Arch Linux

VirtualRider

Member

Registered: 2008-08-20

Posts: 134

NVIDIA vs. ATI

Hi,

i will buy a new pc soon and i would like to hear what you prefer: I have to choose between NVIDIA or ATI graphics card (probably the gtx260^2 or hd4780). What is the current driver situation for those cards/producer? Is everything working fine (if i remember correctly ati is converting opengl commands into directx commands)? Is setting up a dual-screen X a problem for the ati driver?

I had an ATI card some years ago and i had some troubles with it so i tend to nvidia but ati is cheaper and is performing better these days.

dolby

Member

From: 1992

Registered: 2006-08-08

Posts: 1,581

Re: NVIDIA vs. ATI

Go for ATI. Theres gonna be open source 3d drivers soon(ish)
Or even better intel

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initbox

Member

Registered: 2008-09-27

Posts: 172

Re: NVIDIA vs. ATI

With nVidia you will have pretty good performance and I think their drivers are good, plus the control panel is nice. I think setting up dual screens with nVidia is painless.

ATI's drivers don't perform as well (atleast if the situation is still the same) and are more crash-prone, but they are open source now, nVidia's isn't.

So basically, if you want superior performance, you're better off with nVidia, but if you want to actually support and use open source, you should go with ATI.

So basically it's pragmatism vs idealism.

iBertus

Member

From: Greenville, NC

Registered: 2004-11-04

Posts: 2,228

Re: NVIDIA vs. ATI

If you can afford to wait for the ATI drivers to mature, then go with them. If you need performance now and can't wait, go with nvidia. Either way you'll get a pretty good card and decent drivers. I'm excited about the open source drivers for ATI cards, as this has been a thorn in the side of linux users for years.

initbox

Member

Registered: 2008-09-27

Posts: 172

Re: NVIDIA vs. ATI

I'm excited about the open source drivers for ATI cards, as this has been a thorn in the side of linux users for years.

Yeah, same here.

Then again, I've been pragmatic and haven't really cared about using the nVidia drivers, but OSS is always a better choice.

Ranguvar

Member

Registered: 2008-08-12

Posts: 2,563

Re: NVIDIA vs. ATI

Tough. AMD (ATI) has gone open source, which is great - it means Linux driver support will definitely be there as long as there is much demand at all. Also, they seem to have less problems with KWin 4 (KDE's compositing window manager). OTOH, NVIDIA's future as a company is _much_ more secure (despite a recent comeback, AMD's been falling apart in the GPU market, and taking a pummeling in the CPU market, they're even stopping their in-house fab), they have better support for GPU-in-normal-applications standards (CUDA, OpenCL), and historically they've made much better quality drivers, especially for Linux and OpenGL. How they will compare to open-source AMD drivers, I don't know.

It's a toss-up. I'd just find the best card between the two for the price, and then only if an AMD and an NVIDIA are neck-and-neck should you consider this stuff.

neowolf

Member

From: North Carolina

Registered: 2008-01-27

Posts: 105

Re: NVIDIA vs. ATI

It really depends on your measure right now.

Open wise, ATI wins hands down. The open drivers are better, and are inherently going to keep getting better barring a serious policy change from nvidia.

Closed wise, there are some submeasures to be concerned with.
Nvidia has a nasty habit of abruptly dropping support for older cards which eventually tends to cause issues. ATI tends to be more forgiving in this regard.
However 3D wise, nvidia tends to be a better performer on the driver level for sure. 2D wise however ATI tends to come out ahead. Though this is really only clearly evident in certain applications. (KDE4 is a big example, getting decent performance out of the rendering engine it uses with nvidia requires serious tweaking. With ATI narry a thought.)

As a side note, it may just be my own foolishness but after having two nvidia chipsets and an ATI, only with ATI and with the open drivers (and only recently!) have I gotten overlay to work "properly"! Video performance hasn't been bad on any of the prior situations mind you, however tearing has always been an issue until recently.

ddaedalus

Member

Registered: 2008-01-14

Posts: 54

Re: NVIDIA vs. ATI

I have built a pc recently and have gone with a ATI Radeon HD4850 from Sapphire. I am very pleased with this card and the open source drivers work for me like a charm. No configuration for Xorg needed.

Performance wise, I can say that Crysis, Vista64, Very High, 1280x800, NoAA, NoAF runs quite good.
OpenGL performance on Linux, with the open source drivers, then again is horrendous. Can't say anything about Catalyst on Linux since I don't use it.

skyview

Member

Registered: 2008-12-26

Posts: 5

Re: NVIDIA vs. ATI

I second ddaedalus post.

ATI 4850 , in Windows I can play Fallout 3 with max settings at 1920x1200. Archlinux x64 , Catalyst 8.12 has been quite stable so far (2-3 weeks of usage) and performance fine.

Janusz11

Member

Registered: 2007-05-16

Posts: 87

Re: NVIDIA vs. ATI

I have just recently replaced my Radeon HD4870 with a GeForce GTX260 (the new series with 216 processor cores instead of 192 standard) because of all the hassle I had with the ATi card in Linux. This is now the second time that I've switched from an ATi card to a nVidia card and for the future I'll only look out for nVidia cards again.

I can't comment on the open source drivers from ATi. But their CATALYST driver (in Linux) is still a mess. I have the feeling that instead of solving all the most obvious and well known problems, with any and every new driver release they just implement new stuff- and a whole lot of bugs. If they implement anything at all besides of bugs, that is.   

It was never possible to install the CATALYST driver without editing files and/or patching- don't expect to get it run on a new Kernel. The card gets so freaking hot, I almost burned my fingers once when I touched the outlet of the fan. Needless to say that it goes full power all the time even though you are just visiting some pages in the Internet. But the most annoying thing with this card was the fact that I was never able to watch some DVDs on my box. Either they were badly tearing or I encountered serious stuttering.

Anyway, I'm now settled with my new nVidia card. I think that ATi has still a long way to go with their CATALYST driver to get where nVidia is right now.

brazzmonkey

Member

From: between keyboard and chair

Registered: 2006-03-16

Posts: 818

Re: NVIDIA vs. ATI

I'd recommend to avoid Nvidia at the moment. Their drivers are more troublesome than those from other manufacturers.
I currently own several PCs with many flavours of Nvidia cards, they all have their set of issues.
Prefer ATI for performance, Intel for stability and compatibility.

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andre.ramaciotti

Member

From: Brazil

Registered: 2007-04-06

Posts: 649

Re: NVIDIA vs. ATI

I don't feel like buying a nvidia card again. It seems they won't support the legacy drivers on X.org 7.4 any time soon. One has already said to me 'your card is 10 years old anyway', because of exactly that I expected nvidia to open its specifications if they're not willing to mantain it anymore.

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phildg

Member

Registered: 2006-03-10

Posts: 146

Re: NVIDIA vs. ATI

Nvidia has always been good to me. I had no trouble setting up three monitors on two 9400GT's using Xinerama. 3D acceleration works, the setup has proved very stable and fast so far.

However, my new Dell at work came with some ATI card that proved fairly troublesome to get going and working well. I suspect the problem was 85% me though, this is the first ATI card I've come across in several years, and probably the first I've used in Linux.

ozar

Member

From: USA

Registered: 2005-02-18

Posts: 1,686

Re: NVIDIA vs. ATI

I've stuck with nVidia for the last 9 or 10 years now and have never regretted it.

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SiC

Member

From: Liverpool, England

Registered: 2008-01-10

Posts: 430

Re: NVIDIA vs. ATI

+1 here again for nvidia, the experience of getting it to work is that little bit more flawless.  Plus features seem to work better when compared to the ati card in my laptop.  Not had any experience with nvidia laptop cards or ati desktop cards though, so can't comment on them.

Themaister

Member

From: Trondheim, Norway

Registered: 2008-07-21

Posts: 652

Website

Re: NVIDIA vs. ATI

Must give a +1 to nvidia ... Never failed me But then again, if ATi reaches the same level of drivers, I'd switch I guess. Nvidia is the ONLY graphic card with great OpenGL support. Although, heavy duty gaming on Linux seems far off, so my little cute 8800GT should be enough for many years to come! If it's closed or not is a non-issue for me as long as it works.

Last edited by Themaister (2009-01-18 16:44:25)

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B-Con

Member

From: USA

Registered: 2007-12-17

Posts: 554

Website

Re: NVIDIA vs. ATI

Haven't had experience with ATI cards, but my Nvidia's have never given me problems.

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Zoranthus

Member

From: muc

Registered: 2006-11-22

Posts: 166

Re: NVIDIA vs. ATI

I'm facing the same descision right now. Benchmark-wise an ATI would be the better option for my budget, but then again I've never had any problems with my old nvidia card at all. And threads like this one scare me. Also there seems to be alot of pro-ATI votes that say ATI is preferrable in principle versus alot of pro-nvidia-votes saying nvidia is better from their experience. :-/

VirtualRider

Member

Registered: 2008-08-20

Posts: 134

Re: NVIDIA vs. ATI

I'm currently not that happy with NVIDIA - my fullscreen-application-bug couldn't be solved (an issue of the new xorg, i guess), so i seriously think of ATI. Their performing is a good argument too.

mikesd

Member

From: Australia

Registered: 2008-02-01

Posts: 788

Website

Re: NVIDIA vs. ATI

I have been using nvidia since a TNT2 way back in the days. Since then I have had a bunch of Geforce 2, 4 & 6 based cards and once would not have considered ATI.

However since ATI merged with AMD and starting releasing the documentation required to make a decent open source driver with hardware acceleration support I have started to think about what I will do when it comes time to upgrade next. I have a ATI X1600 in my laptop and have been pleased with it though I am still using the ATI closed source driver. Not sure exactly where the open source driver is as far as chipsets/features supported.

While I have been very happy with nvidia I may have to look at ATI next time I'm in the market for a graphics card.

While I'm not normally a fan of closed source products I do feel for nvidia in this case. Competition in GPUs seems to be even more fierce than in CPUs and I can understand nvidia being reluctant to release any information on how they have dominated the consumer GPU market for the past 5 to 10 years. With ATI publishing their documentation nvidia may have no choice but to follow suit.

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z0phi3l

Member

From: Waterbury CT

Registered: 2007-11-26

Posts: 278

Re: NVIDIA vs. ATI

nVidia all the way, closed source drivers and all

I've never had good results from ATI, neither in Windows or in Linux, I don't see them opening up their drivers as something that would tempt me because the performance I've gotten from the hardware in general isn't what I expect from hardware at the same price point

mrunion

Member

From: Jonesborough, TN

Registered: 2007-01-26

Posts: 1,938

Website

Re: NVIDIA vs. ATI

Same here -- nVidia.

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Matt

"It is very difficult to educate the educated."

buttons

Member

From: NJ, USA

Registered: 2007-08-04

Posts: 620

Re: NVIDIA vs. ATI

Great topic.  For once there isn't a sure-fire answer.  I'll break it down.

Nvidia - Extremely buggy lately.  Massive performance.  CUDA.
ATI - Open.  Terrible performance.  One day, it will be good.
Intel - Open.  Astonishingly POOR performance.  One day, it will be good.  (Unless you downgrade to the dark ages when Intel drivers weren't horrible.  Good luck with this.)

Everyone is pretty upset with linux 3D right now on some level.

For me?  I have a 9800GT.  I need CUDA and I like 3D performance.  I will *wait and see* for ATI.  For years, more than likely.

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skottish

Forum Fellow

From: Here

Registered: 2006-06-16

Posts: 7,942

Re: NVIDIA vs. ATI

I don't see all the bugs that people keep talking about with nVidia. In the 10 years or so I've used their cards under Linux, I can remember one time that there was a bug. It was fixed almost immediately. I guess I'm just lucky.

--Correction--

It's more like seven years.

Canaris

Member

Registered: 2009-06-02

Posts: 3

Re: NVIDIA vs. ATI

Ok some time has passed since the last post.

I have a 7600GT and the nvidia driver works pretty stable. So far I've never had any issues. I am thinking about upgrading my graphics card so I was wondering what the current (driver) situation is like?

Are the ATI open source drivers "ready" yet? Or are the nvidia drivers still better?