A few questions about the Catalyst driver...

z.s.tar.gz · 2009-05-07 19:58:27

I was wondering a few things about the Catalyst (fglrx) driver.

1. Is it really that big of a performance difference between the os drivers?

2. Does it crash a lot (is it known to?)

3. I tried to install, and it says it conflicts with libgl. libgl has a bunch of other stuff that depends on it. How can I get around that?

Thats it. I'll look around some more and see if I can find anything on my own.

DonVla · 2009-05-07 20:10:47

1. yes
2. no it does not
3. remove libgl with "-Rd"-flag and install catalyst-utils.

BUT. the catalyst driver works unpredictable (at least on my onboard HD3200).
that means:
> suspend works sometimes, sometimes it hangs on resume (_very_ annoying for me);
> 3d apps (games, googleearh) flicker, but also only sometimes - i had to restart games often to stop this
> then minor flaws, like login manager does not reappear on logout.
do yourself a favor and buy a cheap nvidia card.
i bought a nvidia 7600gs for about 15€ on ebay. and everything works.

z.s.tar.gz · 2009-05-07 20:24:19

I've heard that nvidea cards arent any good for long term because of lack of opensource drivers. How true is this?

DonVla · 2009-05-07 20:47:52

i haven't tried the opensource nvidia drivers. i guess if you don't need 3d, xv extension, etc, they should work properly.
but, the ati os drivers are better then nvidia's.

Kirurgs · 2009-05-07 21:18:55

As for me, catalyst seem to be quite good... When it's installed properly it doesn't crash.
2D performance could be about the same with OS and Catalyst drivers, 3D - Catalyst is the only that runs everything.
I install video drivers from respective manufacturers site, always, and there are no problems with libgl or whatsoever (or I already removed them ).
Suspend seem to work with 4850, for laptop I saw couple of laptops of my friends and ati is doing better than nvidia.
nVidia has really bad OS driver, but ATI is really good.
There are couple of things that are better with nVidia: it has VDPAU and it adopts new features faster, like new xserver, new kernels, but to me it seems that very soon ATI will catch up, so I have ATI cards in my gaming rig

Last edited by Kirurgs (2009-05-07 21:19:39)

flamelab · 2009-05-07 22:55:16

ATi catalyst is a piece of software garbage. Nvidia closed driver and xf86-video-ati-git are the best drivers out there.

z.s.tar.gz · 2009-05-08 01:14:55

[citation needed]

Sorry, but I really would like some numbers with a claim like that.

I'm going to try to install catalyst tonight, I'll post back with what happens.

kensai · 2009-05-08 02:45:31

I am the catalyst driver, and say, the drivers are very bad. But, at least are better than the oss drivers for my onboard hd3200. Nvidia is so much better in so many levels. Hopefully catalyst is getting better, at least 9.4 is a great improvement above all others. Like someone have said, when there is a new catalyst release, we go, "Well, they couldn't have made worse than last year".

flamelab · 2009-05-08 08:29:47

kensai wrote:

I am the catalyst driver, and say, the drivers are very bad. But, at least are better than the oss drivers for my onboard hd3200. Nvidia is so much better in so many levels. Hopefully catalyst is getting better, at least 9.4 is a great improvement above all others. Like someone have said, when there is a new catalyst release, we go, "Well, they couldn't have made worse than last year".

It would be OK if they hadn't dropped support for R500 and older cards. But their devs are so bored and, as it seems, incapable of maintaining support for that chip architecture.

I have a X1600 card and xf86-video-ati-git really accelerates the desktop. With catalyst, for example, in KDE4, when I pressed the button for Kmenu, I took 1-1.5 seconds to respond. With xf86-video-ati, it opens immediatelly. All the apps are launched without delay. Catalyst made my system slower. I couldn't sacrifice raw game power (which compared to Windows is... slower) for that crappy desktop responsiveness.

Except for that, each time a new kernel was released, I had to wait for months for them to release a "compatible" driver or a stupid patch.

I am very disappointed by the closed source driver, both in Windows and Linux, especially in linux. After I "discovered" xf86-video-ati, everything became much better in my desktop.

PS. I'll never forget the fact that they didn't support AIGLX till last year, that it launches 2 instances of X and that it always used 8-10 % of my CPU.
They don't want to make a better driver for Linux. They don't care.

Last edited by flamelab (2009-05-08 08:46:35)

stefanwilkens · 2009-05-08 09:24:37

for what it's worth, nvidia closed source drivers have always been ahead of the ati closed source drivers... and I've seen good things about nouveau, capable of running openarena back in march 2008.

signor_rossi · 2009-05-08 14:32:20

z.s.tar.gz wrote:

[citation needed]
Sorry, but I really would like some numbers with a claim like that.
I'm going to try to install catalyst tonight, I'll post back with what happens.

Please tell us your graphic card model first! There are huge differences between different models regarding how good catalyst or the open source drivers work.

z.s.tar.gz · 2009-05-09 02:27:09

I was just wondering about it in general, but I have a 3200 onboard.

I may get an nvidia card and a new monitor anyways, but all I wanted out of my ati card was decent rendering in blender and phun.

Anyways, I wrecked my system w/ catalyst (my fault) and now I'm running hackintosh, so I may not be able to test stuff for a while.

z.s.tar.gz · 2009-05-19 23:17:14

So, I tried again, but now I get an error that xorg cant find my card. (dont remember exactly what) A little research showed that this was the equivalent to "doesn't support your card".

Now, I think I am going to get an nvidia card, but I don't know which one...

edit: using ubuntu right now and for the first time I have problems with catalyst. UI lag, buggyness, all that.
I am definitely getting a nvidia card.

Last edited by z.s.tar.gz (2009-05-20 00:26:53)

DonVla · 2009-05-20 10:01:11

offtopic:

z.s.tar.gz wrote:

Now, I think I am going to get an nvidia card, but I don't know which one...

depends on what you're about to do.
i wanted a cheap and a power saving card, but with common 3d features.
if you have a pcie slot i'd really recommend the nvidia 7600 GS (note _not GT_) without active cooling (fan).
though you need some good case cooling while playing/load.
it consumes about 10W (idle) to 35W (heavy load) and is powerful enough to play doom3, halflife2 or nexuiz in high resolution.
but even if you don't play (actually i started playing some old games again when i bought this card), it's the least power-consuming nvidia card i found.
i bought it on ebay for 17€ incl. shipping. (like this one: http://cgi.ebay.de/NVIDIA-GeForce-7600- … C294%3A50)

ontopic:
it's a pity with amd/ati graphics chips. the HW is good, the boards with the HD3200 chipsets are great, but the support/drivers are so miserable that it is mostly impossible for users to use them!
the OS drivers are good, but what's the sense of buying a 3d-card/chipset if the drivers do not support this feature.

however, hope this helps.
vlad

ps: and no, i am not a nvidia marketing guy

Last edited by DonVla (2009-05-20 10:02:53)

z.s.tar.gz · 2009-05-20 11:37:01

I was thinking about getting an 8400 something since its 30 bucks and I want to do is autocad and emulator games. Possibly halo 1.

edit: I have plenty of airflow, and I should have enough power (famous last words)

Last edited by z.s.tar.gz (2009-05-20 11:37:39)

ataraxia · 2009-05-20 13:07:02

I bought one of these for my workstation, for much the same reason. 9400GT, passive cooling, $40, free shipping. It should arrive today. We'll see how it works.

ataraxia · 2009-05-20 19:02:49

ataraxia wrote:

I bought one of these for my workstation, for much the same reason. 9400GT, passive cooling, $40, free shipping. It should arrive today. We'll see how it works.

Got it, installed it, set it up. No problems whatsoever. Just the way we can only dream ATI cards would be.

The only thing I wish for this card is two digital outputs of some kind rather than 1 digital and 2 analog. I can definitely see the difference between the monitor on DVI vs the one on DSUB. But dual DVI + fanless cooler = $100+. Not paying more than double for that improvement.

z.s.tar.gz · 2009-05-20 20:32:43

whats the deal with fanless? is it really all the more quite/cheap/something?

ataraxia · 2009-05-20 23:37:34

No fan, no fan noises. Plus, no fan means it won't jam up and overheat your GPU, and cables won't get caught in it. Basically, it's the solid state advantage for GPUs.

z.s.tar.gz · 2009-05-21 01:36:46

But doesnt it get hot? I have plenty of airflow, but still...

I'll look into it though, seems like a good idea.

edit: more importantly, I have very little space on my mobo, as I only have 2 pci and both are used, so I can't have anything too big. Or is that not a problem?

Again, I'll look it up.

Last edited by z.s.tar.gz (2009-05-21 01:38:10)

ataraxia · 2009-05-21 13:45:22

They do get a bit warm. Mine is 58C right now. And yes, they are big in different places. The corner of the heat sink bumps into one of the caps on the motherboard. They are not normally really thick like a huge fan, though.

jduped · 2009-06-09 09:18:26

flamelab good call on the xf86-video-ati-git driver finally getting somewhere on this box thanks to that.

Arch Linux

#1 2009-05-07 19:58:27

A few questions about the Catalyst driver...

#2 2009-05-07 20:10:47

Re: A few questions about the Catalyst driver...

#3 2009-05-07 20:24:19

Re: A few questions about the Catalyst driver...

#4 2009-05-07 20:47:52

Re: A few questions about the Catalyst driver...

#5 2009-05-07 21:18:55

Re: A few questions about the Catalyst driver...

#6 2009-05-07 22:55:16

Re: A few questions about the Catalyst driver...

#7 2009-05-08 01:14:55

Re: A few questions about the Catalyst driver...

#8 2009-05-08 02:45:31

Re: A few questions about the Catalyst driver...

#9 2009-05-08 08:29:47

Re: A few questions about the Catalyst driver...

#10 2009-05-08 09:24:37

Re: A few questions about the Catalyst driver...

#11 2009-05-08 14:32:20

Re: A few questions about the Catalyst driver...

#12 2009-05-09 02:27:09

Re: A few questions about the Catalyst driver...

#13 2009-05-19 23:17:14

Re: A few questions about the Catalyst driver...

#14 2009-05-20 10:01:11

Re: A few questions about the Catalyst driver...

#15 2009-05-20 11:37:01

Re: A few questions about the Catalyst driver...

#16 2009-05-20 13:07:02

Re: A few questions about the Catalyst driver...

#17 2009-05-20 19:02:49

Re: A few questions about the Catalyst driver...

#18 2009-05-20 20:32:43

Re: A few questions about the Catalyst driver...

#19 2009-05-20 23:37:34

Re: A few questions about the Catalyst driver...

#20 2009-05-21 01:36:46

Re: A few questions about the Catalyst driver...

#21 2009-05-21 13:45:22

Re: A few questions about the Catalyst driver...

#22 2009-06-09 09:18:26

Re: A few questions about the Catalyst driver...

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