NVIDIA vs. ATI

flamelab · 2009-11-17 00:06:49

No they are not. They are going to start being "ready" for all cards (3D support/KMS/DRi2), on January. Until then, Nvidia is the best choice. Their driver is really good on Linux.

Last edited by flamelab (2009-11-17 00:07:18)

Nezmer · 2009-11-17 12:54:20

flamelab wrote:

No they are not. They are going to start being "ready" for all cards (3D support/KMS/DRi2), on January. Until then, Nvidia is the best choice. Their driver is really good on Linux.

Optimistic

flamelab · 2009-11-17 13:37:57

Nezmer wrote:

flamelab wrote:
No they are not. They are going to start being "ready" for all cards (3D support/KMS/DRi2), on January. Until then, Nvidia is the best choice. Their driver is really good on Linux.
Optimistic

I said "they are going to start being "ready" "

bigjust · 2009-11-17 15:14:22

very rarely has Nvidia ever let me down, usually crazy stuff during driver upgrades (but then again, I'm lazy). Unless your a purist, Nvidia is the way to go until ATI gets its act together.

andamaru · 2009-11-20 14:27:26

Nvidia all the way. They have the best drivers hands down
Intel, and AMD have open source drivers, but they're still pretty shifty

Last edited by andamaru (2009-11-20 14:28:45)

mythus · 2009-11-20 18:32:53

For graphic cards, I have to say nVidia. I'd love for some ATI love with good working linux drivers, but they just aren't there, and I doubt they'd be there come Feburary/March when I start shopping to build my new PC.

It's odd too because for CPU's I've always preferred AMD. I am thinking about a Phenom 4 processor come February... but Intel i5 and i7's also look soo tempting. But with GPU's, it has always been nVidia, and I think it will continue that way.

JohannesSM64 · 2009-11-20 20:06:06

NVIDIA, duh
Well, a simple pacman -S nvidia got my 9400GT up and running with excellent performance, compositing and VDPAU. With VDPAU + MPlayer, you can watch 1080p with an ancient CPU and a $50 NVIDIA card

dyscoria · 2009-11-20 21:09:52

NVIDIA is great for me, and I didn't have any real problems with KDE4 (and definitely no problems now). NVIDIA did take a very long time to address the KDE related problems (which caused a bit of a stir) but that whole saga seems to be over now.

jceasless · 2009-11-24 19:39:32

This is sort of beside the current discussion, but does it bother anyone else the amount of heat ATI gets for Linux support considering they've made the biggest moves of any graphics company so far to support Linux?

All the heat being flamed at ATI is unjustified. Sure, fglrx sucks. But you know what? I don't game on Linux and I never had a problem with it beyond its dyslexia about screens (would put my TV connected through S-Video as my default screen and wouldn't let me change it). I've abandoned it now because I can get better xv with the new FOSS driver. A driver that will keep getting better and better and better until the day my Radeon 4670 bites dust.

Would I rather ATI spend money overhauling fglrx, or would I rather see a better FOSS driver? The question is stupid. Fglrx is over, keep using it if you insist on gaming in Linux until the day that you can switch over to the FOSS driver (which is much further out for nVidia users). BUT PLEASE, for the love of God, stop complaining about ATI not fixing fglrx. They ARE fixing it, by focusing on an open source solution! nvidia is not, has not, and probably will not.

Okay, sorry, I just realized I am more talking about how people act at Phoronix than over here. If anyone hates this post I can remove it.

Last edited by jceasless (2009-11-24 21:24:40)

quarkup · 2009-11-24 20:11:15

+1 for nvidia, using a nvidia go 6800 (using the latest drivers) and its great.

I'm not really unhappy for now about it is being a open-source driver or not. I also use windows sometimes (at least 1 time each 6 months)

iBertus · 2009-11-24 20:21:58

I used to use ATI back in the day with an old Radeon 8500LE 128MB card w/ fglrx. This setup worked pretty good, I thought, until the moment that I got my hands on a GeForce 7xxx series card and the nvidia driver. Suddenly, all of the issues that I'd been having with ATI (proper resolution, performance, crashes and slow updates to newer versions of X) were not there. I would switch back to ATI if the FOSS driver were more mature and I didn't need CUDA.

Nezmer · 2009-11-24 22:56:19

@jceasless
ATI people are criticized for the inability of providing quality drivers(open-source or not) and the inability to catch up with upstream kernel/X releases for their proprietary offering. While their competition provides quality drivers and introduce interesting technologies.

Your other points would be valid If AMD/ATI is paying developers to work on the FOSS drivers. I don't think they are.

Anyway, as I have Mobility Radeon HD 4570 in my laptop , I hope that one day I can use this laptop not only on Linux but on BSDs and other OSes. I'm that impressed by the effort put on the FOSS drivers. I just don't think the process would be as fast as some people think.

cliffbreaker · 2009-11-25 08:24:26

Got 8500 GT, Nvidia, very happy with it, not a single trouble, before had 7600GS, can say the same - I will never change for Radeon.

jowilkin · 2009-11-25 10:38:01

I have computers with AMD/ATI, Nvidia, and Intel graphics all running linux, and AMD/ATI is by far the worst. There is no way I would buy an ATI card right now, the open source drivers are not at all ready for prime time usage, and Nvidia drivers have always worked great. By the time ATI open source drivers are ready, its not unrealistic to think you will be ready to buy a new card anyway. Why take the risk of hoping that ATI drivers mature?

I have no problems with Intel drivers, but it seems like others have, so Nvidia seems like the clear choice right now.

jordi · 2009-11-25 23:36:01

@jceasless

I don't know about others, but I don't really care that Ati is maybe going to have great drivers in half a year or even more. What I care about is how they are right now, and fglrx aswell as the open source drivers are not only bad but godawful.

Some examples?
fglrx - decend performance, not working with current xorg version, crashes for me when trying to watch dvb in kaffeine
xf86-video-ati - my second monitor stays black from time to time, slow resizing windows, flash is even slower than it is anyway, opening anything that will try to use opengl or directX in wine will freeze X, but at least watching dvb in kaffeine works,
vesa - watching dvb in kaffeine works too, yeeah
xf86-video-radeonhd - X won't even start for me

so my advice: take anything but ati

Hiz · 2009-11-26 16:43:39

we everybody know the answer. Nvidia for Linux. but ppl like to keep asking this question because they consider dual boot with Windows. right?
otherwise i cant find reason you choose ATI.....

Meskarune · 2009-11-26 19:16:38

andre.ramaciotti wrote:

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.

ATI isn't any better in this reguard. My laptop's ati mobility 9600 gpu is only 5 years old and its been sent to the unsupported "legacy card" bin. I can't update my xorg to 7.4 now. Funny thing is, vendors are still selling laptops with these cards!

F1y3r · 2009-11-27 11:13:38

Meskarune wrote:

andre.ramaciotti wrote:
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.
ATI isn't any better in this reguard. My laptop's ati mobility 9600 gpu is only 5 years old and its been sent to the unsupported "legacy card" bin. I can't update my xorg to 7.4 now. Funny thing is, vendors are still selling laptops with these cards!

5 years?! My 3 years old Xpress 1150 is unsupported! I use open source driver.

correnos · 2009-12-16 00:35:04

I would strongly recommend nvidia for anyone looking to buy a GC that's linux-friendly. ATI may be cheaper, but their driver situation is horrible. fglrx is buggy and seems to live in its own world where kernel and X releases are three months later than they actually are. The open-source drivers work all right for 2d, but for compositing the only choice is the git drivers, and those have major tearing/artifacts . There may be a few stories of problems with the nvidia drivers, but they are far less common. Oh, and nvidia has supported freebsd drivers for those interested, though I have not tested their quality.

jowilkin · 2009-12-16 01:04:33

No ATI drivers still aren't ready for prime time. Nvidia drivers work great. There is no reason to buy ATI on linux right now if you ask me.

I'm running computers with Nvidia, ATI, and Intel graphics cards on linux right now and I have no problems with the Nvidia or Intel graphics, but nothing but headaches with ATI. Yeah ATI has open source drivers, but they are not ready for prime time at all. Nvidia's drivers just work. Maybe the ATI drivers will be ready soon, but we've been hearing that for a long time.

edit: oops, I see I posted pretty much the same thing in this thread 3 weeks ago Well the situation has not improved for me with the ATI card.

Last edited by jowilkin (2009-12-16 01:10:09)

mrunion · 2009-12-16 13:43:09

nVidia all around in my opinion, but DEFINITELY on Linux!

jdarnold · 2009-12-16 14:36:13

I'd have to say nVidia too. I've installed plenty of Linuxii (Linuxes?) on both cards but just find the nVidia driver easier to work with, even if it is closed source. This is esp. true with my dual monitor setup. One quick run of the nvidia-settings program sets things up perfectly. Always needed xorg.conf hacking to get it to work with ATI.

bobdob · 2009-12-16 15:52:19

I would have to say I prefer ATI, but only because I have an x1950 pro. It works fine with the open source drivers since its a r500 card. The 2D performance seem to work well for me and I don't seem to have any instabilities.
Having said this I probably won't buy a new ATI card (r800) anytime soon and would choose an nVidia card instead.

Maxa · 2009-12-16 16:58:30

I had the same, X1950 Pro. xf86-video-ati worked fine without KMS, google-earth, flash, that kind of stuff. Now I'm using HD4200 (RV620) and google-earth doesn't seem to be working; other than that, no problems. I haven't tried xf86-video-radeonhd for a while.

I'm getting a HD48x0 (RV770?) soon, I guess it shouldn't work any worse than HD4200 (http://www.x.org/wiki/RadeonFeature). And yeah... it's for gaming in Windows where drivers are not a problem, and I don't use compositing or any other bloat (;)) in Linux.

drcouzelis · 2009-12-16 17:39:13

I don't know if it is important to you or not, but I just wanted to point out that there are no free software drivers for ATI cards, only open source software drivers. You can read more about it here: http://www.phoronix.com/forums/showthre … #post67184 The only free software drivers for modern video cards are for Intel embedded video cards, which of course aren't available in PCI or AGP formats, and they pretty much canceled the "Larrabee" project.

I use a Radeon X850 XT PCI with the open source drivers. Compositing and games like Assault Cube and Sauerbraten run well. I haven't been able to get Portal or Half-Life 2 with Wine to work yet. The card has two DVI outputs. I use one for my monitor and to connect to my TV. I'm sorry, I don't have much experience with nVidia.

Ooh, now I'm in the mood to browse Newegg for a cheap "upgrade"...

Last edited by drcouzelis (2009-12-16 17:52:11)

Arch Linux

#26 2009-11-17 00:06:49

Re: NVIDIA vs. ATI

#27 2009-11-17 12:54:20

Re: NVIDIA vs. ATI

#28 2009-11-17 13:37:57

Re: NVIDIA vs. ATI

#29 2009-11-17 15:14:22

Re: NVIDIA vs. ATI

#30 2009-11-20 14:27:26

Re: NVIDIA vs. ATI

#31 2009-11-20 18:32:53

Re: NVIDIA vs. ATI

#32 2009-11-20 20:06:06

Re: NVIDIA vs. ATI

#33 2009-11-20 21:09:52

Re: NVIDIA vs. ATI

#34 2009-11-24 19:39:32

Re: NVIDIA vs. ATI

#35 2009-11-24 20:11:15

Re: NVIDIA vs. ATI

#36 2009-11-24 20:21:58

Re: NVIDIA vs. ATI

#37 2009-11-24 22:56:19

Re: NVIDIA vs. ATI

#38 2009-11-25 08:24:26

Re: NVIDIA vs. ATI

#39 2009-11-25 10:38:01

Re: NVIDIA vs. ATI

#40 2009-11-25 23:36:01

Re: NVIDIA vs. ATI

#41 2009-11-26 16:43:39

Re: NVIDIA vs. ATI

#42 2009-11-26 19:16:38

Re: NVIDIA vs. ATI

#43 2009-11-27 11:13:38

Re: NVIDIA vs. ATI

#44 2009-12-16 00:35:04

Re: NVIDIA vs. ATI

#45 2009-12-16 01:04:33

Re: NVIDIA vs. ATI

#46 2009-12-16 13:43:09

Re: NVIDIA vs. ATI

#47 2009-12-16 14:36:13

Re: NVIDIA vs. ATI

#48 2009-12-16 15:52:19

Re: NVIDIA vs. ATI

#49 2009-12-16 16:58:30

Re: NVIDIA vs. ATI

#50 2009-12-16 17:39:13

Re: NVIDIA vs. ATI

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