Arch Linux

iBertus

Member

From: Greenville, NC

Registered: 2004-11-04

Posts: 2,228

Re: Should I buy ATI or NVIDIA?

nVidia if you are into GPU computing, decent drivers, decent dual monitor support (as long as you connect both to the same card).

If you were setting up a Windows machine I would have said ATI.

jceasless

Member

Registered: 2009-04-20

Posts: 73

Re: Should I buy ATI or NVIDIA?

I'm on an ATI HD4850 for my desktop.

yes that's a great card, i have two of them in mine.

i know this is kind of a PC vs. Mac (whats leenucks) kind of topic, but i don't buy anything but AMD/ATi and i've never had any issues.  every machine i've built for others is the same.  i would agree that Nvidia has a nice proprietary driver vs. ATi, but since when is that important?  why support that?  from sources i've read about the proprietary driver, its pretty all over the place, and applies some rather intrusive things to the xserver; but i'm not an expert.  nvidia will never open source their driver because 95% of it is shared with the windows/mac driver code; very little is platform specific.

the fact of the matter, like it or not, is these sorts of things are indeed political, and you should consider siding with the party that intends to promote a long term relationship with you and the product (gnu/linux) you wish to integrate, instead of whats "easiest" ATM.  money makes decisions.  ATi has demonstrated a long term commitment to us by ensuring that their products will have lasting support, even if not by them directly, by releasing the necessary information and funding the initial efforts to produce a quality integration with our platform.

bottom line: buy ATi.  demonstrate your dedication to open implementations, and your demand for community involvement in proprietary, "component type" hardware products.  this is how we make things better for gnu/linux.  do you intend on buying a new card every 6mos?  each year?  the ATi driver code is on a fast development track; i wouldn't worry too much, unless you turn cards around faster than a year or two.

my 2c.

Huh, I was thinking the same thing.  ATi has actually invested in Linux by doing this, it's a longer commitment down the road, and will probably provide better benefit in the future.  As for nvidia they do make a great driver but I think they might be less adaptable to new Linux technologies and in fact be able to hold Linux adaptability to creating new ones because they have the market.

This sums it up perfectly for me. A lot of people don't seem to care about the politics of code. I understand if there are certain features such as Nvidia's clear head start in the GPGPU space. If you are just into gaming, I think it is awfully shortsighted to chant 'nvidia' when the ATi driver seems to be growing by huge leaps every three months.

For fans of proprietary drivers, expect x.org 1.7 support to coincide with the Ubuntu release cycle (right on time to be a cycle behind ). Catalyst 10.2 already has a new feature that allows ATi's Direct2D optimizations to be utilized in X windows ( http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=n … &px=Nzk5MQ ). I haven't tried it because personally the open source driver supports all my needs with my 4670, except for the occasional flicker in HD video streams. Did I hear that this is pretty well patched up as of 2.6.33? Never tried multi monitor with the OSS driver, but I'd expect that the fact its a fully open x.org driver means that it will be able to do whatever X windows is able to do, as soon as its stable. Could be wrong on that, though, I admit.

Last edited by jceasless (2010-02-28 18:45:47)

flamelab

Member

From: Athens, Hellas (Greece)

Registered: 2007-12-26

Posts: 2,160

Re: Should I buy ATI or NVIDIA?

On D2D issue: As far as I know, Direct2D is a Windows specific (and only) technology, that needs DirectX infrastracture.

AMD/ATi is... mocking Linux users by using d2d codenames in fglrx, since that can't happen, D2D is not portable.

Last edited by flamelab (2010-02-28 18:49:42)

Vegita

Member

Registered: 2009-10-06

Posts: 111

Re: Should I buy ATI or NVIDIA?

We couldn't even install the properiaty Ati driver for windows vista and windows 7 to make the TV work like on XP. On linux it only worked on tv well, when 3d desktop effects were disabled.
Drivers: nvidia is always better.
Game performance: ati is mostly better in fps, but if you are on linux, that doesn't count, torcs will run around 300fps with newest nvidia even.)

Older cards: xf86-video-ati works wonderful, and I prefer them to any properiaty driver, but opensource radeonhd performance is not okay yet