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#1 2010-04-19 19:20:54

McFlow
Member
Registered: 2010-04-17
Posts: 58

Compatibility with notebooks graphic chips

Hello,
I am about to buy a notebook. Today I had a short conversation with the local stockist and I will talk to him tomorrow again. It's also part of a company that serves a lot of the local companies with IT solutions. They work with Linux systems too.
I said that I would not like an onboard graphic chip like the intel X4500. He said to me that they would cause less problems than the graphic chips by nvidia or ati/amd.
Since I used Linux, which is almost 4 years now I am very active on reading blogs, forums and other articles about Linux. I rather observed quite the opposite to this. Performance wise graphic chips by nvidia and ati are ahead, even a small middle class chip that's sure.
But that was not the main point we were talking about.
The most important point was compatibility. He said that ati and nvidia driver cause more trouble on linux than intel.
From what I read about it in the past is that all drivers, especially ati and intel are improving a lot. If I search different sources for experiences with intel, ati and nvidia graphic chips I find more problems with intel but that can just be a coincidence.
But overall I think in terms of compatibility it does not matter anymore what type of graphic chip you choose.
Can somebody maybe enlighten me a bit?
At the moment I am considering buying the Dell Studio 15 with an ATI 5450. This Studio 15 seems to be a decent relation of price and performance considering the fact that I don't want to use it for gaming in first line.
I hope some people can tell me a little bit more about graphic chips on linuxs.
Thanks and Regards! smile

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#2 2010-04-20 01:53:19

empthollow
Member
Registered: 2009-09-26
Posts: 168

Re: Compatibility with notebooks graphic chips

My experience is first of all, I would not recommend ati.  I have read that ati has gotten better but I have failed to see it in action.  I have a 9250 that support was dropped for long ago and an x200 in my laptop and support was dropped for that last year.  Thanks to the open source community I have a stable arch linux running with the open source driver.  However, no open source driver will ever give you the 3d acceleration that proprietary drivers will.  I have heard good things about new intel cards.  I have never owned an intel graphics card.  I read that the drivers are stable but not capable of 3d acceleration. I am not sure of the details on this. I will note that there was a particular release of an intel driver that was completely broken.  I had to use fbdev to get X11 up on that system.  I am not sure of the driver version or card, I only know I googled the problem and it was in fact a bug.  I have an nvidia 6200le and the proprietary drivers were much easier to setup than ati and it has been very stable for 3 years.  Although the 6200le is not a newer card nvidia is still supporting cards older than mine.  Thank you Nvidia.  So, despite all the rumors and reviews, if I am looking for a performance laptop, I would not consider anything except Nvidia.  Hope that helps.


--empthollow
Check out my Arch based live distro http://fluxcapacity.99k.org

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#3 2010-04-20 03:09:14

mcmillan
Member
Registered: 2006-04-06
Posts: 737

Re: Compatibility with notebooks graphic chips

I have intel drivers on both my old laptop and and my netbook I got last week. Neither one has given me any serious problems, though other people have reported problems, from what I hear it's mainly due some major changes that were made recently and took some time to get wrinkles worked out.

That being said, the intel cards aren't supposed to be able to perform quite as well as ati or nvidia. If you're really concerned about having good graphics  you should probably go with one of those. I don't have any first hand knowledge of how ati or nvidia is nowadays, but empathollow's comments fit with what I've heard.

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#4 2010-04-20 03:13:25

Allan
Pacman
From: Brisbane, AU
Registered: 2007-06-09
Posts: 11,365
Website

Re: Compatibility with notebooks graphic chips

My guide...

Compatibility:   Intel > Nvidia > Ati
Performance:   Nvidia / Ati > Intel

I choose Intel as I do not need fancy graphics on a laptop and they are generally "good enough".  Then Nvidia.

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#5 2010-04-20 10:09:06

McFlow
Member
Registered: 2010-04-17
Posts: 58

Re: Compatibility with notebooks graphic chips

Okay, thanks.
I think you helped me a lot smile

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