Arch Linux

Poprocks

Member

Registered: 2004-12-08

Posts: 26

Would like your opinion on ATI's proprietary drivers

I purchased a video card from ATI around Christmastime -- I purposely bought a Radeon 9250 AGP because it was the highest Radeon supported by the DRI.  It works great, no complaints at all.

I've heard a lot of talk about the proprietary ATI drivers -- I know they're needed for 3D acceleration for newer ATI cards -- would it be worth trying out the proprietary drivers on my machine?  There are no problems with my 3D acceleration now but the most taxing thing I've tried was Enemy Territory which worked great.  If I were to try out a newer 3D game, for example, do you think I'd notice a difference of any kind using the proprietary drivers?

Just curious on your opinions on this.  Thanks.

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I take my Poprocks with Diet Pepsi

khazdar

Member

From: ohio

Registered: 2003-11-06

Posts: 123

Re: Would like your opinion on ATI's proprietary drivers

Download the Doom3 demo and see for yourself.

iBertus

Member

From: Greenville, NC

Registered: 2004-11-04

Posts: 2,228

Re: Would like your opinion on ATI's proprietary drivers

It isn't just a matter of head-to-head performance. The ATI driver has many more features that cannot be included in the DRI driver for legal reasons. These features are used by many newer games and will, if not increase performance, make the games that use them look better. On the performance front you will probably also notice a big difference. Games like Doom 3 are probably not going to be playable with the DRI driver but should at least run with the ATI drivers. Back when I had an ATI card I did notice that some GL visuals didn't render correctly with the DRI drivers but did with the ATI ones. I had a Raddy 8500.

aCoder

Member

From: Medina, OH

Registered: 2004-03-07

Posts: 359

Website

Re: Would like your opinion on ATI's proprietary drivers

When and if the proprietary drivers work, they should be used instead of DRI, because they work very well.  They do, however, break frequently.

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If you develop an ear for sounds that are musical it is like developing an ego. You begin to refuse sounds that are not musical and that way cut yourself off from a good deal of experience.
  - John Cage

DarkPath

Member

Registered: 2004-11-15

Posts: 50

Re: Would like your opinion on ATI's proprietary drivers

I've had the proprietary ATI drivers installed for a couple months now and haven't had any problems with them. However, it did take me a LONG time to get them working, but that's because it took me a while to figure out that I had some symbolic links pointing to the wrong files...

I've been able to play Enemy-Territory with only one minor problem that didn't effect gameplay. Even then, it only happened once. My roommate using Windows with an ATI card, however, has had numerous problems.

Really, I doubt you should have much difficulty with the proprietary drivers once you get them installed. Also, with ATI's current push toward better Linux drivers, hopefully even better things are coming.

qwerty

Member

Registered: 2004-12-17

Posts: 183

Re: Would like your opinion on ATI's proprietary drivers

Ati drivers works quite good, just read here

http://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?t=9264&start=45

YO

iphitus

Forum Fellow

From: Melbourne, Australia

Registered: 2004-10-09

Posts: 4,927

Re: Would like your opinion on ATI's proprietary drivers

A lot of people have problems with the ATI drivers, not working at all and the like, and i think for now it might be better to stay away from ATI cards.

kleptophobiac

Member

From: Sunnyvale, CA

Registered: 2004-04-25

Posts: 488

Re: Would like your opinion on ATI's proprietary drivers

If i use linux and need a gui, I go nvidia. Why? It just works.

The ATI drivers for linux are only available in rpm, rarely work, and require a lot of fiddle time to get there. They suck.

I use an ATI card in my windows/gaming box, and nvidia cards in my linux boxen.

It's been quite some time since ATI said they were going to pay more attention to the linux community, but I have yet to see anything particularly interesting out of that one.

kcy29581

Member

From: CA

Registered: 2004-12-23

Posts: 231

Re: Would like your opinion on ATI's proprietary drivers

I have used the drivers and wasn't satisfied at all. Crashes, bugs, and the dreadful installation compared to nVidia!!! Maybe it's cause they're rpm's? I didn't seem to find anything else.

Although I have seen that some people have had no problems whatsoever! (weird)

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There is no spoon in Arch...

DarkPath

Member

Registered: 2004-11-15

Posts: 50

Re: Would like your opinion on ATI's proprietary drivers

I have used the drivers and wasn't satisfied at all. Crashes, bugs, and the dreadful installation compared to nVidia!!! Maybe it's cause they're rpm's? I didn't seem to find anything else.

Although I have seen that some people have had no problems whatsoever! (weird)

Well, it shouldn't be because they're RPMs as Arch has tools to extract the files from RPMs. However, ATI's making pushes lately in the Linux area and IIRC they're changing their driver release schedule to be inline with their Windows driver releases... meaning new, updated drivers every two months. So far, after solving the problem I came across when installing the ATI drivers packages (thanks to qwerty for the PKGBUILDs! ), I haven't had any trouble with them. In the coming weeks, I'm going to be installing some more games on Linux. As it is, that's the one big reason I still dual-boot with Windows. If I come across some problems, I'll let you know, but I've got a lot of schoolwork and finals coming up soon, so I may not have anything on this soon.