Experiences with ATI drivers for linux

eatmuchpie

eatmuchpie

eatmuchpie

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I am going to be building a new computer in a few months time (when I get some money), but I can't decide between Nvidia or ATI. On a windows PC (ie. with no compatibility problems) ATI wins (as far as I understand it). So I would like to get an ATI card/

But, I've heard of problems with ATI's driver for linux. I'm currently using an Nvidia card on linux and have no problems at all, but can the same be said for ATI?

Thanks very much.
 
I used to have a 9800XT. But I couldn't get any sort of 3D performance under linux, and the drivers were an absolute pain. Bear in mind though that since then ati have put more resources into developing drivers. However I found the support totally lacking.

On the otherhand I now use a 7800GTX. I think I bought it 2 weeks after release, and there were drivers that ran it fine. The only problem I had was the fan would stay on high speed. I emailed a bug report to nvidia, and actually received a reply! The problem was fixed in the next driver release a few weeks later.

I would go for nvidia if I were you. The top end cards of both brands are usually fairly comparable. If I'm completely honest, I prefer the IQ of ati cards in windows. I think their AA algorythm must be better than Nvidia's. However as a fulltime linux user, except for gaming, nvidia was the only choice.
 
riddlermarc said:
It can depend on which distro you opt for, I know Ubuntu and Fedora have acceptable support for ATI cards :)
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Eh? The drivers are the same whatever distro you use. The only differences will be in the xorg.conf and the kernel configuration, all of which can be changed on any distro.
 
I think the nVidia drivers for Linux are more or less consistently on par with the Windows drivers while my limited experience of ATI drivers is that your ATI card won't run nearly as well in Linux as it would in Windows. The ATI drivers are supposed to be improving but nVidia seem to have been supporting Linux much more actively than ATI and I think it shows. I would like it a lot to have the option of an ATI card on my compy (to have more choice really) but really only when the drivers can show off what the card is actually capable of.

I would do a google search on any cards you are interested in for Linux to see if there have been any benchmarks / reviews done on the card. At the moment I have an nVidia 6800 which runs Quake 4 @ 1280 x 1024 very smoothly on Linux without problems on high quality, even with 16xAA.
 
riven said:
Eh? The drivers are the same whatever distro you use. The only differences will be in the xorg.conf and the kernel configuration, all of which can be changed on any distro.
Click to expand...
Yes I know that, I'm talking about installation - with Fedora you have the livna repo, Ubuntu you have the ability to either apt-get them or run through a process like this.. I don't know about other distros, I was trying to infer to the OP that with both Fedora and Ubuntu you don't have to worry too much about the install process, it's straightforward.
 
I just recently reitred a 9600XT which worked flawlessly in windows but with any version of the ati linux drivers I tried it crashed the system immediately upon running ANY 3d app. Nvidia on the other hand have excellent drivers that install without too much fuss, so I'd go nvidia.
 
A stable and properly configured ATI Linux setup isn't so difficult to achieve anymore but the OpenGL performance can be around 20% slower compared to Windows whereas NVIDIA on Linux is generally on a par with Windows.

Problems with ATI or even NVIDIA drivers are often because of bugs or user error meaning it's mostly a matter of finding the work arounds for bugs or becoming more clued up on how to get it running smoothly.
 
I saw some benchmarks from ID a while back (around 7 months) who said that Nvidia's drivers for linux were around 20% slower and I think as far as they could see it would never match Windows driver performance. Although there is a much larger team working on Windows.
 
thanks for all the posts.

I tend to compile the kernel from source after each new install, so installing the nVidia driver from source isn't a problem.

I use cedega to play games on linux (if supported), otherwise i would boot into windows. but i'd like the option to play them in linux, so I guess nVidia is the way. I'm waiting for the conroe chips to come out, so I may be able to wait for the G80 chips from nVidia (perhaps they will beat ATI and make my decision easier).

@ FireBarUK, do you have a link to that (what is ID?)
 
FirebarUK said:
I saw some benchmarks from ID a while back (around 7 months) who said that Nvidia's drivers for linux were around 20% slower and I think as far as they could see it would never match Windows driver performance. Although there is a much larger team working on Windows.
Click to expand...

Could you find the article? I did find this on Doom 3 in which both Linux and Windows versions were benchmarked on the same hardware. Windows clearly won for performance but there were several non gpu factors slowing the Linux version down (see the initial points about SSE2 code and the differences between using a 64bit and 32bit OS, especially several months ago, and also the comments section). I'm not sure how Doom 3 compares now and I couldn't find any benchmarks comparing Quake 4 on Linux / Windows but would be interested to see some (don't have a Windows cd anymore so it's a bit difficult for me to test).
 
^ It was very similar to that but I think the other site blamed it on the drivers purely. Interesting read.

I hope that ET:Quakewars runs on Linux. Hopefully ID will have a word with the dev studio :D
 
ATi drivers have come along greatly since the last time I had to use them (current desktop machine runs an nvidia card), they're very easy to install and work perfectly on my laptop (ATi X200M).
nVidia do still have the upper hand though, no question - but the gap is closing.
 
I had a lot of problems with a x800xl and the latest ATI linux drivers on Fedora Core and SUSE. I decided to ditch that card for Gainward Bliss 7800GS (AGP) instead and haven't had any. I'm now using Fedora Core 5 as my every-day o/s. :)
 
Don't even go there :eek:
Absolutely awful things, very prone to just 'loosing' the 3d acceleration at random, and have only just started to support the X1000 series properly :rolleyes:

-Leezer-
 
I've been running a 9700 Pro under Gentoo for a good 12 months or so now as my sole os, updating the ati drivers fairly frequently...

Support wise i personally haven't had a problem, always worked fine, speed however has been severly lacking, although it is getting better it's still nowhere near the windows performance.

nVidia on the other hand i haven't used in years, but when i did UT under linux actually ran a good 15-20fps faster than under windows...
 
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