Has ATI drivers improved?

scrlk

scrlk

scrlk

Soldato
Joined
25 Sep 2009
Posts
3,630
Last time I was dabbling around in Linux, ATI drivers were frankly crap & Nvidia was apparently better. Is this situation still the same as this will affect my potential new build.
 
From what i've read, no. nVidia still seem to be the way to go with Linux.

ATI have improved their drivers, but that's not exactly a hard thing to do. :p
 
I recently bought a 5870, I use Arch linux and they ditched support for official ATI drivers last year as they are so bad. They are now maintained by a community Arch member, the problem is when I updated last it obviously didnt compile a new driver and it went menta lol...


I uninstalled the official drivers and run the opensource "radeon" driver. It's perfect for 2D desktop, video and compiz but useless for games, which doesn't bother me.

If you want great support for everything is the new nvidia 460GTX good? I know the 480GTX was hotter, larger and about £80 more expensive, thats why I bought the 5870.
 
Agree with Oxy - you can get decent but basic support via the open source radeon driver.. but the closed source nvidia driver is brilliant and supports hardware hd video accelleration on even very low spec cards. Nvidia is also actively developing and supporting linux, while ati support has been patchy at best.
 
Going to echo the above comments. nVidia are still light-years ahead of ATi with supporting Linux.
 
I have to say I find the whole ATI/Linux thing a little juvenille, and that it does suck, hell I was even thinking of dropping an Nvidea card in my machine, till it dawned on me why there are problems, and that problem is Linux itself.

It's a bit like cheap booze and married women, you know you shouldn't but you still waste your time..................
 
sastusbulbas - when I last ran an nVidia card I could do everything in Linux that I could do in Windows right up to and including gaming both natively and under WINE. I've had two ATi cards since, and both have been utterly woeful at anything involving 3D, or even anything slightly harder than displaying a Compiz-ified desktop.

The problem isn't Linux. nVidia can make drivers for their kit that just....work. Why can't ATi?
 
Oh sure, they operate the display okay. And if all you want to do is browse the internet, write the odd e-mail or letter, or watch the occasional DVD then fine. But nVidia will supply you with a driver for your card that allows it to perform just as well under Linux as it does under Windows. ATi simply can't do that.

Christ, my old 9600GT played games under Ubuntu better than this 5770 in here at the moment. Under Windows, the 5770 will annihilate the old nVidia card. ATi make great cards, and their Windows drivers haven't given me a moment of trouble for a long time time now. But their Linux drivers leave a great deal to be desired.
 
Replaced my 5870 with a GTX 480 a few weeks ago, purely because of the Linux situation. I remember having huge problems in Linux from my X800 days, which put me off buying a 5870 - they haven't really changed. Last release wouldn't even compile against my kernel, rubbish. Nvidia drivers have worked great on every card I've had - and you get lovely VDPAU now.
 
this is why I don't run linux on my desktop..... as its too much of a pain to get the drivers to work on linux, compared with Nvdia sure it can be done...


thats why I m getting a netbook with a Nv ion for that reason, plus the added reason of it being able to game a bit ... Civ on the move here we come :D
 
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