Radeons -- cards for the linux sadists?

[bremstrahlung]

I hope this is not beating a deadhorse...

Having read through several threads in this and other forums, it seems that even though the benchmarks for ATI cards tend to trump the NVIDIAs for similar price tags, the former is still not worth the hassel of buying if Linux is your primary OS (Yay!). I know there are fixes so that XFree 4.3 works with the newer Radeons, but is the headache worth it?

I'm debating whether to buy a Radeon 9600 Pro or the FX5600 (non-ultra). I will probably try to OC either. There is a price difference of only about $15 between the two although the 9600P is rated higher. For the sake of the previous argument, I am leaning strongly towards the latter. RH 9.0 is currently the linux distro that is in my machine (used to be Debian :( ). If NVIDIA is willing to support Linux, then I'm willing to support the company.

What are your opinions?

[mdwatts]

Most here prefer Nvidia as they are a bit easier to setup with the X stock driver 'nv' or the Nvidia driver 'nvidia'.

Have a look at http://mirror.ati.com/support/driver.html to see if they have Linux drivers for the 9700 Pro.

I also purchased the FX 5600 last week, but I haven't replaced my GF3 Ti200 yet. Likely tomorrow.

[madcompnerd]

Nvidia is far better, they know what a good driver is. And they didn't shun linux and BSD. I'll forgive ATI when they get bought up :).
Stupid Radeon 3200, wasn't supported for OpenGL. You have no idea how pissed I was that I couldn't play quake with my, at the time, $100 card.

[bluesky]

The driver "radeon" is supposed to support also 3D and openGL. But its situation is not very clear to me. Unlike "nvidia" driver. What's going on?

[gennro]

yeah i would nvidia is the best card for linux since they have good driver support and the drivers are easy to install under linux

[Lemming]

I've said it before and I'll say it again: I hear alot more of problems with ATI cards then NVIDIA cards.

[Icarus]

Originally posted by bluesky
The driver "radeon" is supposed to support also 3D and openGL. But its situation is not very clear to me. Unlike "nvidia" driver. What's going on? Ya, suppose to support openGL...yet on my Red Hat 9 install "direct rendering : No"

Yet...I'm still trying to figure out when I use the SuSE 8.2 LiveCD, "direct Rendering : Yes"
With the same driver, I even used the same XF86Config file...Anyone know what SuSE 8.2 has that Red Hat 9 does not?

Darned laptop, I won't get anything but nVidia for my desktops...until ATi gets it together and puts out Linux drivers (that work) and support them! nVidia puts out new Linux drivers at the same time as they do the Windows drivers (most of the time)

[bluesky]

I have radeon 7000 and in redhat 9.0, when I turned on "3D acceleration support" for the card, after rebooting, startx(gdm) gave a blank screen.

I then looked at the XF96config and found the option "dri" had been turned on. So, I commented it out. X windows came back but of course only 2D.

[Icarus]

ATi uses the DRI option for 3D, remove that you don't get OpenGL (Unless you are using nvidia, which does not apply here)

Crazy thing when I get direct rendering to work (using SuSE) on my laptop my glxgears fps goes from 250fps to 2100fps :eek:

[PolteRGeisT]

I have a Radeon 7200 and it gives me absolutely no 3d support at all.

[GnomeProject]

Anybody have a solution then...b/c I have tried to install the drivers for my ATI card(s) and they never work!!! I wrote ATI twice about this too...and no response!

[arioch]

Both ATI and Nvidia were recently caught cheating, but Nvidia was later cleared... I've had hell with my Radeon 8500le under Linux. As far as i know ATI still doesn't have any official xfree 4.3.0 drivers on their site. If i knew then what i know now, I would have gotten myself an Nvidia card instead.

[Icarus]

Originally posted by arioch
If i knew then what i know now, I would have gotten myself an Nvidia card instead. Just because ATi is hyped as the best 3D card available, don't believe them. They may make the best/fastest hardware, but their driver support is the worst (I've had better luck with drivers for a USRobotics Sportster modem in Win95 then with anything ATi)

ATi claims they support Linux, but their recent removale of the drivers from their site tells me otherwise.

[AlexPlank]

The 9500 pro is faster than the 9600 pro so get the 9500 pro from circuit city(if you choose radeon). They both are priced the same.

[bennyboy]

i just ordered parts for my new computer i chose nvidia for my video card they are alot cheaper then raideon and support linux, raideon is no longer supporting linux and just discontinued several cards that used to support linux.

[glussier]

Both ATI and Nvidia were recently caught cheating, but Nvidia was later cleared...


False, nvidia were never cleared, nvidia cleared themselves, by saying that they were optimizing for 3dmark. After the 3dmark patch, the nvidia card was much slower than the radeon.

That said, the ATI drivers under windows, are every bit as good as the nvidia detonators now. I use ATI under window, but under Linux I stil use nvidia.

[arioch]

Originally posted by glussier
False, nvidia were never cleared, nvidia cleared themselves, by saying that they were optimizing for 3dmark. After the 3dmark patch, the nvidia card was much slower than the radeon.

That said, the ATI drivers under windows, are every bit as good as the nvidia detonators now. I use ATI under window, but under Linux I stil use nvidia.

"That said, the ATI drivers under windows, are every bit as good as the nvidia detonators now. I use ATI under window, but under Linux I stil use nvidia."

Not correct. My Radeon 8500 card crashes constantly during UT3 and most other games under xp. This NEVER happened with my geforce card. Most others i know with Radeons have similar experiences. could it be that ATI tweeks their drivers beyond a reasonable limit just to beat Nvidia? I know Nvidia doesn't squeeze their drivers 100% for reasons of...stability.

As far as i know, Nvidia was cleared by a third party.

[glussier]

I never had a problem with a Radeon setup, so there must be something wrong with your setup.

What do you know about nvidia not pushing their cards. Are ou joking, look in forums, you'll see others who have problems with nvidia drivers. It's not because you have no problem, that nvidia are perfect.

[arioch]

It's not that Nvidia doesn't squeeze their code, but some take it further than others.

Maybe you didn't get it the first time. Allow me to elaborate. I know others with similar problems with ATI cards. The ones that have switched to Nvidia eliminated their problems successfully, so there's nothing wrong with my setup.

[spagnitz]

Drivers for the radeons (radeon 8500, 9500 pro 9700 etc..) that will support xfree 4.3.0 and 3d Acceleration can be found here:


http://www.schneider-digital.de/html/download_ati.html

You want the glx1_linux_X4.3.zip, be sure to read the readme file, this is the driver source and you will also need to have the kernel source installed to make them

You can find further info on this at Rage3d.com under the Linux in the Forums area