Nvidia or ATI - 2010 Edition

[Saoshyant]

I've been out of the loop, but I intend to build a new computer soon. Couple years ago, Nvidia chipsets were recommended due to official drivers, but I also remember hearing ATI were going to open up their specs. So, it's nearly 2011 and I don't know what GPU to pick today. What's your opinion?

[MooPi]

ATI has come a long way and now give excelent video support for their chips. I have switched to ATI on my computers. Just the standard radeon driver nothing special.

[clgy15]

ATI or should I say AMD graphics are the way to go. If your building a new system you can get the AMD Eyevision system. I have one and man is it way better than intel and nvidia combined. What I like about AMD is its bang for its buck and with an Phenom II x6 and Radeon partner its worth every penny.

[JDShu]

If you want to play the latest games, Nvidia is still better. If you only need 2d, play old games, and want to see open source drivers progress at an incredibly rapid pace, then ATI is what you want :P

[Saoshyant]

If you only need 2d, play old games(...)

What? I'm all for progress and I'm happy to hear AMD/ATI are making good leaps to cater to us, but I need my gaming fix.

[JDShu]

What? I'm all for progress and I'm happy to hear AMD/ATI are making good leaps to cater to us, but I need my gaming fix.

In that case, I'm going to have to recommend Nvidia.

[MooPi]

In that case, I'm going to have to recommend Nvidia.

That is definitely old news when it comes to 3d performance. Straight out AMD/ATI have excellent 3d capable cards these days.

[stmiller]

nvidia!

[JDShu]

That is definitely old news when it comes to 3d performance. Straight out AMD/ATI have excellent 3d capable cards these days.

Nvidia cards are still FAR superior to AMD cards when it comes to framerates and the ability to run newer games. If you want to play OpenArena and Urban Terror, then its fine, but I am assuming some people want to play more advanced games.

Edit: Actually I totally ignored Catalyst, which I hear is getting better these days, but still buggier than Nvidia.

[koleoptero]

Nvidia cards are still FAR superior to AMD cards when it comes to framerates and the ability to run newer games. If you want to play OpenArena and Urban Terror, then its fine, but I am assuming some people want to play more advanced games.

Edit: Actually I totally ignored Catalyst, which I hear is getting better these days, but still buggier than Nvidia.

Do you have any price comparison between ati and "superior" nvidia cards? Cause a gtx 485 is far superior to any ati card afaik, but it also costs a fortune more than all of them. And I haven't noticed any difference between nvidia & ati at the price range of $150-250.

[del_diablo]

ATI has better hardware at the moment, but the driver is still "not good enough". There are still minor performance gripes around, a few bugs around, but for the normal 3D user its more than good enough.
Nvidia got the suckier GFX-cards at the moment, but they got "better drivers", which means that the performance on both platforms is equal, along with the fact they support newer dsitros than Ubuntu.

So.... its a mess.
if only the radeon driver have had 10-20 more active major developers, this mess would never have happened, because the open drivers would have been good enough for gaming useage.
While ATI does a better job at the open drivers, they sorely lack developers and bleeding support. I guess the old series will have proper support in 2-3 years, if the current pace is the pace it will be continued.
if there is a speedup, and the gallium drivers will be developed as planned, we should have partially working drivers for the Radeon 6xxx series by some time next year, but proper performance will not happen before another few months after that.
The nouveau is in worse state than the radoen driver, BUT it got more devs, so I assume it will at some point inpefectly surpass the radeon driver. Which is sad, because its buildt on luck and reverse enginnering while the radeon driver got proper documentation.

[Saoshyant]

^Damn, that certainly makes things harder for us undeciders.

Anyone knows if a Radeon 6870 can play, at the very least, Amnesia with the current drivers?

[del_diablo]

That should work fine on fgrlx(propitary ATI drivers). If you are running Ubuntu, there are not really any worries.

[Saoshyant]

Thanks. ATI it is, then.

[gradinaruvasile]

^Damn, that certainly makes things harder for us undeciders.

Anyone knows if a Radeon 6870 can play, at the very least, Amnesia with the current drivers?

That is, IF the card is properly supported. It is a new card so it may (and probably has) bugs with the drivers.

I am nvidia fan all the way (i was even before using Linux) - the drivers are rock stable, they have (newer cards) VDPAU hardware decoding, but mos of all, they work as they supposed to and have the best compatibility 3d wise.
I admit that amd/ati have made progress, but they still have bugs and issues...

[alexan]

Thanks. ATI it is, then.
I see people are pretty happy ATi's opensource driver... too bad nearly no one in the ATI/AMD offices did any work for them; nor ATi by itself show real interest in Linux universe as "paying clients".


here the release highlights updates on latest ATi's driver (work done by ATI's employee)


Highlights of the AMD Catalyst 10.10 driver for Linux release include:

New Features

Support for new Linux operating systems

This release of AMD Catalyst driver for Linux introduces support for the following new operating systems:
openSUSE 11.3 support (production)
Ubuntu 10.10 support (early look)
source (http://blogs.amd.com/play/2010/10/22/amd-catalyst-10-10-radeon-driver/)



Instead, here the work made (for linux) by Nvidia's employee:



Added support for the following GPUs:
GeForce GTS 450
GeForce GTX 460M
GeForce GT 415M
GeForce GT 425M
GeForce GT 420M
GeForce GT 435M
Quadro 2000
Quadro 600
Stopped installing OpenGL, VDPAU, CUDA, and OpenCL header files with the driver. Those interested in these files can get them from their Linux distributions' packages, where available, or upstream from:
OpenGL header files (gl.h, glext.h glx.h, glxext.h):
http://www.opengl.org/registry/
VDPAU header files (vdpau.h and vdpau_x11.h):
http://freedesktop.org/wiki/Software/VDPAU

CUDA and OpenCL header files (cuda.h, cudaGL.h, cudaVDPAU.h,
cl.h, cl_gl.h, cl_platform.h):
http://developer.nvidia.com/object/gpucomputing.html

Note that while libvdpau.so is still included in 260.xx drivers, it will be removed from a future release series in early 2011. Distributors are encouraged to package libvdpau.so from http://freedesktop.org/wiki/Software/VDPAU

Note that http://www.opengl.org/registry/ does not presently provide gl.h or glx.h. Until that is resolved, NVIDIA's OpenGL " header files can still be chosen, through the “--opengl-headers” installer option.

Fixed the CustomEDID X configuration option so that it can handle EDID files from Linux procfs; e.g., /proc/acpi/video/IGPU/LCD0/EDID.
Fixed an interaction problem with a change in X server behavior that caused slow text rendering on X.Org xserver 1.9.
Enhanced VDPAU to support interop with CUDA and OpenGL when Xinerama is active.
Fixed a bug in VDPAU that prevented temporal-spatial de-interlacing from operating when temporal de-interlacing was not also enabled.
Added support for configuring the dithering depth used when driving a flat panel with a GeForce 8 family or Quadro 4600/5600 or
newer GPU. See the "Dithering Controls" in the Flat Panel page in nvidia-settings.
Added support for the nvcuvid API.
nvcuvid provides a mechanism for decoding video and exposing the surfaces to CUDA, allowing applications to perform custom processing of the video. nvcuvid is primarily targeted at transcoding and video- processing applications. nvcuvid was already available on other platforms.

By default, nvidia-installer places headers in /usr/include/nvcuvid, and library in /usr/lib/libnvcuvid.so, or in the appropriate library path for your system.

Fixed a bug in VDPAU that could cause a "display preemption" when toggling MPlayer to full-screen the first time.
Added OpenGL 4.1 support for Quadro Fermi, GeForce GTX 4xx, and later GPUs.
Enhanced VDPAU to fully support Xinerama.
Fixed a bug in the X driver that prevented operation of Xinerama when using multiple NVIDIA GPUs from different major hardware generations
on X with ABI 4 or greater.
Fixed a bug in the OpenGL driver's Xinerama support.

Rendering should have ocurred to all physical X screens driven by an NVIDIA GPU compatible with the NVIDIA GPU driving physical X screen 0. However, if some physical X screen did not satisfy that requirement, then not only would that physical X screen not be rendered to (as expected), but also all physical X screens with a higher number would not be rendered to (which was unexpected).
Added GPU "Processor Clock" reporting to the nvidia-settings PowerMizer page.
Implemented support for SLI Mosaic Mode on Quadro FX 5800 and Quadro Fermi and newer Quadro GPUs.
Enhanced the VDPAU overlay-based presentation queue to allow it to be used when SLI is active, and in some cases when the X composite extension is enabled. See the README for further details.
Added support for configuring the dithering mode used when driving a flat panel with a GeForce 8 family or Quadro 4600/5600 or newer GPU.See the "Dithering Controls" in the Flat Panel page in nvidia-settings.
Added unofficial GLX protocol support (i.e., for GLX indirect rendering) for the following OpenGL extensions:
GL_EXT_texture_integer
GL_ARB_stencil_two_side
GL_EXT_transform_feedback2
GL_NV_transform_feedback2
GL_NV_conditional_render
Added GLX protocol support (i.e., for GLX indirect rendering) for the following OpenGL extensions:
GL_NV_point_sprite
GL_EXT_stencil_two_side
GL_EXT_point_parameters
GL_ARB_transpose_matrix
GL_EXT_framebuffer_blit
GL_EXT_framebuffer_multisample
GLX protocol for the following OpenGL extension is promoted from unofficial GLX ptotocol to ARB approved GLX protocol:
GL_EXT_geometry_shader4
GL_ARB_shader_objects
GL_ARB_vertex_shader
GL_ARB_fragment_shader
Added support for configuring individual displays as any eye in passive stereo mode "4" when using TwinView or SLI Mosaic through extensions to the MetaMode syntax.
Added ColorSpace and ColorRange features for HDMI. These give the ability to output YUV over HDMI and select full/reduced color range on RGB over HDMI. ColorSpace and ColorRange are X Configuration options and can be changed dynamically through nvidia-settings.


source (http://www.nvidia.com/object/linux-display-ia32-260.19.12-driver.html)



ATI == Xbox360 == Microsoft = do not want upset microsoft


does we?







PS:

Choose ATI: happy, people with open source (no company investment) drivers only

Choose Nvidia: pay the dues to linux engineer who are working (hard) for a company who care the "1%" of market share... plus great gaming.

[Saoshyant]

Damn it, now you make me feel terrible.

Well, at least I found that there's a GTX 460 model with at least one Displayport. Progress.

What I have been reading about the advantages over ATI that Nvidia provides seem to sum up mostly to stuff like PhysX, which according to Wikipedia is generally disabled and barely supported by anything, and their CUDA overhyped thingy, which doesn't seem to offer much of an advantage over ATI's offerings.

Both Radeon 8670 and the GTX 460 seem to offer 3D support (don't care, but I suppose it's better than lacking it) and their power consumption is mostly on pair with each other.

I think I'll just base my decision on whichever one I manage to grab my hands on, since there's no clear winner.

I really hoped the ATI drivers were in better shape :/

[alexan]

I really hoped the ATI drivers were in better shape :/

"We" as Linux user.. whish that too.


But it doesn't look in the company a clear choice to support Linux. There was some openess from them towards OpenSource community... but they never gave enough information to allow OpenSource community get competitive on fair play (equal amount of resources spent) with the market.

Open Source Hardcore Gaming isn't yet possible.. even with the (no real) help from ATi: we need a serious company, with enough balls, to take the step towards it:
Give
OpenSource
Hardware
To work on it.

OpenSource engenieer aren't multitasking. Do they develop/fix the driver.. or reverse engineer: if they need to do both things, they will be incredibly slowed.
And ATi didn't show to have such courage to provide OpenSource community such possibility; by sure, not while they are dinner at Microsoft's Xbox table.

Intel and/or Nvidia are more credible IMHO.

[LowSky]

I went Nvidia for one reason: VDPAU.
My system runs cooler thanks to it. HD video content doens't bog down my CPU and I don't hear fans whining.

I think AMD is making great products and the support has been there for Linux for a while now, but they need to support VDPAU.

[mips]

nVidia.

Better 3D support.
VDPAU for offloading video decoding from CPU to GPU.

If it was a Windows machine I would however go ATI.

[3Miro]

If you have to get the computer right now, then go with Nvidia. In a few months a new ATI driver will be available for the Radeon 5xxx models and that will be FOSS so it will probably work better, however, this is months away and especially for wine games ATI is currently not very good. Also, it is not like Nvidia will fail as soon as the new ATI driver is released.

[del_diablo]

But it doesn't look in the company a clear choice to support Linux. There was some openess from them towards OpenSource community... but they never gave enough information to allow OpenSource community get competitive on fair play (equal amount of resources spent) with the market.

ATI?
The entire story is a mess(when we are talking about 1xxx and newer).
First novell waisted 2 years on the radeonhd driver.
Then 9 or 10 months after that the "radeon" driver was started up, by the same pool of documentation that novell used.
Novell waisted more or less good amounts of time on their driver, since they never got anywhere with it.
Radeon driver on the other hand advances so fast its completely and utterly close to eldritch coding, considering that there is barely any people working actively on it.
At the least AMD got their act partially together on FRGLX :P

[Saoshyant]

Ok, you guys convinced me. Thanks for the help, really.

I'm going with a Zotac GTX 460, which is a model that has an actual HDMI in contrast to other Nvidia chipsets AND a DisplayPort.

[JDShu]

I see people are pretty happy ATi's opensource driver... too bad nearly no one in the ATI/AMD offices did any work for them; nor ATi by itself show real interest in Linux universe as "paying clients".


Wow, that is absolutely ridiculous. AMD released the specs, which requires A LOT of effort - far more than just sticking to proprietary drivers (which they also develop). They also reached out to the oss community and are actively engaged. Just check out the Phoronix forums to see how much they've been working to get the oss drivers working.

In addition, Catalyst requires (what seems to me) much more effort than the Nvidia drivers, though this is really because Nvidia was smarter about it. AFAIK Catalyst was from the grounds up a driver written for Linux while Nvidia's Linux drivers share 90% the code with their Windows drivers. Basically Nvidia has a much better proprietary driver model than AMD/ATI does, but its not due to a lack of effor or care about Linux.

[alexan]

Wow, that is absolutely ridiculous. AMD released the specs, which requires A LOT of effort - far more than just sticking to proprietary drivers (which they also develop). They also reached out to the oss community and are actively engaged. Just check out the Phoronix forums to see how much they've been working to get the oss drivers working.
No, building driver for 3/4 different system (XP/Vista/Seven/OSX) require a lot of efforts... and money investment (people who get paid for the job done). That's the "paying" client did expect from the hardware manufacturer.
If you buy an ATi.. you're not a client of AMD/ATi.. since they don't provide worthy proprietary driver.

Their "openness" toward open source may sound friendly to us (I do too appreciate it) as "we try what we can do in our free time"; but definitely, you must realize where you money goes, you don't pay just the hardware components... and if you put your money in ATI, your moneys goes to pay windows's driver engineer.


In addition, Catalyst requires (what seems to me) much more effort than the Nvidia drivers, though this is really because Nvidia was smarter about it. AFAIK Catalyst was from the grounds up a driver written for Linux while Nvidia's Linux drivers share 90% the code with their Windows drivers. Basically Nvidia has a much better proprietary driver model than AMD/ATI does, but its not due to a lack of effor or care about Linux.
I do agree that a company which would release OpenSource hardware should had absolute priority for Linux user (what your hardware will do, rely only on the quality of the hardware.. the community will constantly redesign/innovate its software).

But at this moment, this company is not ATi nor AMD nor Nvidia.
If you want it opensource, there's better than ATi or Nvidia; if you want your moneys worth there's only Nvidia.

[JDShu]

No, building driver for 3/4 different system (XP/Vista/Seven/OSX) require a lot of efforts... and money investment (people who get paid for the job done). That's the "paying" client did expect from the hardware manufacturer.
If you buy an ATi.. you're not a client of AMD/ATi.. since they don't provide worthy proprietary driver.


:confused: What you're saying makes no sense. If I buy an ATI card of course I am a client of AMD/ATI.

What I'm saying is that ATI invests just as much as Nvidia on their proprietary drivers. Possibly more because theirs is actually from the grounds up a Linux driver. AMD has a Catalyst development team thats many times the size of the current oss developer team.

So:
Nvidia: No oss support, Proprietary drivers that shared a lot of code with Windows drivers.
AMD: Oss suppory, Proprietary drivers that do not share much code with Windows drivers.

Nvida Linux drivers are better because THEY WERE SMARTER ABOUT IT. The money they spend on Linux drivers however is NOT THAT DIFFERENT from AMD.

[nerdy_kid]

From my rather limited experience, NVIDIA kicks butt over ATI on Linux. However, the ati card I have is a crappy old integrated radeon 200M (I think it was M). Terrible card :P No idea what the newer ATI cards are like. Thats my 2 cents worth :)

[BlueLionCostas]

I never got anti-aliasing and mipmaps working with ATi cards. Is that also solved with newer cards? I personally think nvidia is better, but I don't know anything about prices, so maybe you'd be better off with AMD. I haven't checked out computer hardware in a while and things are just moving too fast :P

[KingYaba]

ATI has better hardware but Nvidia has better drivers.

And when I say better hardware, I'm talking about power consumption, temperature, and price/performance. Those GTX 480s run disturbingly hot, for example, on load.

Right now I'd still recommend a GTX 460 or a GTS 450 depending on your budget and desired use. I haven't read much into the new ATI 6xxx cards yet.

[alexan]

:confused: What you're saying makes no sense. If I buy an ATI card of course I am a client of AMD/ATI.
No, you aren't: you're supposed to use your videocard on your PC but... whoops: there's linux into it.
No new bugfix or improve of perfomance for you... since for ATi you do not exist. (the 10.10 is all about package the same stuff for distro's update)


What I'm saying is that ATI invests just as much as Nvidia on their proprietary drivers. Possibly more because theirs is actually from the grounds up a Linux driver.
Reality check:
nVidia lastest linux driver cover bigger number of boards than ATi
Previous driver from nvidia were good... now improving. ATi were bad, now freeze.
ATi business is with Microsoft+ ATi still don't offer a perfomance option for linux: nor opensource, nor proprietary.


AMD has a Catalyst development team thats many times the size of the current oss developer team.
We don't know the numbers, but know the results: I am very sure will be a good news to see something OSS coming out from AMD/ATi studios.
But this news is not today, not for 3d performance. If you want help them with money.. make a paypal donation say directly "for OSS driver".
Do not buy their stuff which is supposed to work only on Windows.



So:
Nvidia: No oss support, Proprietary drivers that shared a lot of code with Windows drivers.
AMD: Oss suppory, Proprietary drivers that do not share much code with Windows drivers.

Reality check:
What's able to do nVidia with their driver for Linux... is over ATi capabilities. ATi has Windows driver too!



Nvida Linux drivers are better because THEY WERE SMARTER ABOUT IT.

Really? then call ATi and warn them: so the next time they will be less dumb.

[QUOTE=JDShu;10068110]The money they spend on Linux drivers however is NOT THAT DIFFERENT from AMD.
Obviously the money nVidia spend for pay software engineer which develop linux driver were the same kind ATi spend for its guy to wander in opensource forum to debate and promote.
Money of same kind, but different amount. :guitar:

[Lancro]

All is said, I choose Nvidia too, since always I have used nvidia, the best.

[JDShu]

No, you aren't: you're supposed to use your videocard on your PC but... whoops: there's linux into it.
No new bugfix or improve of perfomance for you... since for ATi you do not exist. (the 10.10 is all about package the same stuff for distro's update)


You're still not making sense here.



Reality check:
nVidia lastest linux driver cover bigger number of boards than ATi
Previous driver from nvidia were good... now improving. ATi were bad, now freeze.
ATi business is with Microsoft+ ATi still don't offer a perfomance option for linux: nor opensource, nor proprietary.


Performance option? I assume you mean that Nvidia drivers have better performance than Catalyst. Again, this is because Nvidia drivers share more code with the Windows drivers. Therefore, less time and money was needed to go into them while they are less buggy. Again, it was a smart thing that Nvidia did. This does not mean that AMD is not interested in improving its Catalyst drivers, and from the news lately, they have.



We don't know the numbers, but know the results: I am very sure will be a good news to see something OSS coming out from AMD/ATi studios.
But this news is not today, not for 3d performance. If you want help them with money.. make a paypal donation say directly "for OSS driver".
Do not buy their stuff which is supposed to work only on Windows.


But AMD cards are supposed work on Linux. Catalyst or OSS drivers WILL work with modern cards, AMD is ACTIVELY supporting this!




Reality check:
What's able to do nVidia with their driver for Linux... is over ATi capabilities. ATi has Windows driver too!


Yes, Nvidia and AMD both have Linux drivers. The reason that Nvidia drivers are better is that they share more code with the Nvidia Windows drivers. This has nothing to do with how much more money Nvidia is spending than AMD. Am I repeating myself?



Really? then call ATi and warn them: so the next time they will be less dumb.

Its too late now, so much work has gone into Catalyst already that AMD would rather improve Catalyst than create a whole new driver.



Obviously the money nVidia spend for pay software engineer which develop linux driver were the same kind ATi spend for its guy to wander in opensource forum to debate and promote.
Money of same kind, but different amount. :guitar:
Maybe I did not make this clear enough. So I'm going try to put it simply.

Nvidia spends money on the Nvidia proprietary driver. This includes what you said, paying software developer to develop Linux drivers.

AMD spends money on the AMD proprietary driver AND on opening up the specs/helping the community develop OSS drivers. This means that AMD pays sofware developers to develop proprietary Linux drivers, just like Nvidia. In addition to that, AMD ALSO (key word: ALSO) spends money paying technical writers and IP lawyers to allow specs to publish for the oss community. And yes, pay Bridgman to wander the Phoronix forums answering questions.

This means that both companies spend money to pay software engineers to develop Linux Drivers. So don't feel guilty buying an AMD card because some of that money does go towards Linux development.

[Oxwivi]

I'm afraid I must side with alexan. From what I gathered even if ATI is OSS, funding for it is separate rather than from the card you bought.

And about the driver's code for Windows, if Nvidia can get it to work on Linux, then so can ATI, instead of doing it ground up.

[JDShu]

I'm afraid I must side with alexan. From what I gathered even if ATI is OSS, funding for it is separate rather than from the card you bought.


AMD pays technical writers and IP attorneys to create specifications that the public can use to create the oss drivers. It may sound unglamorous to you, but somebody has to do it - and the process is long and painful. As for developers, AMD pays at least one developer (Alex Deucher) to work on the oss driver. (I think there are two, but I'm not certain). For the record, Red Hat employs 2 people (Dave Airlie and Jerome Glisse) who work on the oss drivers and I *think* Novell employs 1. Finally there are two developers (Marek Olsak is one of them) who work on it independently/in their free time. So no, its simply false that ATI oss funding is separate from the money coming from a card you would buy. AMD does not fund it ALL, but it certainly funds a good amount.

Finally, the whole point of open source software development is that the community is involved! I am personally of the opinion that if we can show that when a company actively engages with the community to create good drivers for a cheaper cost to the company, then it would encourage more hardware makers to support open source. Open source drivers work better with Linux so if you care about Linux and FOSS, then you should support what AMD is doing,



And about the driver's code for Windows, if Nvidia can get it to work on Linux, then so can ATI, instead of doing it ground up.


As I said before, AMD made the mistake a very long time ago (or maybe their Windows driver is just badly designed, I dunno) and now its too late to create a whole new driver. I personally have no interest in Catalyst, but I'm just pointing out that it is completely false that AMD does not pay for developers to create Linux drivers.

[Oxwivi]

Yeah, that's the whole point of OSS, but the fact is the money you pay for development are going straight to their pocket, and the community is working without any funding from your purchase. The slice of money you pay for development is used to make the Windows driver better not Linux.

That's the whole point we're trying to make you understand your money doesn't make Linux driver better.

[chris200x9]

Yeah, that's the whole point of OSS, but the fact is the money you pay for development are going straight to their pocket, and the community is working without any funding from your purchase. The slice of money you pay for development is used to make the Windows driver better not Linux.

That's the whole point we're trying to make you understand your money doesn't make Linux driver better.


o rly? You buy amd, amd gets money, amd uses money to hire 2 OSS devs...where's the problem?

[del_diablo]

They could have hired 4 or 5 people who worked actively on the driver, that alone would have set the current state of the radeon driver a lot further.

[NMFTM]

So basically, if you want to play modern games with 3D graphics. Then you want an Nvidia card. Don't even think about ATI/AMD for the time being.

I've been hearing for a long time now about how good ATI support is "just around the corner" and "you can safely buy an ATI card now with the reassurance that it'll have good driver out in no time" but so far I've yet to see this. Also, if I'm going to buy a GPU I'm probably looking at around $200. I'm not going to spend that kind of money unless I know for a fact that the drivers will work properly as soon as I boot up the OS. Not some future promise that everything will work right in time. I want results now and Nvidia is the company that actually cares about the minuscule segment of the desktop market that runs Linux. So, they're going to get my business.

[JDShu]

Yeah, that's the whole point of OSS, but the fact is the money you pay for development are going straight to their pocket, and the community is working without any funding from your purchase. The slice of money you pay for development is used to make the Windows driver better not Linux.

That's the whole point we're trying to make you understand your money doesn't make Linux driver better.

Read my post again. There's another point I want to make, but I don't think you've fully comprehended my previous argument.


They could have hired 4 or 5 people who worked actively on the driver, that alone would have set the current state of the radeon driver a lot further.

As opposed to no devs hired by Nvidia to work on an oss Nvidia driver. Is this really that hard?

[del_diablo]

As opposed to no devs hired by Nvidia to work on an oss Nvidia driver. Is this really that hard?

Throw in Archlinux, gets newest kernel, wait for AMD to support Ubuntu's latest kernel, and keep on refusing to update?
Well, so long you are on Ubuntu, you are fine, but that is a major part of the reason ATI get so much hate. The other part is when they dropped the legacy.
ATI is doing a lot better job at a floss driver than Nvidia, but they should have put some more effort into it, or bothered to support the latest Xorg and Kernel when they first got out.
Doing either one of these will fix the entire hate issue.
I am at the least glad the latest radeon driver supports blender properly with my mobility 3470, which means there is no reason to sit around Windows all the time. But still, it is ages before the driver gets "good enough", and those 4-5 devs could have fixed that.
We could have a lot more of the gallium framework done, or Novell could have bothered to write radeonhd properly back in the day, so that would have been the developed good driver.

NMFTM: Where did you copy that troll pasta from?

[alexan]

I think it's wrong to split things up in "good" or "bad".
Companies just do their business, both Nvidia and ATi/AMD are following (both) their own, legitimate, plans.

We talk about investment; and when we talk about investment we should consider just one only thing: what gave you more "worth" gain and the price you're going to pay for.

Opensource is what all Linux is about: if the community see something they don't like in the driver, in addition, the community can cut/fork out what it don't like. Also, differently from closed source no company can decide that your product is ready to die (see Microsoft's Windows XP). I already stated this previously: Open Source is very highly preferable over everything... but it has to be opensource.
ATi still hadn't delivered absolutely nothing complete of OSS: the serious work load rely all over OSS community of developers... free work

Companies much smaller than ATI have provided to OSS community many, and much more complex, support for open source. With complete codes and information. These companies should be a priority for Linux. I would call them companies of the 1st place: ATi need just more a very little step in that direction to reach this place, even ahead nVidia. But they can not afford it!

Armies of 3d artist, musician, programmer and stuff like that develop stuff for ATi hardware; and that hardware is called Xbox... Microsoft... Xbox.

Again, Microsoft is the establisher of rule on many degree for ATi: Windows/Xbox. Is not credible as bearer of the OpenSource. ATi is not bad, simply cannot afford OpenSource if they want to stay in business (I would say... just cowards).
You need a very big O.O and a very damn good plan if you're going to see your business completely upsidedown at once.


nVidia did taste the "Microsoft's boot" when they did kick them out of the first xbox.. is a bit less scared... more credible to take the step towards the opensource. Meanwhile the Linux's community should just follow those who respect them enough to provide fairer service.

Again, both ATi and Nvidia have proprietary driver (the driver you put "virtually" in the package you sell)... so far now, only ATi don't feel it an urgency of investment.

OSS's ATi driver to be loosly comparable to Nvidia's proprietary driver? == ATi is the winner.. but this is not now.

[JDShu]

@del_diablo: It will require a lot of time for the oss drivers to reach the capabilities of the Catalyst drivers, that's true. Unfortunately what is done is done, and we'll just have to wait. That is why I recommended Nvidia to the OP because he needs his gaming fix now :) The misinformation in this thread however is getting on my nerves.

As for the number of devs, I don't know what AMD HR is thinking, but I do know that open source driver devs are hard to find. AMD can't move people on their Catalyst team to the oss team for legal reasons, and I suspect that they cannot easily hire competent driver devs who understand FOSS from the outside. Graphics driver development is really intricate and difficult after all.

We need to remember that AMD and Nvidia are businesses and are driven by the bottom line. I really hope the oss effort by AMD will be successful for them, because it would encourage more businesses to follow suite.

[JDShu]

@alexan: I'm going to stop responding you, but I encourage you to read this thread a couple more times.

[NMFTM]

I'm all for open source. But I also want to play 3D games to their fullest potential and not have to boot into Windows that often. I like Nexuiz and Sauerbraten especially. Also, I'm more of a Linux fanboy than an open source fanboy. If Linux were proprietary and Windows were open source, I'd still use Linux because I just like the OS in general better. I also feel that Bash is far superior to cmd.exe and Powershell.

For me, I don't really care about comparing one company's open source drivers to another company's proprietary drivers. I just want the drivers that will do the best job at making my $200 GPU work to the best of it's ability. And right now that's Nvidia's proprietary drivers. Now, if ATI had open source drivers that were only slightly worse than Nvidia's proprietary ones than I'd buy an ATI card for the same price. But as it stands right now, they're more than just slightly worse.

I'm willing to put ideals over functionality when it comes to open source vs proprietary to a certain extent. But I'm not a free software zealot like RMS. I don't think it's immoral to use proprietary software. And I'd assume that most of the people on these forums are as well, how many of you don't have Adobe Flash installed?

[del_diablo]

And then Nvidia got out their Fermi revision 2 chip, and apparently fixed the real issues.
So its still a heatsink, but at the least now it gives the performance it was suppose to have for being a heatsink(while 480 did not).
Well, now its just to wait for the mobility chips, unless 5970 turns out to be a killer, Nvidia have won this round.

[Kir_B]

WOW!!!

I've just spent the last couple of weeks researching a build for a friend, which was to include either an HD 6850 or HD 6870 (we liked the power to performance to cost ratio), but after researching the support for these cards in Linux, I'm more than a little disappointed, as from what I was reading many months ago, ATI/AMD were progressing rapidly in their Linux driver support (I seem to remember reading about this somewhere in these forums, but I may have misunderstood and it may very well have been more to do with the open source ATI drivers.).

From what I'm understanding currently, the drivers for the 6850 & 6870 aren't even ready for Linux. I don't know what ATI is thinking, but there goes 400-500 dollars in business out the door! This is probably NOT helping their bottom line!

I can't begin to tell you how disappointed we are to hear this, as we were both looking very forward to escaping the clutches of both Intel and Nvidia!

We are going to hold out for another month or so and see what develops, but I can tell you, I'm not holding my breath.

Kirby :rolleyes:

[del_diablo]

I don't know what ATI is thinking, but there goes 400-500 dollars in business out the door!

Lets see: High end card marked is less than 10% of revenue....
The sales of high end card marked is quite high, meaning a few hundred less sales here and there does not really affect profit.....
Now, Linux even with a maredshare over 1 entire percent, of a marked which is over 1 billion computer owners, the thing is, your choices are so drowned it does not matter. Unless they ship a completely and utterly ridiculess fluke, it won't affect sales in the long run.
Unless "my bad experience with X" piles up to 10-20% of the entire marked, it won't affect anything, so really, it does not matter.
And BTW: You can esquape the clutches of Intel, AMD got really good CPU's, but Nvidia is currently better for the Linux desktop, and it will be until AMD gets over and fix catalyst properly with updates regularely, or the radeon project gets enough devs who are actually working to get progress.

[Shining Arcanine]

I've been out of the loop, but I intend to build a new computer soon. Couple years ago, Nvidia chipsets were recommended due to official drivers, but I also remember hearing ATI were going to open up their specs. So, it's nearly 2011 and I don't know what GPU to pick today. What's your opinion?

Nvidia and ATI both have capable 2D Linux drivers, but Nvidia is far superior in terms of 3D drivers and there is no guarantee that will ever change.

The reason people even recommend ATI hardware is because Nvidia hardware is only better if you use binary drivers for it. If you use open source drivers, ATI hardware is better. The average person that does not care if Nvidia does not release the source code to their drivers will likely want to have Nvidia hardware.

[Gtank]

Nvidia for sure. I made the mistake of buying a radeon 3450 when I was using windows and can not use XBMC on my HTPC since i've switched to ubuntu because the screen just goes black. (there are too many posts of people having problems with radeon cards in ubuntu with no solutions)
I'm now looking for a reasonably priced nvidia card for my ubuntu HTPC.
Hope you can learn for my video card selection mistakes.

[dh04000]

Hmmmmmm..... there has been a lot of general discussion of whether Ati or Nvidia is better....but I don't think its as cut dry as that.

Certain Nvidia and Ati video card lines work better than others...

Anyone know which Nvidia or Ati cards are "currently" 100% supported?

I have a Ati x1400. Everyone here knows the cluster f*** that is the Ati x1xxx line....

But there probably is Ati cards that have prefect driver support, as well as Nvidia with issues or prefect support.

Wine and Native Linux games are a good tests of driver compatibility. Games like TF2, L4D, L4D2, Star Craft 2 working in the newest WINE is a good sign that everything is working in the driver side of the video card. Amnesia is a great native game to test.



Post YOUR 100% driver compatible cards/card lines here!

[Dawei87]

is there any reason why everyone is saying the ati 6xxx series is not gonna be supported for a long time? i was using the 5xxx series just a few months after it came out and it was fully supported by the time i got it, 3d in linux is great in a 5750, 5850. i just always thought they picked up support for the new cards in a decent amount of time. as for which card you should get, maybe the 6xxx isnt ready yet from ati, but it all depends on how much money you wanna spend on your gaming. ati has better costs/performance ratio, but if you have a lot of money to spend then go for the highest nvidia card, as it will do very well. the only other thing to look at really is power consumption if that matters at all to you. ati cards typically take less power and heat up less, but some ppl dont care either way. one thing about nvidia that kinda bugs me is they only support sli with intel cpu's, you can run sli with amd, but as far as i know you either have to get a special mobo or do a lot of work to get it running with amd, which can be a pain too cause intel chips are pricier than amd. in the end it seems nvidia still has the highest end card, but dont let people tell you you cant run new games on ati, i have a 5850 and it has played everygame ive thrown at it at max settings including metro 2033, bfbc2 and everything else i can think of with an amd phenom II x4 965 cpu.

[rajeev1204]

I see people are pretty happy ATi's opensource driver... too bad nearly no one in the ATI/AMD offices did any work for them;



.


Without getting to much details , some of the core developers of the radeon project are paid directly by AMD.



And as far as ATI is concerned, i used to be concerned about a year ago when making the switch to ATI .Own a radeon 4850 and it works just fine .

The real question is whether you have any games to run on such hardware.Fact is , you dont .So since not many or hardly any new games are for linux, this brings us to the open drivers. Which are far superior to the nvidia alternative.Try it once and you wont go back to prorprietary drivers with either hardware.

Conclusion : As per thread title , for 2010 go with either card depending on choice .