Linked by Andrew Youll on Tue 27th Dec 2005 12:07 UTC, submitted by Phoronix
As 2005 comes to an end, both NVIDIA and ATI have fought a competitive battle not only when it comes to their hardware lineup but also display drivers for alternative operating systems. When discussing this subject matter, GNU/Linux users have been quick to criticize ATI Technologies whether it is due to poor installation support, distribution compatibility, rudimentary control panel, or simply the performance level of its drivers.
Thread beginning with comment 79321
To view parent comment, click here.
To read all comments associated with this story, please click here.
To view parent comment, click here.
To read all comments associated with this story, please click here.
Member since:
If you follow ati forums then you know that Ati engineers themselves said that they simply don't have enough manpower/resources for linux/opengl drivers. Therefore, wishing that Ati could out do nvidia in this regard (yeah, 2006 is going to be the year) is simply unrealistic.
This is the only post that actually explains what's going on. Simply put, ATi doesn't have the resources to spend on Linux drivers. Nvidia has. (also for Solaris and FreeBSD). And the results reflect this.
You're less likely to get issues with Nvidia solutions under Linux than you will with ATi. (That doesn't mean you get problems 100% of the time. Sometimes an ATi solution works without too much difficulty under Linux. I know my Thinkpad's Mobility Radeon 7500 works.)
Overall, if you're planning to use various OSs, check hardware support and the things involved to make them work. (This is one of those times where I prefer NOT to use those "easy to use distros" with pre-packaged ATi or Nvidia drivers). I go for those that are recognised by the manufacturer.
eg : I have two Sempron64 setups, one with GF5900XT, the other with GF4 ti4200-8x...And yet, under PCLinuxOS, the GF4 one won't even boot with the pre-package Nvidia driver. Under Slackware/Fedora/Suse, where I manually install the driver, both are fine!
To me, it doesn't matter if its ATi or Nvidia...Its whoever provides the best support in drivers for the OSs I use. If the situation was vice versa, I would lean to ATi.
As for those mentioning VIA's UniChrome IGP...That is a POS not even worth bothering. VIA provides binary drivers to support open-source OSs. What they advertised is that they're opening their drivers! (Supporting an OS and opening up your drivers are two very different things).
Last time I checked, VIA won't help (open-wise) with 3D-support of UniChrome because its "too complicated" for the community to handle. As a result, the open-source driver for UniChrome was worked on by the community (which, I think, have splintered). I'm not sure how far its gone status-wise.
As a result, all my setups involving UniChrome IGPs (just VIA EPIA Mini-ITX boxes) are used in roles where the display is only used for installation of software or for troubleshooting. (server, firewall, etc). I'm not wasting time on crap like that.