ATI has released the 8.29.6 version of its proprietary Linux drivers, with the announcement that the 9000, 9100, and 9200 IGP and Mobility Radeon chipsets are no longer supported by the new version. Radeon 8500, 9000, 9100, 9200, and 9250 devices are also dropped from support. Thankfully, these models are supported in 2D/3D mode by the open source DRI driver.
ATI’s New Linux Drivers Drop Support for Older Radeons
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While my Radeon works nicely with the open source drivers, this is just unacceptable. *makesnotetosteerclearofallati*
While my Radeon works nicely with the open source drivers, this is just unacceptable.
If my undersanding is right, there is OpenSource 2D/3D support for the chipsets that are no longer beings supported.
In some ways this seems to be a better move, at least that’s how I feel.
Especially if ATI provides some development time to improving the OpenSource drivers (unlikely).
this is just unacceptable… the 9250 AGP cards are still being sold in shops for low end and the windows drivers dont support them either o_O
I have an Ati Radeon RV250 (Radeon 9000) with 128MB RAM. I was thinking of upgrading to an NVIDIA card anyway due to lack of decent Xgl support for the RV250, and this news only makes that step easier.
My reason for avoding Ati, although I’m running a Windows laptop, I do find that Ati’s arrogance over crap alternative operating system support does come back to bite Windows customers with less that adequate support – if they can’t be bothered providing quality drivers for Linux and other operating systems, then I don’t see them thinking about the long term support for Windows.
I’m very pleased with my Nvidia GeForce Go 7300 (256MB VRAM) compared to the previous ATI experiences I have had in the past.
The page title on ATI’s website: “Customer Care” 8|
I could (almost) understand about radeon 8500/9000, but 9100, 9200 and above are still beeing sold (even if onboard graphics) in entry-level… this clearly shows that ATI has litle respect/care about its customers; specially non-windows ones!
The R8500 and R9100 are identical cards.
At one point in time ATI decided to rename the 8500 to 9100 because it was confusing (9000 was in fact slower than the 8500 since it’s using a scaled down version of the R200 chip). You can flash the 9100 bios to your 8500 and you’ve got yourself a “newer” card
I’m not sure about 9000 and 9200 but diferences between those two are very minimal also (i >think< they’re using the same chip but I could be wrong).
Not quite true, The Radeon 9100 is a 8500 but not the pro or even the regular 8500, its the LE version. Thus the memory badwith is limited so you cant flash 99% of the 9100´s with a regular 8500 bios but hte le one. Just for your information to be correct.
this is just unacceptable… the 9250 AGP cards are still being sold in shops for low end and the windows drivers dont support them either o_O
Hang on, the page is refering to LINUX drivers, how did we start talking about windows drivers?
Or are the windows drivers also stopping support for them?
Regarding mobility revisions, as far as I was aware, ati NEVER properly supported the mobility chipsets (my old laptop with a 9200 mobility wouldn’t accept the ATI drivers, or they wouldn’t accept it).
I can’t believe that some people are STILL hoping for good device drivers from graphic card vendors. Both nVidia and ATI don’t care much about Linux. Why would they anyway? I’m sure that getting more people to work on good drivers for Linux would cost them more than the increase in revenue.
We don’t need closed source drivers and we don’t want some random specs either. All we need is more standard. Remember in the DOS days, we had an actively developed/strongly supported VESA standard. Everyone was happy and everyone was able to develop software on the same base (minus the fees some had to pay to get the specs).
Everyone should force graphic card vendors to comply to some active standard (not to some outdated VESA version). Seriously, we don’t really need all the power of today’s graphic cards on Linux. Who play games on Linux anyway? Desktop effects? Not worth the pain 😉 CAD applications? Could be one remaining issue…
“Seriously, we don’t really need all the power of today’s graphic cards on Linux.”
X..g..l… :-D~~~~~~~
😉
Who play games on Linux anyway?
I do when I have time. Once a quarter, the local LUG has a Linux based LAN party featuring mostly Enemy Territory since it’s free, but also some Doom3 deathmatch and Q4 arena games. We’re really hoping the next Enemy Territory: Quake Wars comes out with native to Linux.
What an incredible exercise in masochism.
Guyz you should try Nexuiz, this is one very good free game!
Ok back on the topic.
Seriously, I have an ATI mobility RV350, on my laptop. I am gonna buy a new laptop, and I am gonna make sure of at least one thing: my video card is Intel or Nvidia.
I still wonder what happen to the fact that AMD claimed it would buy ATI, and that they would eventually open the driver’s doc?
I still wonder what happen to the fact that AMD claimed it would buy ATI, and that they would eventually open the driver’s doc?
Did AMD actually say that, or was it just a rumor floating around? Also, ATI has released the specs for these cards, so it seems odd to complain about that in this thread.
Who play games on Linux anyway?
I do – wine works well for many older games. A few months back I played a LAN game of Warcraft 3, and afterwards my friends were saying “You can’t play games on Linux”. When I quit Warcraft they were shocked to see Gnome ;-).
That’s because you were using Gnome.
“That’s because you were using Gnome.”
Hehe, I would be shocked to see Gnome too. KDE or any other WM/DE I would of believed haha. Nice one.
er … thanks for explaining the joke that everyone already got.
“er … thanks for explaining the joke that everyone already got.”
That wasn’t the intention. Rockwell eh… Thanks for the belittling reply. Pleasant comments from me are not common. I’ll be sure to return the favor.
I can’t believe that some people are STILL hoping for good device drivers from graphic card vendors. Both nVidia and ATI don’t care much about Linux.
I’d say that for example nVidia does care about Linux users. Their drivers work, and maybe I’m just lucky, but I haven’t every had any issues with them. And to this date, I have used a dozen of different computers with various nVidia cards, and all worked. All the ATI cards I’ve had have had issues with the closed-source drivers, though. Luckily I have been able to use open-source ones insted, which work very well.
Seriously, we don’t really need all the power of today’s graphic cards on Linux. Who play games on Linux anyway? Desktop effects? Not worth the pain 😉 CAD applications? Could be one remaining issue…
Err…Why would anyone even release games for Linux if no one played them? The same applies to desktop effects: if there was no need or demand for such, why would there be now already two different hardware accelerated solutions? Besides, some people just like eye-candy and good-looking desktop. I even hear sometimes people don’t use Linux because it’s uglier than Windows. And then there are a lot of applications which benefit from powerful graphics card, ranging from simulations to CAD to 3D modeling (Blender)..
Who play games on Linux anyway?
I do. [1]
– Gilboa “should have ignored this obvious flame bait” Davara.
[1] Q3, Q4, RtCW, ET, UT2K3, UT2K4, D3, X2, etc
You forgot…
Q2, Doom 1, UT Classic, PPRacer, Chromium, Nexuiz, Alien Arena, etc, etc, etc.
I don’t think that it matters much that it is ATI. This really hurts linux and makes it worse for support and I think that is what is the bad thing.
I honestly wonder that in five years who is going to even worry about linux anyway. It is going to be mac as the alternative OS to Windows anyway.
Linux will still be around, but I just feel that the hype will be over and people are not going to care anymore.
and shows
1.the need for more standards (as rx182 said)
2. the need for open graphics chip
3. the migration from closed to open source
@proforma
maybe your girlfriend has just abandoned you, I understand, It has even happened to me. You will get over it, trolling is just a short term reaction.
People tend to give up easily. I promoted Linux 4 years ago (I did before, and do now, but by this time I organised a big LIP, and was more active) and it was further from being an alternative on the desktop.
When I started using the IRC people I met were all into trying different OSs, Linux, *BSD, etc. Today a lot of people in the Messenger generation ain’t into other OSs, they got Windows with the computer their parents bought, and it serves them enough. Old school people and people influenced by these are the users and new users of most different OSs. Of course there’s always people on the search to move away from Microsoft, but the times are different, so some marketing by other OSs work on these people, we can see that by watching people acquiring Apple hardware.
Linux is ready for my desktop, as for a lot of people’s desktop. In my view, it requires the user to be interested on the software, and the underlying OS, but it is usable by people who aren’t at all interested. Some people are completely against learning something different from Microsoft software, those are difficult to introduce to Linux, even if it is easier, free and free.
The “fight” is not on showing that Linux is ready for the desktop, it is on educating people to Open Standards so they know how and why to ask for all those codecs and plugins and drivers missing a completely legal and/or stable solution on alternative OSs.
Edited 2006-09-21 11:00
This is a pity but unfortunaly very common.
One of my computers is a Toshiba 4070CDT with a DX5 level graphics card and with OpenGL 1.0 support.
When I bought it, it came with Win98, which I quickly changed into a dual boot machine.
When Win2000 was launched, Trident said it wouldn’t be supporting the card on the new Windows. So I was left with 2D acceleration. No 3D anymore.
And this will be always the problem with closed drivers in any OS.
Any time that the manufacter decides not to support a card, or worse not to support a certain kernel release, then we are left on the dark with unusable hardware.
GNULinux isn’t ready for the home desktop. This is mainly due to the small hassles that come up.
Eg. someone gets you a scanner for christmas and it doesn’t have linux drivers or you friend has some crappy piece of software for sending farting sounds and you want to join in, but there isn’t a version for linux and it’s doogy so it doesn’t work under wine.
The average home user doesn’t want to deal with that.
GNULinux will continue to make head way in to business because it’s good, cheap and can be pushed on users that won’t really care because they won’t have root privileges and couldn’t make any changes to the systems anyway.
*damn, ATI and Nvidia, there is no good reason not to open source the drivers. It’s just companies being arseholes to their customers because they can.
Making headway onto business desktops is the best way of making headway onto home desktops; platforms like the Amiga and Mac were much better for home desktops until way into the late 90’s, but the Amiga went bust in 94 due to the impact of the PC on the business desktop (which would have happened even if Commode had not had crap management).
And open source drivers start to support this chip quite well. xorg 6.8 had only 2D support for that chip, but starting from 6.9/7.0, basic 3D support for the r300 was added into xorg. Now with xorg 7.1, performance has increased a lot.
Whatever the chip you use, if it has only proprietary drivers, your chip will stop being supported sooner or later. This is somewhat normal, companies are here to make profit. They will make more profit if they invest their money in research for new hardware than if they insist to support legacy hardware.
If ATI drop support for their older chipsets, they would be very wise if they gave full specs for those chipsets to the OSS community.
Right on. ATI don’t make money out of Linux users running happily with their old Radeon. The make money out of us cracking the s&^ts and buying their latest and greatest. Not me. Oooo no.
There’s a lot of disharmony between the goals of Linux and companies producing graphics cards like:
1. Linux supports almost every CPU ISA, even ARM, MIPS, SPARC, HP-PA. Proprietary binary drivers usually support only x86, AMD64 and sometimes Power PC.
2. Linux aims to be the first system available for new computing platforms, while most hardware producers suffer from “chicken or egg” problem when it comes to release drivers for new platforms.
3. Linux should support a lot of legacy hardware, while hw makers like forcing upgrades to users.
4. Linux is about building open-source code base, binary, proprietary drivers are about preventing anyone to get code.
5. These graphics cards are not that much different from each other. It makes sense to have a single, common codebase for part of the drivers common for many cards.
6. There’s a real danger that graphics companies may decide to stop supporting Linux (eg. under pressure from Microsoft) – then what?
7. Quality may suffer with binary drivers. Reliability data for them is not published. Producers are not obliged to support users by eliminating existing errors.
9. It’s profitable for driver producers to include spyware into their products (getting usage data etc.).
———-6. There’s a real danger that graphics companies may decide to stop supporting Linux (eg. under pressure from Microsoft) – then what?———–
I can’t see that happening. there’s more linux users worldwide than there is mac users.
You think there’s a real danger that graphics companies may decide to stop supporting apple?
As we’re seeing, they’ll drop older card support, but that’s wholly different. As long as they decide to provide the specifications to the DRI it’s not that big of a deal. Any (of todays)distros I’ve seen has 3d support out of the box for R200 and below class chips. That’s what we want anyways.
Apple pipes some money to them, either by using their products/chips on Apple’s hardware, or by hosting manufacturer’s logos on marketing campaigns. Even thought the user base is less on the Apple side, their marketing is much more visible.
Edited 2006-09-21 12:42
Never underestimate the power of greed, the depth of MS’s pockets or level of corruption in our government.
I know I’m going to be the only one who says this but………..
WhO cArEs?
Ati’s drivers are crap anyways. I’ve tried them on several occassions. Now granted the DRI drivers aren’t anything to write home about either but from what I’ve seen the DRI drivers are more stable.(yeah, it could just be me)
I bought my firegl 8800 over a year ago with the full intent of running the OSS DRI drivers and I’ve been fine. I’ll usually recommend this card to other linux users *because* of the OSS drivers.
That is until opengraphics opens it’s doors for business.
*EDIT*
I just thought of this……. I could understand this reaction if support in closed drivers were dropped from the Geforce 2 line of cards. There’s no fall back for you guys. nVidia doesn’t supply specs to DRI.
Edited 2006-09-21 11:57
this might be an unpopular opinion, but to me this move makes good sense really. there’s already decent open driver support (with DRI) in xorg for those cards that are listed, why would someone want to bother with the proprietary fglrx drivers in those cases, particularly with the (IMO deserved) horrible reputation that the latter has.
perhaps with this move ati could actually devote the resources to making fglrx a better driver, perhaps even on par with nvidia’s. (remember, nvidia doesn’t support their older cards with the recent drivers either. for that they have the ‘legacy’ version.) personally I’m sick of closed drivers anyhow, not that I have much choice at home on my ppc box anyway…
I Agree, I just wish Ati would release the specs to these older video cards which they no longer wish to support.
Just a stupid question:
I have a Radeon IGP 340M (345?) in my HP/Compaq nx9010 laptop. Is that a completely different device, or a submodel of one of the 9xxx devices? Is it supported by the driver?
That said, I failed to get the earlier fglrxs work too, so it is more like a theoretical question for me
Works with the “ati”/”radeon” driver though, but there are some glitches here and there.
Edited 2006-09-21 11:58
I have the same GPU, the latest fglrx does NOT support that chip, and i think it will never be supported. Use the opensource drivers, they’ll do the job.
I play Unreal 99/03/04, Call of duty 1/2, quake 1/2/3/4, doom 3, Dune 2000, Hearts of iron, Guild wars, World of warcraft, Warcraft 1/2/3, Neverball, Worms, Red Alert 1/2 and many more games. And its not just once in a quarter or so. Its more like 8 hours a day =) Well aslong as im still on vacation anyways. (im on my last week of the three months holliday) As wine progresses and more games is actually supported i think ill soon see most games overall to work in linux. This news might feel like a backlash but in fact the open source drivers are actually quite fast for those cards wich is dropped, so people getting them or have one since earlier shouldnt be worried. Btw in some FPS style games i have actually seen better performance than in windows. (the native ones atleast)
for open source drivers
Indeed. I have two Radeon 9200 cards. One in my old x86 PC and one in my PowerPC Mac mini.
I use Linux on both machines, and I can happily report that the open source radeon drivers work perfectly with 2D and 3D acceleration on both architectures.
I went for a Radeon 9200 because of the open source drivers, even though people were telling me that nVidia cards are faster. When the next kernel or Xorg release comes out, I don’t have to worry about something breaking the binary driver. So I’m happy.
It was mentioned earlier that ATI dropped support for the aforementioned cards under Windows too. Happily, Windows users are less concerned about this because ATI makes older versions of their drivers available and because they don’t have to worry about their latest-and-greatest version of Windows breaking support for older drivers (even if that is because a latest-and-greatest version doesn’t exist). If the Linux world was serious about backwards support for both binary and open source drivers, they would ensure some sort of stable interface for their device driver developers too.
Since I have always been more of a 2D user than a 3D user, I have always been happier with the open source drivers anyway.
i run ati on linux. these older cards dont have any more things that can be done to them on driver level. this is a GOOD thing as it means u can load the last supported driver and run it forever instead of needing to update it monthly.
what about when new version of linux kernel or xorg comes out and the current driver no longer works?
and I thought Nvidia was arrogant and anti-linux for having a windows only SLI zone club on their web site, now I see them as the lesser of two evils.
Current driver are still in public share and works well. Sure, there will be no more further optimisation or enhancement, but hell, Windows 98/Me/2000/XP are no more either
It not reminded me not to buy another ATI card, it just reminded me not to upgrade my operating system anymore
That’s Microsoft that will regret it, I will *NEVER* upgrade to Vista if I cannot use my current video card (for me it’s not an option to change my hardware at a great cost to fit the new software which is costful as well, it’s the world upside-down, it’s the software which is supposed to adapt to the hardware). So who won if the affair while neither of them will ever sell me their new stuff ?
Kochise
Edited 2006-09-21 14:27
I read a lot of “we need open standards”, “we need open-sourced drivers”, “ATI should care about us” and so on here on this forum. Then please show me why ATI would do so. Where is the power behind such statements that will force ATI to open up their secret data?
Then I see a lot of “I’ll never use ATI again” and “Nvidia is better anyway”. Do you have any evidence that ATI would even listen to such threats? What is the expected loss of market share?
What we need is not whining. What we need is a bunch of people doing cleanroom reverse engineering of the d*mn drivers and hardware, as much as is needed to build working open-sourced drivers.
I understand that for DirectX 10, MS demands the same featureset from all cards. When they all have the same feature set, where is the incentive to keep the drivers closed?
> I understand that for DirectX 10, MS demands the same
> featureset from all cards. When they all have the same
> feature set, where is the incentive to keep the drivers closed?
AFAIK, MS only demands a minimal feature set, i.e. a common denominator for all cards (so that game programmers can reasonably use those features). Cards can still support more than that, although it would of course require specialized programming, so only the biggies like ATI and nVidia are interested in supplying extra features.
Then there is the actual implementation. DirectX does not demand a certain implementation, and thus different cards vary in speed. There is a certain possibility, that by analyzing the driver one gains information about the underlying implementation. This would give a competitor an advantage (although this is mostly a non-argument since competitors would analyze closed-source drivers as well).
As some here pointed out, knowledge about the implementation could also reveal that IP laws (especially patents) have been broken. I don’t know if this is true, but if it is, then it’s currently a state of mutually assured destruction between the biggies, but also explains why nobody wants an open-source driver which could destabilize the situation.
So where are *we* left now? We want support for alternative operating systems, because there is currently no OS that fulfils all needs. We want fast, stable, and bug-free drivers for obvious reasons. I would be happy if all that was possible with closed-source drivers, but so far companies like ATI fail to deliver, and that’s a good reason to reverse-engineer the whole thing.
I agree this decision by ATI is/was in bad form. However we (SciTech) will continue to offer multi-OS support for all older ATI hardware in both our “Free” personal edition of SciTech SNAP as well as our commercial edition of SciTech SNAP graphics. Current support for ATI hardware on Linux (all versions) is as follows:
Mach64 GX, Mach64 CX, Mach64 CT, Mach64 VT, 3D Rage, Mach64 VTB, 3D Rage II, 3D Rage II+, Mach64 VT4, 3D Rage IIC, 3D Rage Pro, 3D Rage LT Pro, Rage Mobility, Rage XL, Rage 128, Rage 128 Pro, Rage 128 Ultra, Rage Mobility 128, Rage Mobility 128-D4x, ES1000, Radeon 7200, Radeon 7000, Radeon IGP 320M / 340M, Mobility Radeon, Mobility Radeon 7000 IGP, Radeon 7500, Mobility Radeon 7500, Radeon 8500, Radeon 8500DV, Mobility Radeon 9000, Mobility Radeon 9000 IGP, Radeon 9000 Series, Radeon 9100 Pro IGP, Radeon 9100, Mobility Radeon 9200, Radeon 9200 Series, Radeon 9500, Radeon 9500 Pro, Radeon 9550, Mobility Radeon 9550, Mobility Radeon 9600, Radeon 9600 Series, Radeon 9600 XT, Radeon 9700 Pro, Mobility Radeon 9800, Radeon 9800, Radeon 9800 Pro, Radeon 9800 XT, Mobility Radeon X300, Mobility Radeon X600, Radeon XPress 200, Radeon X300 Series, FireMV 2200, Radeon X550, Radeon X600 Series, Radeon X700 Series, Mobility Radeon X800, Radeon X800 Series
You are making such a big deal about this, but it’s not the problem that you think. ATI still lets you download older versions of their drivers for older cards. They only provide upgrades to add functionality, which often requires the support of hardware that the older cards just don’t have. When a new version of their drivers comes out, the older versions don’t go away, and will still work as well as they did before.
I must confess to some confusion regarding the reactions I’ve seen here.
I don’t particularly care that the proprietary drivers have dropped support, because the OSS drivers already support these cards quite well.
I prefer not to use the proprietary drivers unless I have too, since it causes additional headaches with kernel and Xorg updates.
Has anyone considered that part of the reason ATI feels comfortable dropping support for those cards is that the OSS drivers already have them covered? What value does fglrx add?
Besides, ATI is likely to see some major changes now that they are AMD.
I’m watching and waiting, with cautious optimism, on that front.
I just bought an 8250 *yesterday*. It was a cheaper but certainly not free, about $50. I thought this was a fair price for a relatively new dual-head card.
The next time I buy a graphics card, I will certainly remember this. Unless AMD’s ownership brings about a greater sence of responsibility to their customers and their continued use of their products, I won’t buy an ATI product again.
edit: i meant 9250.
For me the open-source drivers have always been faster and stabler than the closed-source which, but still they aren’t perfect: for example TV-out support is at best very shaky. And since ATI doesn’t release all the specs, open-source drivers might never support all the features of the cards. I do understand there are license issues and such which could hinder them from releasing the specs, but it still would be nice if they solved it one way or another.
I don’t understand why this is a problem.
ATI provided specs on these cards to the writers of the open source driver. The open source driver supports these cards perfectly. Therefore ATI no longer provides support for them in its buggy, proprietary driver but encourages people to use well tested, supported open source code.
Isn’t this the model we’ve been encouraging hardware vendors to embrace for years? Why is it a problem that ATI no longer writes code for these devices, so long as code is written and ATI is helping with the process? Why is it a disaster that the buggy proprietary driver doesn’t support these cards any more (for some of them it never supported them in 3D mode *anyway*) if the superior open source driver supports them very well?
I was under the impression there was something the OSS drivers didn’t do that the ATI drivers did?. All I want to know is – can I use vmware/google earth/openoffice. Is it just that they offer higher glxgears scores? which is irrelevant to me anyway? If so why am I recompiling new drivers everytime I build a new kernel?
The open source drivers only support the older ATI cards and not the newer ones. Also, performance isn’t as good, but with cards this slow that isn’t going to matter much anyway. I’m not sure about features like multiple screens, tv out, etc., but for basic usage the open source ones are much nicer if you can use them because they “Just Work.”
Edited 2006-09-21 23:11
The whole proprietary driver crapola we have to put up with, especially with the current cards being decommished prevents the specs from being published.
More than likely due to the fact ATI probably stole IP in those cards, and doesn’t want anyone to know about it.
In case your wondering why Video card producers do not release specs, this is probably the biggest reason.
Nvidia and ATI probably steal like thieves amongst themselves, and they do not want the other to know about it. (Purchasing each others cards and secretly analyzing how they work behind closed doors.)
I mean, what better way to build a better card than to purchase one of your competitors and reverse engineer how it works. This goes on all the time in the electronics industry.
The law in the USA and its various colonies such as Europe, Australia ironically prevents prosecution of this kind of law by being recursively rediculous and preposterous:
1) You cannot reverse engineer Hardware to figure out how it works and use that to build a product.
2) You do it anyway.
3) Your competitor reverse engineers it and finds out that you did it.
4) Competitor can’t do a thing about it, because he broke the law in finding out that you broke the law copying his product.
C? Ridiculous and just the sort of laws created by Lawyers to increase litigation, and stop innovation. (i.e. DMCA act and its children of waste and destruction.)
In any case they have protection of the law in that if someone should find out, they can’t use the information in court because it is a violation of IP law in the first place to do industrial espionage.
So it is a neat little game, that produces crappy products and crappy driver software.
Our only hope is the Open Graphics project.
-Hack
> The law in the USA and its various colonies such as Europe […]
This is so funny I just had to highlight it
I say colony only due to the fact that as trading partners your laws are almost identical to ours, and are changed to fit our trading laws.
Especially when it comes to this intellectual property crapola of patents and copyrights.
Europeans don’t even have the balls to admit it.
(i.e. They don’t have software patents, but the issue them anyway, even though the population doesn’t want them.)
Just to make the Empire of the USA happy.
So, in affect economically, yes you are a colony of ours.
Be a nice European colony too and institute “Software Patents for 1000 years.”, or we just might do some “regime” changes.
🙂
-Hack
I almost expected that you meant it that way. Yes, you’re right, the US dictate a lot upon Europe, and yes, Europeans don’t have the balls to admit it or even become a bit more independent… although I don’t think a “regime change” would be possible in Europe – too much bad reputation. You’d just issue some economic pressure and we’re f*cked
To think I nearly installed their driver on my Dell C610 yesterday.
There are tons of people with those Radeons out there. Between dual core offerings from Intel and ATI’s investment in their users, I wouldn’t be buying AMD stock any time soon.
I just cannot believe the rampant lackwittedness displayed by most of the posters. The Free X.org and XFree86 drivers support 2D and 3D quite well on these cards. This is because ATI kindly released specs on their older 9250-and-earlier chips.
The old drivers are still available and most likely will continue to be available. I swear to god, do you cretins not have two brain cells to rub together? This includes you, Thom, and I’m disappointed that an OSNews staffer would be so clueless.
Edited 2006-09-21 19:22
I do not miss any proprietary ATI driver, too. I am still using Suse 9.0 with my “old” ATI Radeon 7500 card and, yes, there is 3D support for it. Although Suse warned me two years ago during installation with a popup that these 3D drivers are still in the alpha stage, they work flawlessly until today. No kernel update ruined this installation. Many, many thanks to open source and xfree86 (the version used in Suse 9.0).
I just cannot believe you’re satisfied with these drivers and dare say others lack wit.
The Free X.org and XFree86 drivers DO NOT support XvMC at all on these cards. This is because ATI didn’t release specs on their older 9250-and-earlier chips.
If they had, using an ATI 9250 (which I bought, but I won’t make that mistake again) on my MythTV center would have been a no brainer.
I swear to god, do you cretins not have two brain cells to rub together?
Who’s the cretin now ?
Well, I don’t mean to insult you, just to make you realise that these drivers are not just for 3D anymore.
And with HD content coming, this will be more and more important.
…they never realy worked acceptable anyway. All i can get out of my Radeon 9000 notebook-GPU with the official Ati-Drivers is pretty plasmaeffects.
Too bad that the OSS drivers are completly useless when it comes to 3D.
The next Ati GPU that i’ll buy will be released shortly after ice-skating season in Hell.
haha exactly. my mobility radeon 9200 hasn’t been supported in the ATI linux drivers for ages. even with a modeline gathered from powerstrip in windows… the ATI drivers just put garbage on my screen. the OSS drivers work fine but seem to be useless for XGL as far as i could figure out.
whats crazy is they stopped supporting the card in windows too way back with catalyst 5.7! this laptop (HP ZT3000) is not even 2 years old and I won’t be able to run Vista on it (I tried). The only way I could get vista to even display 2d was to hook up and external monitor… press enter button till i got through the initial screens, then run powerstrip and apply monitor settings gathered why running powerstrip on xp. but still, my laptop monitor would not come back after going into powersave and there was no direct 3d support at all. this is 1.7ghz pentium m with 1gb ram… that is stuck in windows xp (with outdated drivers) thanks to ATI. seriously will never deal with ATI again.