SciTech Software, Inc. today announced the official release of the world’s first web-based, graphics-driver build system with support for Windows, Linux, OS/2 and more. With SciTech’s exclusive online build system users can now easily configure, build and install certified SciTech SNAP Graphics drivers on their home machines, for non-commercial use free of charge.
Get SciTech SNAP Graphics PE for Linux Free
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I hope they are able to successfully bridge the gap between commercial (and proprietary) and Open Sourced software. That would be a huge win for opensource (some proprietary stuff will never be opensourced, like display drivers).
Good luck!
Too bad it doesnt support my FX 5700
will it works with X.org ?
from its website, it refers to only XFree86.
One thing that has always confused me is the difference between the SciTech drivers and the manufacturer’s drivers. Could someone be a little dove and explain the difference between the two for me?
My birthday is in the 27th, and last night I named SNAP as one of the things I’d like. My mom and my fiancee both have so much trouble shopping for me (and they don’t accept the “it’s the love that counts, I don’t need gifts!” arguement), so they were happy to hear I’d thought of something I’d like.
Eh, oh well :-). Back to the drawing board…
still no 3d support so it is pointless for me.
good work to the guys working on this though, as it looks like a good product im just waiting on 3d.
Does the 2D support help with 3D? I’ve heard that running a card that doesn’t even have a 2D DRI driver (VESA or fb only) is much slower at 3D stuff than one that has a 2D, but no 3D driver.
Skyos neads SNAP, otherwise its not going to get any drivers.
This seams a good way to get drivers on minority OSes (smaller then Amiga) to me.
> will it works with X.org ?
Yes, but not out of the box (needs some manual configuration). The next release will have better support for it.
> last night I named SNAP as one of the things I’d like
The full version is still available for purchase.
The NVIDIA drivers work fine with my FX 5700.
By the way, anyone have a link to the PE license that doesn’t require I sign up? This just takes me to a log-in page.
http://my.scitechsoft.com/licenses/license_home.html
I don’t see any reason not to use the official nVidia’s driver under windows … I’ve got an old riva tnt2 m64 board, and the SNAP driver just sucked for me on XP (no OpenGL accleleration … and I couldn’t change refresh rate – don’t really know why?) … any way I’m quite happy with the official Detonator drivers. Mayby SNAP will be good for people with really old and not supported cards?
to running scitech snap? thanks!
> will it works with X.org ?
I’m using it right now with X.org and Fedora Core 2. Works perfectly so far without any manual configuration.
what about my ATI IGP 340m, and xvideo, and tv out?
I’d really like my “Trident Microsystems|Cyber-XP4 Video Accelerator” to work better. Xfree has some minimal support for it. X.org outdated even more minimal support
Any chance this silly trident will become supported?
Taras
Um, has anyone actually managed to get this working? I can’t even find anything on their site about an online build system. What’s going on here? How does this work? How do I install it for my ProSavageDDR?
> will it works with X.org ?
Yes, but not out of the box (needs some manual configuration). The next release will have better support for it.
Where can one find the directions for the manual configuration?
Does this really do anything ? I downloaded the linux version, I’m using a Nvidia graphics cards that should be supported. At one point I can see a fancy logo, but then my screen is switched to another resolution and I have to go back to something readeable with fbset.
The thing is, there seems to be nothing on that site that helps me. I need a registration code for helpdesk support (or even to read the license), the help files tell me to go to some page where I can only find ads and corporate logos.
This product is a joke, isn’t it ?
I signed up, built and downloaded, but I couldn’t get it to run with xfree86. I’m on ArchLinux with xfree 4.4.0. The driver includes binaries for 4.0.2, 4.0.3, 4.1.0, 4.2.0, 4.2.1 and 4.3.0. I couldn’t get the configuration tool to run:
# /usr/bin/snap/snapxf86cfg
SciTech SNAP Graphics 2.1 for Linux XFree86 Configuration Program.
GA_initLibrary failed!
Therefore I manually enriched XF86Config-4 with ModulePath “/usr/bin/snap/X11/4.3.0” and Driver “scitech”. This is what I got when trying to start xfree86 4.4.0:
(II) LoadModule: “scitech”
(II) Loading /usr/bin/snap/X11/4.3.0/scitech_drv.o
(EE) LoadModule: Module scitech does not have a scitechModuleData data object.
(II) UnloadModule: “scitech”
(II) Unloading /usr/bin/snap/X11/4.3.0/scitech_drv.o
Because the driver is for 4.3.0 I then tried to downgrade, but I got the exact same error with the correct X version.
Any ideas of how I can get it to work?
Johan (IP: —.lycko.afb.lu.se) says he’s using it on X.org under FC2, this means it should work with xfree 4.4, right?
ArchLinux is not a supported distro. Not all distro’s work because of binary compatibility problems between different Linux projects, mostly due to major differences in the versions of glibc. We are looking into using the LSB to build our code, but unfortunately we need access to a lot of low level functionality that is not available through the base LSB libraries.
Well, I got it running under Slackware. I had to tweak a couple things to get it to run right, but it is better than what X comes with for my card (a ProSavageDDR VIA KM266). The X drivers are unaccelerated, even in 2D, so in glxgears, I’d get about 60 FPS at best. With the SNAP drivers, I get about 240. Unfortunately, there are some big time redraw problems. I’m just using Mozilla and xterms, and there are major redraw problems! Under blackbox, I even noticed some problems with how the moire background was drawn *on startup*.
What’s worse, when I close X, there’s a line about how I have 22 days left for this evaluation version!!! Nowhere on the web site did this say it was an evaluation version. I’ll buy the full version if I can get support for this redraw problem, but surfing their site, I doubt I’ll find that.
Snap graphics does work on ArchLinux, but it requires XFree86 from 4.0.2 upto 4.3.0. XFree86 4.4.0 is binary incompatible with previous versions on ANY platform. X.org is binary compatible with XFree 4.3.0, so SNAP should work with this.
As for me, I have ArchLinux 0.6, XFree86 4.3.0 and snap works on two computers: kernel 2.6.3 and NVIDIA GeForse MX 400 on Intel 845 chipset; kernel 2.6.6 and ATI Radeon 9200SE on NVIDIA NForse2 Ultra (Epox 8RDA3+).
Then why did I get the error even after I downgraded to xfree86 4.3.0 from the 0.6 release? Would it be because of glibc?
(EE) LoadModule: Module scitech does not have a scitechModuleData data object.