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ATI vs. NVIDIA: ATI Steals the Show
(54)T-Dub writes "Apparently a group of MIT engineers made an OpenGL wrapper for the NVidia Demo of 'Dawn.' (a fairy with high sex appeal) Even though the wrapper adds more overhead the demo still runs faster on the 9800pro and creates higher quality images." Yet another reason it's good to have engineering students on your side.
Yeah, i use the ATI linux drivers and they work very well.
nvidia practically destroyed 3dfx. They bought 3dfx and refused to update any drivers (e.g. nvidia refused to update the windows xp 3dfx-driver when microsoft contacted nvidia). Thus many people had to buy a new geforce card.
i fear we all (we who had to buy geforce cards to get windows xp working/or people that heard about this story) have established a real HATE relationship against nvidia.
go go ati. best wishes!
I can't speak for their FreeBSD drivers, but ATI's 3D linux drivers for the Radeon 8500 and up work incredibly well. I get better framerates with UT2003 under linux than I do under Windows with the OpenGL renderer.
Dinivin
Yes she does, she's called Dusk and is your average gothic-esque-urban type. Check the new demos.
Learn from the mistakes of others. There isn't enough time to make them all yourself.
I find it quite funny that most posters doesn't have any idea about the graphics market.
Here is the lates marketshare data from Q1-2003:
Whole market:
NVIDIA: 31%
Intel: 29%
ATI: 19%
Desktop standalone:
NVIDIA: 64%
ATI: 28%
"I'm hoping this is a driver issue and that subsequent optimized releases of Detinator will speed it up. If not, it is a sad day for NVidia."
What is a driver issue? Article talks about that with an OpenGL wrapper Dawn demo can be run on some ATI cards, nothing more. Slashdot summary is quite misleading since there isn't any benchmarks.
Why the Sam Hill should I buy ANOTHER new card when there's simply no compelling reason to upgrade?
Ah ha!
Here in lies the challenges of Sales and Marketing departments all across the land.
Unfortunately, they will find a way to convince you that you MUST get the new Happy Graphics 10,700 GF5x Twin-Turbo Platnium card.
I think it is the extra LEDs or the fancy new second generation heat spreader that is there to cool the PCB.. because umm, that's uncooled so far!
But really, if you want to make a conspearacy or something, it is the old Wintel routine. Build faster graphics cards, so you can design fancier games, which require faster graphics cards, which push the development of games, which..... allow you to sell these things for mucho dinero (much money).
Well, you see how it works I'm sure.
Your Ti 4600 won't seem so adequate in 3 years I'm afraid.
And then Sam Hell will convince you to upgrade to that Happy Twin-Turbo!
direct link
Ahhh...the great dumpster continuum. Many a free computer will be found there. -- sowth (748135)
ATI has both closed-source drivers that really expose the abilities of the hardware, and open-source drivers which are quite reliable and not problematic at all (in my experience). Radeon support for DRI comes standard in the kernel too, as does framebuffer text console support.
So yeah, they do.
--Dan
Yes, they make binary drivers, which seem to work arguably well :)
If anyone wants it, I've mirrored the OpenGL wrapper here (78k).
You can get the dawn demo from here
How about these.
You want the file glx1_linux_X4.3.zip.
Dinivin
I think that you should dig a little deeper before making posts like the one above. The fact is that you can get ATI binary drivers for xfree 4.3.0 today right now. Check out the following URL for a download (GLX1_LINUX_X4.3.ZIP):
t i. html
2 f1 8f2e7271a06ab6fca8005df0028&threadid=33685530
http://www.schneider-digital.de/html/download_a
If you need more information on the driver - check out (may be slow due to slashdotting taking place):
http://www.rage3d.com/board/showthread.php?s=87
Now that having been said I hope you'll feel the need to retract your statement regarding the lack of an ATI provided binary driver for xfree 4.3 systems. I also hope that anybody who modded up your statement here gets tagged in meta moderation as there isn't even the slightest grain of truth in your statement.
J
I love idealists not because I am one, but because they make life bearable for pragmatists such as myself.
The open source drivers do work with GLX. I'm using them quite happily now. They don't support the 9500 and up, but that's because the DRI team haven't had time rather than because ATI are witholding documentation. As far as graphics cards go, ATI support the Free Software community far better than Nvidia do.
It's your own damn fault, really. I recently bought an ATI AllInWonder 8500, which has kickass fully Open Source Linux drivers. I bought this card because some quick research revealed two things: 1. Its 3d performance is more than enough for my needs and 2. Quality drivers are available. Quality drivers will be available for your 9700 Pro, but maybe not for some time.
Personally, I'm not a bit upset with the way ATI handles their Linux users. I much prefer it to NVidia's binary only crap. While the full programming specs may not always be available for the latest and greatest ATI cards, they are available for stuff that's not far behind (http://dri.sourceforge.net/ indicates that Radeon cards up to the 9200 are supported.) Not only are the drivers available, but because the specs are there, the drivers can be ported to any platform, not just those that some commercial interest feels is worth its money. NVidia won't release PowerPC Linux drivers, so I'm stuck doing software OpenGL on my G4. If the G4 had a Radeon I would not have this issue.
ATI really should be commended for making the necessary info available to the DRI and XFree86 developers to write quality open source drivers.
noah
This is just a race for the ultra high end, this isnt where companies are made and broken.
I mean, Ferrari makes nicer cares than Mitsubishi, but guess who moves more of 'em?
nVidia definately has the upper hand on the lower-midrange side of things.
I just picked up a GeforceFX 5200 for 80 bucks. 128 megs of DDR, 250mhz clock, a great card for $100 bucks that plays everything just fine. I'm runnig GTA Vice City at 1024x768 and thats good enough for me.
ATIs comparable card, the Radeon 9000, is completely powerless. The 5200 beats it hands down - and this is coming from someone who's used and loved a lot of ATI products over the year.
Likewise, the 5200 Ultra, 5400, 5600 all give the radeon 9500, 9500 pro and 9700 a good run for their money.
It's only the cutting edge top of the line where ati comes out ahead.
They've reversed roles - it used to be GeForce was slightly faster, but ATI was a better buy for lower end cards.
Anyways, there's room enough in the world for both of them. In fact, I'd welcome more competition from S3 or Matrox or someone.
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
Idiocy would be to rush out and buy an ATI All in Wonder card after reading your post. The only features you might be able to get working are 2D and 3D acceleration, if you're lucky.
BTW, did you browse to the links you copied into your reply? There was never a mention of the 9800 series cards. So what makes you think ATI supports Linux with binary drivers? The fact that they at one time released a binary driver that's compatible with XFree86 4.3.x?
I bought like 5 ATI 7x00 cards and got maybe one of them to work. The rest are worthless POSs until XFree86 improves their drivers. I don't trust that ATI cares about this market and I will never buy one of their cards again.
Don't reply unless you can find a driver that enables the same features as the Win2k/XP drivers. If not then just accept that ATI doesn't support Linux yet.
I can't believe you got modded up. Stupid moderators.
I should clarify. Games are playable using the open source drivers. My Radeon 9000 (which is a cheap, low end card) gives me far, far better framerates with UT than the Voodoo 3 it replaced did. Do you get as many FPS as you do with the binary drivers? No. Do you get a high enough number of FPS to play 3D games at reasonable detail levels? Yes. Do you get the ability to run 3D applications without crippling the system? Yes. Can you do 3D visualisation on the desktop? Yes.
So, it's entirely acceptable for desktop use even if you're using 3D applications on the desktop. Note that "entirely acceptable" only defines the base level of performance. If your primary goal is gaming, then the binary drivers are probably a better bet - if not, then the open ones are fine.
Here's a quote from a review on xbitlabs
Yeah, I remember the first time I installed a 3dfx card and played GL Quake. "Holy shit" I think were my first words, followed soon after by "Holy fucking shit". I'm fairly confident that nothing will ever recreate that experience. Going from 320x200, 256 color with speed-optimized (accuracy de-optimized) software rendering at 15-20 fps to 640x480, 16-bit color with all the goodness of OpenGL (transparency, reflections, good dynamic lighting) at 30+ fps was a revelation. It's probably going to be incremental improvements from here on out, and no mere increment will ever have the sheer impact that the first 3 seconds of glQuake had.
That said, I'm still pretty impressed with the graphical improvement since then. Compare glQuake to... Well, anything very recent that uses pixel and vertex shaders. Quake3 became a lot prettier (and faster) when I switched from a Voodoo3 to a GeForce 3. Newer games look even better (rain and water effects with pixel shaders look great). Add more trangle-processing power for more detail and the ability to have dynamic terrain (like waves in water)... I'd say we're progressing nicely.
No, there's no reason to buy a GF4 if you have a GF3. Maybe a GF5 or whatever ATI has at the time. Skip a couple generations so that your new card really -does- have a noticeable advantage over the old, and you'll be much happier.
The enemies of Democracy are
UT(1999) runs faster and better under the NVidia Binary Driver and Linux than it does on the same hardware with Windows. I kid you not, it's true. Since I really don't play any other games on a serious level, I'm a very happy gamer. (I would say "happy camper" but j00 kn0w th4t t3h c4mp3rz r l4m3rz ^_^)
Anyway, compare this to ATI on Linux. UT (again, the original 1999 edition, GOTY version) will not run with hardware acceleration and the DRI drivers with a Rage128 32MB. However, boot the machine with Windows and it is perfectly fine. It won't do the kind of resolution and the kind of framerates I get on my Athlon with a Ti4200 128MB, but it's evolution, baby, as the song goes. The DRI drivers for Rage128 are very, very sad. They also lock up on occasion for no good reason.
This isn't FUD, it's reality. I have no vested interest in NVidia. I don't own any stock, much less NVidia stock. I'm not a zealot. I'm on the pragmatist side. Whatever works.
The NVidia binary drivers work so well under my chosen distro of Linux that I am going to yank this Rage128 card very soon and replace it with a GeForce 4MX 64MB. (lower power consumption and better bang/buck ratio than the rest of the NVidia line) Once I do that, I will be able to run UT as it should run...under full hardware acceleration.
The DRI driver guys have had enough time to make a solid driver for Rage128. I mean, my G3 Blue-and-white came stock with a Rage128 16MB PCI vid card, with ATI Cinema hardware accelerator daughter card. That was bought in 1999. It's 2003. Four years to come up with a decent open-source driver for Rage128, guys! Four years! You would think that they'd get it right by now. And ATI is not supporting such an old card with their binary drivers.
I used to really, really like ATI kit. It's still mega-solid under Windows 2000, and it's pretty much the only game in town for Macs. But in the x86/Linux world, NVidia still just works.
Knowledge is power. Knowledge shared is power multiplied.
http://members.shaw.ca/tylerv2/dawn/
He's supposed to be getting more all the time. Check back regularly!
You're welcome...
"nVidia chips will live or die by OEM sales and having decent support for Windows gamers. All else means nada. And as for Linux users being opinion leaders... ROTFL. Really, could you be any more full of yourself?"
Gee I'm replying to an AC. A couple things you forgot. First of all Nvidia's (and ATI's for that matter) chips aren't just used in gaming cards but in the (as large if not larger) professional OpenGL market. The trend there is people moving to Linux with open and closed apps on top. Since a lot of Linux users (the one's you're poo-pooing) are in the OpenGL market as well as the ever growing gaming market. I'd say the original poster is more correct than your narrow (just windows) view of the world.