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ATI at the Top Graphics Chip Maker for 2004
dirutz writes "ATI is at the top according to market share, but nVidia is catching up. Hopefully this competition means lower prices and more goodies."
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Hopefully this competition means lower prices and more goodies.
And better open-source support?I've owned various nVidia and ATI video cards. My current PC is using an ATI RADEON 9600XT from ASUS. Its a bit dated now, but a very nice card overall. My other PC has a nVidia GeForce4 MX400 made by Chaintech. That card is quite a bit more dated, and was kind of mediocre to begin with.
Anyways, the point I'm slowly coming to, is that, essentially, I don't really care if I own an ATI or nVidia card. High end cards are high end cards. I've had few problems with either; although, I find reliability of anything made by ASUS is best. Benchmarks aside, you get what you pay for. And most of the "discussion" over which is better in reference to ATI and nVidia is pure fanboyism.
... with regards to the availbility of their high-end cards. When was the last time you saw a store (online or otherwise) that had a x800 (of any stripe) or high end 6800 in stock? Probably not in the last 3 or 4 months. I was considering upgrading from my 9800pro, but until better cards become more widely available the costs are going to remain prohibitive.
How about Matrox? Are they still in business?
Haven't heard anything from them for ages....
I don't need a signature.
However, given their stance on Linux drivers, my next purchase will be Nvidia. I don't like the fact that I can't use my DVI port because ATI doesn't feel like it.
/etc/portage/package.keywords /etc/portage/package.keywords
... similiar to nvidia. So get either one ... I've used both, and both have their strengths and weaknesses (e.g ATI drivers and celestia have issues and nvidia can't hold a stable image at 1920x1200 under Linux), and now that ATI has finally gotten their act together WRT Linux drivers, they are a viable competitor to nvidia in that market.
echo "media-video/ati-drivers" >>
echo "media-video/ati-drivers-extra" >>
emerge -Du media-video/ati-drivers media-video/ati-drivers-extra
or do whatever the equivelent is for your distribution to install the ati-drivers version 8.8.25, and run fglrxconfig to configure X accordingly.
I've got ATI drivers running on a dual DVI card, on multiple heads in one case, and on a single 1920x1200 on another, and have used them in both 64-bit (opteron) and 32-bit (athlon/intel) environments. For ati 9250 and less I use the xfree drivers, for anything above that I use the new binary drivers.
I've done the same with nvidia cards (although I've yet to find an nvidia card that doesn't flicker incessently at 1920x1200 resolution, despite using the DVI port rather than the analog port -- go figure).
ATI is now releasing driver updates for Linux every 2 months
In other words, you can pick whatever card you like the best and expect driver support on Linux for it now, on both 32-bit intel and 64-bit opteron at least. PPC users are stuck with the free drivers (which work fine on my powerbook 17" BTW), and unfortunately other platforms are similarly limited, but for 99.99% of us the support is pretty damn good at this point.
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
Who cares about market share, monthly volumes and top-of-the-line performance when 90% of the features of an ATI Radeon All-in-Wonder card are NOT available on Linux? It's only a couple a weeks ago the first feature-less driver for the X.org / 2.6 kernel came out!