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The State of ATI Drivers on GNU/Linux

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the all-I-want-is-some-hot-3d-action dept.

An anonymous reader writes "After 50 days of the Phoronix editor-in-chief exclusively using ATI Radeon hardware in his system, he has issued his final blog post dubbed The State of ATI Linux. Topics covered include the very low frame-rate performance, image quality, overclocking X.Org 7.1 support, Big Desktop/Dual Head, Linux CrossFire, and other relevant items to gamers and Linux enthusiasts. From the article 'While discussing this trial with a colleague that was not familiar with the quality of ATI's Linux drivers he immediately classified ATI Technologies as attempting to fine-tune a hull on a ship while there is a giant hole in the side. However, is this truly the case?'."

4 of 173 comments (clear)

  1. However, is this truly the case? by everphilski · · Score: 5, Interesting

    However, is this truly the case?'."

    yes.

    Use nVidia if you want performance. They use a standard code base between all OS's. 95%+ of the code that is in your Linux driver is in your windows driver. The drivers are stable and have great performance. This has been hashed out many times on various OpenGL forums...

  2. if you've wondered why ATI & Nvidia aren't coo by toby · · Score: 4, Interesting
    A possible explanation given at the Linux Kernel Summit:

    Speaker David Airlie started with a review of the current state of free graphics drivers. Intel chipsets are relatively well supported, thanks to an enlightened position being taken by that company. ATI is a "former leading light" in the free software world, but is no longer cooperating. Even so, the free R200 driver is feature-complete and, at this point, faster than the binary-only fglrx driver. ...

    Why do vendors refuse to support the free software community? David noted, with amusement, that both ATI and Nvidia withdrew support at about the same time that they got Xbox contracts. Let's hope, he says, that Intel never works an Xbox deal.

    (via the always excellent LWN)
    --
    you had me at #!
  3. Re:if you've wondered why ATI & Nvidia aren't by Jah-Wren+Ryel · · Score: 4, Interesting

    The rumours are that the next generation of intel graphics chips will be closer to competitive with whatever ATI and Nvidia have by then than the current ones. Presuming that is true, it sure would be nice if they maintain their current policy about open-source / open-specs for the chips.

    --
    When information is power, privacy is freedom.
  4. Useless bitching about no/bad open source drivers by Theovon · · Score: 4, Interesting
    One thing that pisses me off is that so many people keep bitching about lack of proper open source drivers, but they don't actually try to DO anything about it. If you don't have the technical expertise, then how about financial support or donating resources for the various efforts trying to correct the problem? Either you work to reverse-engineer current products (or support the reverse engineers financially), or you get hooked up with the Open Graphics Project and help fix the problem once and for all.

    The Open Graphics Project comes up pretty high in google searches. When someone writes an article like this, it tells me that they didn't even TRY to do their homework. From reading the article (yeah, I read it!), it would appear that the author isn't seriously looking for alternatives. It's reasonable enough to evaluate ATI and nVidia drivers. What's unreasonable is to make everything totally one-sided by not mentioning the alternatives.