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Insight Into AMD's Linux Driver Development
Cowards Anonymous writes "It's no secret that ATI Technologies has had a rough time in the
past delivering display drivers that met the expectations of their customers. When ATI started out producing a FireGL and Radeon Linux driver they for some time were greatly behind NVIDIA's feature-rich driver.
The early ATI Linux driver had lacked essential functionality such as PCI Express and x86_64 architecture support and was also affected by stability and performance problems — not to mention a great deal of bugs."
when i switched from NVidia to ATI, it was a rough start.
for the longest time i couldn't get the driver to build/install, then one day everything just worked!
i can't tell you which version it was, but from then on, i've had no problems or complaints.
an open driver would be nice, but even still, my compliments to them.
It's also no secret that ATI has long had problems with their drivers for Windows too.
No, this is not a troll. I use ATI cards almost exclusively myself and I prefer them over NVidia, but I do have to admit that Nvidia's drivers as a general rule seem much better designed and simpler to install.
There is no -1 Disagree mod. Slashdot.org/faq defines mod options. USE IT.
And they still are.
to build a customer base is to alienate your existing customer base. I bought an R200-based laptop a couple years ago. ATI decided to just not support those cards in their fglrx driver package one day. Why would I buy from a company who won't continue support for their own products for more than a couple years? I will make every effort to never support them again until they get customer/product support in order. NVIDIA, bravo.
TODO - Insert Creative/Witty Signature
What is the purpose a two months long QA process, when the result is broken drivers either way?
The long QA process *guarantees* that the drivers break on new kernels.
The long QA process isn't worth jack shit. The recent 8.37 drivers locks up my computer 100% of the time.
Did ATI need 3 months to QA a version check patch for the xserver-xorg-core version number, just to release drivers that no longer work?
With such shitty drivers, I would think it would be better to at least release early and release often.
Whatever. They don't need to do any work. All they need to do is open up the specs, and people will do all the work for them. People aren't bitching that the drivers don't work, people are bitching because they aren't allowed to improve them.
There's a whole community out there willing to do all the software work from scratch, but they don't have the resources to create the hardware. The hardware developers somehow see this need to provide the software themselves, instead of taking advantage of the community, but then go and do a shoddy job of it. That's why people are annoyed by the whole thing. It could be so much better, with very little effort from ATI, but they steadfastly refuse to play nice, forcing developers to resort to reverse engineering. Same goes to Nvidia by the way, but at least they seem to be a bit more competent in Linux/X.org driver development.
This whole argument is just a big excuse. We don't want excuses, we want some damn drivers.
--- someone who's been buying Nvidia since he realized that ATI doesn't work as well on Linux.
The article is a long excuse explaining why AMD/ATI are unable to release decent GNU/Linux drivers. That's interesting enough as far as it goes: AMD/ATI and Nvidia both have crap closed, proprietary drivers which don't work well, make kernel updgrading difficult and are unauditable for security. So why bother with them? Further ATI have a history of dragging their ass and blocking the release of Free drivers,
Why bother with this crap? Just get an Intel GMA X3000 integrated motherboard and save time, power, money and hassle due to Intel "getting it" and releasing Open Source drivers and full specs. (You'll probably also be able to benefit from their free wireless drivers.
If you're into hardcore gaming then you're probably running a PS3 or an Xbox on the side anyway.
Now, I don't pay much attention to video cards, but when I saw "FireGL" I thought "why would you need to optimize OpenGL graphics for Firefox?".
how can someone dare to come up with so many pages of blabla, without responding why they don't even allow an existing 2d code to be published.
ati i won't buy any card of your brand until the source code ends up upstream in the kernel drm and xorg.
I made the same mistake as many Fedora users - jumping (to Fedora 7) before looking. I'm not poking at Fedora here, on the contrary, I am a loyal Fedora user. It's ATI I'm upset with. ATI released a new fglrx driver (version 8.37) since Fedora 7's tests and final release that also does not work with X.Org 1.3. We're all sitting around waiting for the 8.38 which ATI claims will be compatible. And don't even get me started on ATI's absent AIGLX support for Linux. My next card will nVidia.
I installed PCLOS on my desktop PC, and it worked just great with my Radeon 9100 video card. Even managed to run Beryl with about an average of 30 mins before screen freeze. I was so impressed that I thought I'd give the ATI proprietary driver a try- bad call! After installation with Synaptic, my login session froze evry time within seconds- had to uninstall using apt-get. Not impressed with ATI's linux driver.
Basically, TFA says that "ATI has a release cycle". They even have an unofficial bugzilla and an unofficial wiki. Oh, and they'll drop R200 support too. And all that's supposed to make better drivers for Linux one day. I really wish they'd go the Intel way: hire some top-notch developers, give them specs and make them do Free drivers.
I've had three nvidia videocards (one that is onboard) and one ati.
I've always had, and still have problems with them when I use the proprietary drivers under linux (Ubuntu/Debian/Slackware, both packed and from the nvidia site). A few months back I just gave up and stopped blaming it on the videocards and drivers since I seemed to be the only person whose screen froze up upon switching to terminal mode and back.
The onboard videocard gives the same problems and I have exactly zero problems when using the slow open source drivers from x.org. That's why I excluded the posibility of my motherboard being broken.
Is there anybody; a single person who had the same problems or could anybody smarter than me tell me what I overlook?
If you mod this up, your slashdot background will turn into a beautiful sunset!
While I would love to help out in 3D graphics, but am in no way capable, I am also curious - how many competent 3D graphics hardware developers are there, really, outside of AMD, nVidia and a few other companies? What do they expect? A handful, dozens, hundreds, or even thousands of developers? Is it really that 'easy' so that they would benefit from from the Argus eye?
--
WTC does this have to do with AMD?
-Rick
"Most people in the U.S. wouldn't know they live in a tyrannical state if it walked up and grabbed their junk." - MyFirs
As one of my co-workers elloquently put it:
"Having an installed ATI driver equals that of being close to onions being peeled... you cry a lot"
That's why I use nVidia. I put up with that for 5 years in Windows and a couple in Linux.
I have to say I'm not finding anything insightful in the linked article. It's just a long winded way of saying, "The drivers aren't very good, but AMD/ATI is working hard on it." which we most of us likely already knew. It would have been good to see some insights on what AMD did to improve the driver development process, what impact the open source announcement made, etc.
Dell has solved this problem by including the Intel stuff instead for their Linux offering. It's time for ATI to release their drivers as OSS.
- David A. Wheeler (see my Secure Programming HOWTO)
The patches to get fglrx to work with my newer kernels are trivial, and apply neatly to the glue code. Not so with the binary only X module, which checks your X server release instead of the ABI version, and refuses to work with new releases. That's abusing the ABI for sabotage, not following it.
I think I speak here for a fairly wide swath of GNU/Linux developers and distributors: While the quality of the driver and it's release is of some importance, the license of that driver is the deal breaker. Give us a poor driver with a free (as in freedom) license and the community will make it great. Give us an excellent driver with a proprietary license and only a minority of users will use it. Why? Many distros (I'll use Fedora as an example) will not package proprietary drivers. Ubuntu, which I believe is the most popular right now, is on the fence and, at the very least, warns the user. This is part of the fundamental nature of GNU/Linux: It's about freedom. Does AMD understand this yet? It doesn't seem so. Moreso, because most free software developers ignore ATI's drivers as proprietary, there is little GNU/Linux software that takes advantage of the higher end cards. The DRI drivers on an r200/r300 card work just fine for almost everything. Why would a user, then, pay $100+ for a higher-end video card when a $35 Radeon 9250 is better supported? For users it's thus a choice of price/benefit if nothing else. If AMD wants to work better with our community they need to join our community. Break the closed development loop in favor of integrating their paid developers and "volunteer" driver developers, there's a number of skilled developers with DRI that I'm sure would be very willing to help should AMD do this.
The article basically says "thanks for these power point slides, AMD/ATI, I'll kiss your F**** asses in my article" Seriously, that article sucked.
Also, when they say that customers don't realize how much work goes into drivers, is that an excuse? I don't care how much work goes into drivers, I know it's hard to do. It's hard to develop the cards to begin with, and to engineer them. The entire process is hard and full of work. The bottom line is that if you can't produce working drivers for a product that you created and manufacture and sell, that you are in the wrong business and wasting my time.
I'd have thought lacking a great many bugs would be a good thing. (Yes, I know what was meant, but it's monday morning, I'm at work and I feel like pulling the legs off the English language.)
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
> Intel "getting it" and releasing Open Source drivers and full specs.
a y/024582.html
Actually, Intel has not released docs for their GMA X3000. Their current stance is that the driver is the documentation. That's fine and good, except the driver is still very incomplete (missing OpenGL features, no XvMC, no tv-out, etc.). See here:
http://lists.freedesktop.org/archives/xorg/2007-M
Their day begins in a leased office room, just about the size of your apartment bedroom (that you have long since abandoned in favor of your mom's basement). In that room is one table with only a black office phone on top, and one chair behind it. The developers, all dressed in various levels of casual, some with coffee mugs in hand, stand around waiting, engaging in small chitchat. The door opens, the lead developer comes in with a briefcase (for his other job where he gets a steady paycheck, putting out fires for a Fortune500 corporation), and he sits behind the desk after greeting everybody. The ATI number is on speeddial and he punches it. Then he puts it on speakerphone for the benefit of everybody.
Hello, this is ATi
Hello?
Yes, how may we help you?
Is there any chance that your company will be releasing the specs today?
Christ, will you please stop f***ing calling me and get a f***ing life?
Is that a no, then?
F*** you!
The lead hangs up after he hears the dialtone, and addresses everybody. "Same time tomorrow, gentlemen?" There is a murmured yes, and they start to leave.
Today's episode is brought to you by the captcha "annoyed"
TFA mostly talks about the ATI/AMD development cycle and how it should/will improve the driver release timing and quality. -Some- mention of that in the post would have been nice, rather than essentially copy/pasting from the first page.
"Always forgive your enemies; nothing annoys them so much." - Oscar Wilde
I agree.
I started using ATI products with the purchase of an Xpert@Play98 (RagePro PCI based). This was quickly followed with an All-In-Wonder-Pro (RagePro AGP based) for a secondary system.
What I discovered was that the cards worked very well for DOS/VESA and Windows 95 environments. They were rather, erm... "lacking" when it came to Windows NT4 environments. In specific, even though the cards came with hardware 3D support, that support was very limited under Windows NT4. OpenGL support was basically non-existent and DirectX support appeared rough. Furthermore, the television tuner and video capture support for the All-In-Wonder was missing altogether under NT4. Lastly, there was no way to set monitor refresh rates for screen resolutions other than the current desktop resolution. ATI's response to my various inquiries was to suggest that NT4 was a niche operating system that did not deserve a fully-featured driver set. They pointed me to Windows 95 and the just released 98 for all of my "gaming and multimedia needs".
Now, most of us can agree that NT 3.51 was something of a niche product and that NT5/2000 was a fairly mainstream product. So the question is, where did NT4 sit? And was ATI justified in their snubbing of it?
Personally, I figured it *was* a widely enough used product to deserve a good set of drivers. So for the next few years, I snubbed ATI in favor of Nvidia. The only time I went back to ATI was for their Radeon 8500 since it supported YPbPr component output long before anything on the Nvidia side did. And guess what? The driver support for component output was horrible under Windows 2000. Plus, numerous games would lock up under it.
So with that Windows history in mind, I am not at all surprised that the same thing is happening under Linux. In my opinion, this is just the way that ATI works when it comes to "niche" operating systems. Not saying that is bad thing for their core users, but for those of us out on the fringe, it can be painful.
I can see not having that stuff in NT4 - it was still more of a niche-server-oriented OS, but in my case, I had had the last model of AIW Rage built, that was supposedly 3D accelerated. I had a K6-III 450Mhz machine with 256MB of memory. My friend I competed with had a Celeron 266 with 128MB memory and a VooDoo2 (at least a year older than my "state of the art 3D card), later a TNT2 (slightly older than my "state of the art" 3D card)
On everything but 3D, I ran circles around him. On 3D apps with either card, he ran circles around me.
Add to that the long convoluted process of deinstalls, reboots and installs with every ATi card I've used between that one and the X300 I most recently have used. I honestly can't see going back.
And both nVidia cards and Intel cards BSOD significantly less in my experience, in Windows.
So far, I've had better luck with nVidia in reliability over ATi in any OS I've used. Intel is close, but has had a few performance quirks.
It seems, most of the critics of the closed-source drivers happily shut up, when they get drivers for their platform.
Manufacturers have learned this long ago — they release binary drivers for Linux/i386, and the criticism all but disappears. NVidia has gone farther than most by releasing Linux/amd64 and even FreeBSD/i386 binaries.
But FreeBSD/amd64 is not there... Nor are Open|NetBSD... Nor Linux/ppc.
I know, each additional platform costs plenty. But it is the source, I'm asking, not binaries. If — as the case may be — the most modern version of NVidia drivers can't be built on FreeBSD/amd64 due to feature FOO missing on the platform, I could #ifdef that feature out myself. Earlier versions of the driver weren't using FOO even on i386...
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
From TFA:
This is why you should follow the new kernels and X.Org while in the development stage. Follow the CVS (or GIT or SVN).
It's true, that kernel may take longer to get out the door than you'd like -- but your new drivers should be backwards-compatible by at least one or two minor kernel versions, right? That way, even if your release is a month or so ahead of the official kernel release, you probably already support it by the time it does roll out.
The end-user doesn't care about the release notes, probably doesn't read them. I know I don't read the release notes on my nVidia drivers, I just know that they just work, and just about as well as they do on Windows.
It is not that we expect you to be doing some set amount of work for us every month. It is that we expect you to not be so insanely, stupendously far behind your competition (Intel and nVidia) that I simply have to tell everyone building/buying a computer for use with Linux to get nVidia if they want games, and Intel if they don't, but never, ever buy ATI.
And all of them worked.
All of which are lacking certain features I've taken for granted elsewhere (AIGLX, for one), perform worse, and generally suck more.
It's been a LONG time since I tried ATI/AMD for video, and it will take a lot more than a pathetic "It's not our fault, really!" article to make me try them again.
Irrelevant. My nvidia drivers shipped with Ubuntu, so I really couldn't give a damn who it was that took the x86_64 package and turned it into an Ubuntu package.
In fact, while I do encourage testing on various distros, really, just provide one easy, reasonably transparent installation package -- in the form of a tarball or something close to it -- and have the license allow distros to repackage them for you.
Also, you're forgetting Intel. Intel is going to be the really ugly competition here, because they are the only game in town with a fully supported, fully open driver. If Intel ever releases a video card capable of taking on ATI or nVidia in my price range, I'll take it. (In the past they have done integrated crap that doesn't really compare to the $100-200 range of nVidia/ATI cards, but they've told us that's changing.)
This is the perfect opportunity for AMD, by the way: Just open up your code, and I'm there. The performance difference in hardware isn't significant, but better drivers are, and open drivers would be better.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
Those drivers actually have firmware in them--lots of binary blobs. Not exactly the "preferred form for editing the work"; the R300s are not supported, only the R200 cards are according to your link. Someone not update that page in a while?
I know that lots of folks are vexed that nVidia won't open their 3D driver, saying "If nVidia stops supporting Linux you're all doomed." Well just who do you think supports the open source nv.c driver? How about the nVidia SATA driver? Yes, it's nVidia, so even though the 3D stuff is closed source, they're still supporting OSS.
Next about the "Crap" drivers from nVidia, I've ordered a bunch of new Linux PCs, each will have a low-end nVidia video card added when it arrives? Why? Well I need dual headed support and that can be spotty with other video card vendors. I also need to run them in 8-bit color (don't ask, I just need to.) and my experience with the glorious wonderful OSS Intel video drivers is a nasty little box that follows the cursor around on the screen. I don't have ANY issues with nVidia's "Crap" drivers, everything looks great and works great.
I applaud ANY vendor who makes efforts at supporting OSS but I buy stuff from vendors who support Linux. Every system I own is either an nForce mobo with an nVidia video card or is simply sporting an nVidia card. When asked about what to buy, I recommend nVidia products. They have the best quality 3D support and performance of ANY vendor (which isn't much), they make it possible for me to play games under Linux that I'd otherwise have to play under Windows and that is worth a lot to me.
I have had NVidia cards before and just gave up on them. Recently I had a whole motherboard and just gave up on it because the onboard card wouldn't work correctly with the distribution of linux.
I have had other Nvidia cards where I have recompiled the driver for each new version of the kernel. I don't want to recompile drivers everytime I upgrade a kernel. Especially on server systems, but heh whatever for now.
You know if we could get every linux user (assuming 1 million) to invest 3,500 - 4,000 dollars in AMD, we would have controlling interest and could tell them to do it however we wanted, but then we would probably want to protect our investment and not let our competitors know how our devices are built or work.
Hey but wouldn't it be cool, we would have our own linux cpu and video company, that could be used to leverage motherboard manufacturers and wireless cards to make compatible equipment
Hey, got to go my bongs empty.
AMD just held there stockholders meeting so it would be a year before we could have a stockholder protest.
He who said 1,000,000 monkeys on 1,000,000 typewriters would eventually type the great novel, never saw an AOL chat room
"I have a hard time believing I had other bad hardware in there to cause the troubles since in both cases the GeForces worked perfectly."
Point noted. However a particular hardware-hardware combination having issues is nothing new. e.g. VIA chip sets. Also some things running nicer under a particular vendor is also not new. Some games were designed more for Nvidia than ATI for example.
You mean stability and performance problems are features?
I mod down anyone who says "I will be modded down for this", regardless of the rest of their comment
I can't imagine what ATI/AMD thought they were accomplishing with such a trite article. I'd be surprised if it doesn't disappear soon. If your boss yells at you for always being late to work, what does it accomplish to say, "Well, I set my alarm clock every night." They seem to be trying to say they're working very hard. Then that is just giving them more rope to tie a better noose. Because it only begs the question, if you're working that hard, and the product still doesn't improve, what do you have to be proud of?!! The article obviously came from the sales and marketing department, as it was devoid of any useful technical information and oblivious to the opinions and desires of the community. Rather than deflect criticism, it makes them look arrogant, ignorant, and ineffective. Intel is poised to hand them each their hats.
I have a fairly recent ATi card (X1300, ok, I'm a cheapskate) and I tried to install my card when I got it.
First try, nope, no default driver since it's brand new. Second try, ATi drivers - nope, the card was out 3 months, but no drivers. Screwed - SVGA only at a bad non-native resolution without any 3D support.
About 1.5 months later I tried to download their drivers again, this time it would support it. Wouldn't install. There are a few undocumented things you have to turn on in your kernel or it won't work, not to mention some symlinks and devices that are assumed, not specified or even given in an error message.
Two weeks later I finally figured out which parts I didn't have that broke it (shmem support, mostly) and got it to work. Now, it's a breeze. One in every 40 movies I watch makes mplayer occasionally do something that completely whacks the driver into triple fault - IE, reboot. It supports two displays but if you use that, both of them will occasionally forget for 1/25th of a second that they were on and just display garbage instead. I'm an operating system developer and if I want to do any development on the card, I have to either copy / rewrite the X driver (which, needless to say, didn't support the card) or just be screwed.
No, that's not the track record I know AMD has. I'm hoping strongly that AMD will change the ATi corporate direction into the right direction.
That {insert random screenshot here} article.
{insert ad here}
Was 3 times {insert random screenshot here} longer.
{insert ad here}
Than it {insert random screenshot here} needed to be.
{insert ad here}
And that is why for each and every PC we buy, we make darned sure they contain a regular NVIDIA graphics card. There is no point battling something if, with the right mouse click upon purchasing, you can entirely avoid.
:-)
So whatever the plan was, concerning ATI and Linux, we'll wait changing these plans until we read plenty of happy forum posts around the world
Unfortunately, my (otherwise excellent) T60p thinkpad is crippled by having a FireGL 5200 ATI graphics card.
The fglrx driver works well enough mostly (although no AIGLX at all), but about once a week, doing something like scrolling a page will crash the machine. I've gone back to the VESA driver - at least it doesn't crash.
Unfortunately, the vesa driver doesn't support any 2D acceleration, such as copy-rectangle. This means that scrolling large pages is CPU-limited (on a very fast core-duo machine!).
I think that if in more than one year they have not been able to deliver drivers supporting AIGLX/Beryl/Compiz, than probably there's something really wrong with their process.
Maybe it's just they are not involving enough people in the development of the drivers, but in this case open sourcing the drivers would be a great idea. In any case at the moment I would never buy another ATI card, since I use almost only Linux and since Beryl/Compiz are one of the most compelling reasons for me currently to buy an accelerated graphic card.
Like McDonald's board of directors meeting over poor sales in India, clueless to the ethical views of that market. Sales VP: "They don't like our beef" Marketing VP: "So we'll give them better beef, fresher!" Technical VP: "We could slaughter the cow on site if it helps" Sales VP: "That could be a great slogan, 'fresh from the cow'" [cue standard nods of agreement and voicing of support from around the table]
I had 2 identical systems a while back. old P4 1.8gz with asus mother boards I got from a dealer friend who couldn't moev them. They were unopened cpu's and new, just not cuttign edge. We needed 2 comps one for me one for my brother. At the time I had been Nvidia exclusive since about the first GeForce. I was advised that for that generation the ATI 9600 was the best bang for the buck. While my brother already had my hand me down GeForce MX. My system was crashing consistantly at least twice a day and the error message ont he windows systems traced it back to the aTI drivers. My brothers computer was stable and fine. So I went back to nvidia after that. It might have had great bang for the buck but crashign twice a day is not acceptable.
PS. And no windows in general does not crash twice a day on my systems. So it's acceptable.
"There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy."
I think a Carmack + the Torvalds could make some serious inroads here, obliterating the scenario you pose. Unfortunately, the Carmack I think of is apparently into rocketry in his spare time... :(
-
Now that Intel's back in the drivers seat we can leverage AMD into releasing ATI chipset documentation. Send a message that we won't stand for this bullshit anymore... boycott them.
Let the president of AMD know why you won't buy his products: dirk.meyer@amd.com
I have several issues with ATI drivers and my thinkpad t42p. All of them are listed in http://www.thinkwiki.org/wiki/Problems_with_fglrx ... and all of them are critical. I mean like screen flickering and hang on loggin out.
I simple can't use the driver with such bugs!
These bugs are filed for 1.5 year by now. I don't care if ATI has better developing circle or not.
When all problems will be solved?
When I can use TV-OUT with my ATI card under linux again?.. And don't tell me about IP. IBM, for example, released drivers as open source and it's comes with xorg by default.
I simple don't recommend buying ATI cards to anyone. The better alternatives are exist.
Don't worry, they will. Right after the planned x86-GPU extensions make drivers obsolete.
There is some usefulness to the MS-Windows logo for systems in a locked down environment. After installation by someone with admin privs, the software or hardware will work without local administrator privileges.
to periodically release this BS just to keep ATI regularly on the Linux sites. Ever heard the saying 'There is no such thing as bad press'? Its a freaking joke, I've stopped reading these site all together.
All they need to do is open up the specs, and people will do all the work for them
Yes... if ATI opens up their specs, their people will do all the work for nVidia's people. And vice versa.
I, for one, can understand why there's some animosity towards releasing the blueprints of your state-of-the-art 5-hojillion-manhours-in-the-making video card to all the tubes on the internets.
Granted, it's not the same as giving nVidia a briefcase of trade secrets, but you have to be careful when your company's existence depends on that extra frame per second your hardware gets in Doom VII 1/2
DATABASE WOW WOW
You want to ride on top of the mountain of FOSS work to benefit your own product, while not releasing your code because you're not of the FOSS mindset.
That's called leeching.
So, complain as much as you want, it won't get you anywhere. Slimy leechers are not supported. We simply don't need you.
It basically worked out of the box, it drove both of my DVI flat panels. No install headaches or anything else. It isn't perfect, but it supports what I critically needed. It hasn't crashed once in the several days since I got it. I even got 3d working too. Easy setup.
The only two negatives that I've noticed not working is xvideo overlays, and ATI says to use glibc 2.3. I haven't been adventerous enough to try glibc2.5 yet. So, I'd like to say that I'm at least one satisfied customer who won't bitch overly much about how ATI's drivers.
this is written as if its a good thing!
It is written as if it is a good thing beacuse the issue is that if they do not support DRM, you cant play such X or Y content, if they do not support "Broadcast flag" you cant see X or Y channel.
They did not make DRM they are just making their cards able to *read* such stream of data...
Ubuntu is an African word meaning 'I can't configure Debian'
But I am not so sure about this one : does "100 people involved with the program" means "code monkeys, managers, and coffee robots included"?
RIP Slashdot. I used to love you. dead account - but slashdot wont let me delete it.
I love AMD much for the processor (or maybe hate Intel for historical reasons), but unless NV or ATI opens their specification, Intel would beat AMD because of his free graphics drivers.
You cannot combine i9xx or i8xx chipset with AMD (I suppose), so if you choose free & open graphics drivers, then you use Intel.
And when the better software gives intel solid performance advantage, the ATI and NV is screwed (and I am not speaking about intel's semiconductor technology advantage). The future will show us.