GeForce And Radeon Take On Linux

[pschmid]

Graphics technology makes quantum leaps on a regular basis, but Windows isn't necessarily everyone's darling. We tried Fedora Core 5 to check the "state of the Linux union".

 

[qukza]

Gaming aside, check out setting up XGL on Linux. Installation of this has previously been a pain but this appears to have been made fairly easy in Novell SLED 10:
http://wiki.novell.com/index.php/SLED10:_Configuring_and_Using_Desktop_Effects_%28Xgl%29

Videos and screenshots here:
http://www.novell.com/products/desktop/preview.html

And it runs on relatively old Nvidia and ATI cards... (unlike certain other forthcoming GUIs...).

 

[smlong]

I can't imagine anyone would spend $400 on a graphics card for a Linux system. The thought of SLI on a Linux system seems like a wasted expense as well.

I tried Cedega, Wine, etc. They are novel almost-solutions at best.

 

[gman01]

I can't imagine anyone would spend $400 on a graphics card for a Linux system. The thought of SLI on a Linux system seems like a wasted expense as well.

I tried Cedega, Wine, etc. They are novel almost-solutions at best.

I agree - until PS3 games are available, there is not enough games to justify that expense.... (yes PS3 games/software is written in linux - google it)....

 

[laitainion]

Just because it is written in Linux doesn't mean it'll run in Linux, since it'll be compiled for the PS3/Cell instruction set, not Linux/x86.

Even with the Cell's surposed ability to compile any code into it's own native code using just-in-time compilers, that's still going to mean a performance hit so I don't see games developers making 'use' of this feature.

 

[smlong]

I can't imagine anyone would spend $400 on a graphics card for a Linux system. The thought of SLI on a Linux system seems like a wasted expense as well.

I tried Cedega, Wine, etc. They are novel almost-solutions at best.

I agree - until PS3 games are available, there is not enough games to justify that expense.... (yes PS3 games/software is written in linux - google it)....

Well, I would never purchase a Sony product either.

Laitainion is correct, though. One parallel I like to draw is that games for the Sega Genesis were developed on Amiga systems since the hardware was similar. Just because the IDE exists on one platform for a game system doesn't mean that that platform can also make use of the developed games.

As a software engineer myself, I would much prefer writing games for the Xbox/Xbox360 since they use DirectX/Windows functionality. It would make porting games to the PC a no-brianer.

 

[gman01]

Just because it is written in Linux doesn't mean it'll run in Linux, since it'll be compiled for the PS3/Cell instruction set, not Linux/x86.

Even with the Cell's surposed ability to compile any code into it's own native code using just-in-time compilers, that's still going to mean a performance hit so I don't see games developers making 'use' of this feature.

If the PS3 games needs an emulator to run on linux someone will write one.... Unlike the windows game emulators this one should work on all PS3 games.... Yes there will be a performance hit, and it will not be as fast as an actual PS3 - unless PCs and Video cards get faster....

 

[Alyarbank]

I bought a 6800GT just for my Linux box, I'm tired of wasted time scanning for scumware and constant WGA/Security updates, I wanted a game box to Play Quake3 and Quake4. Id has ported both to Linux, I have them both flying on my rig. BTW, the money I saved on software made it possible to buy better hardware.
Additional Software for Windows:
MS Office
Photoshop
Illustrator
etc. = more $$$ (to support basic functions beyond Paint and Wordpad)

Office alone almost saved enought to fund my display adapter. All these funtions can be done on Linux without buying expensive software.
NVIDIA support is pretty good these days, installs and configures quite easily
compared to what was available just a few years ago.

 

[Natedogg]

I liked this artical all in all. But I think they should have put in a Doom 3 benchmark as well. I would have liked to seen the differances between ATI and Nvidia with the current drivers under doom 3.

Soon Croteam will finish porting Serious Sam 2 for linux. I wonder what kind of performance differences will be between linux and windows for that game.

system:
Mandriva 2006
Athon XP 2800
nvidia 1.0-8762
FX5950 Ultra

 

[andrnils]

I thought i'd share my experiencies of ati on 64bit-linux and nVidia on 32-bit linux: Go for nVidia!

That my sound harsh, but after struggling with ati-drivers for 10's of hours i'm quite fed up. Let me tell you the story from the beginning:

In January i bought a laptop (a HP nx6125 ml-40 with an ati X300). Fine, i had heard that ati was hard to live with, but at first the driver wouldn't even recognize my card (this isn't really only ati's fault, HP edited some versionstring that is used to identify the card ), so i could not use any hardware acceleration at all.

ATI then released an updated driver, which recognized my card. That was pleasing, but the performance was dreadfull, and it never got any better with the updates from ATI. Then came an update to Xorg, and ATI's drivers are incompatible with it and have been for some time now

I now use xorg-x11 opengl-implementation and open-source drivers (xf86-video-ati with mesa). Imagine the chock when i tested the performance now, it was better than with ATI's own drivers. I tested with glxgears at 1440x1050: ATI's drivers deliverd at most 750fps and the open-sourced driver delivers 1100fps! This still is really bad numbers, as a comparison my geforce4 4600ti delivers ~5000 fps

Furthermore, with the open-soured driver I can now change the brightness level of my display while in X via the hardware-buttons, which i couldn't do with ATI's drivers (i could change brightness in the console).

My old desktop uses the above mentioned geforce4 4600ti (p4 2.53ghz, 512mb PC2100), and there have never been a problem with the nVidia-drivers. And as someone before mentioned, i have it running Xgl My friends all looks quite stunned when i play a movie in a window placed round the corner of the cube

That's my story on ATI and nVidia on linux.

Best regards
andrnils

 

[Alyarbank]

Oh, that's right, I run Doom3 too!
Doom3 rocks on this system. In my opinion Nvidia has much better support at present, I've worked with both and found Nvidia is much more user friendly and much less problematic.

I also have XGL on my Geforce 448Go powered laptop. Was pretty easy to install on Suse 10.1 from Novell's write-up, 10.0 is a little more tricky.


8)
Athlon 3800+ X2
MSI NX6800GT
1 GB Ballistix PC4000
200 GB SATA-II Seagate
Abit AN8 Ultra

 

[gman01]

I bought a 6800GT just for my Linux box, I'm tired of wasted time scanning for scumware and constant WGA/Security updates, I wanted a game box to Play Quake3 and Quake4. Id has ported both to Linux, I have them both flying on my rig. BTW, the money I saved on software made it possible to buy better hardware.
Additional Software for Windows:
MS Office
Photoshop
Illustrator
etc. = more $$$ (to support basic functions beyond Paint and Wordpad)

Office alone almost saved enought to fund my display adapter. All these funtions can be done on Linux without buying expensive software.
NVIDIA support is pretty good these days, installs and configures quite easily
compared to what was available just a few years ago.

I have been 'linux only' since 2000.... And have never once missed windows - so I know what you are saying.... I am obviously not a big gamer, so I have no need for windows.... I grew out of that phase of life a long time ago....

 

[TheGreatGrapeApe]

If the PS3 games needs an emulator to run on linux someone will write one.... Unlike the windows game emulators this one should work on all PS3 games.... Yes there will be a performance hit, and it will not be as fast as an actual PS3 - unless PCs and Video cards get faster....

You know you can also develop in a windows environment, eh?

They are using Cg and OpenGL-ES-P, and with Cg you could code in either Linux or Windows and then export quite well. One of the advantages of using such interfaces is the ability to easily export to other platforms.

And since the PS3 is not just another PC running Linux, but actually a proprietary adaptation, don't expect that you'll get an emulator any time soon, nor easily.

I suspect the emlator will be hard to make and take a very long time at best, but like the PS2 and Xbox (could emulate Halo on huge servers using AIX, but that's not practical now is it).

 

[aonhagen]

I tired Fedora 5 and it dindnt work for me :?

I coudnt find a good guide about how to install the Nvidia drivers

You have to see what linux kernel ver you have, install the kernel for your GPU, some headers and the driver it self.

I tired for several days but i couldnt install it properly


I would like to see something in linux like "add or remove programs" just like in windows

And you should only need to worry about the driver and no more

I dont like windows but at least is more easy to use.

Cmon! You even need to dl some files to make mp3s work (at least on fedora)

 

[andrnils]

Well, ubuntu has a really nice package manager, you may want to try it out, see here for more details.

Myself i use gentoo, but thats a little bit trickier according to some... But i like the control i have there

I can't remeber that nvidia-drivers were that hard to install. I remember it as (the manual way):
Download the installer, run the installer, add 'nvidia' to /etc/modules.autoload.d/kernel-2.6, do as root 'modprobe nvidia' and edit the 'device'-part in /etc/X11/xorg.conf like so [code:1:9c45a4cb99]Section "Device"
Identifier "SomeName"
Driver "nvidia"
EndSection
[/code:1:9c45a4cb99] and the restart X. It's possible that Red Hat has changed the paths to these files, but slocate should find them for you

By the way: That you have to download some files to play mp3's is thanks to some ruleing in an american court, i think they face rather sever consquences if they include these files...

Best regards
andrnils

 

[icthy]

I'd like to second those that had problems with the ati driver. I can't get my M9 mobility radeon to work with 3-D acceleration in Fedora Core 5, and it worked fine with Fedora Core 3.

Linux drivers still have a way to go in my opinion (ATI's fault, not linux). I think the article could have been improved if there was some discussion on success/failure rate on installing drivers (a quick poll on fedora forum would have been edifying).

 

[andrnils]

Such a poll would be interesting but predictable,... and why only on the feodora forums

Personally i never liked feodora, i never got the feeling of control i do on my gentoo installs, and i feel 'lost' as where to find files in feodora (most of this goes for ubuntu too, but ubuntu at least has a decent package mangager )

andrnils

 

[TheGreatGrapeApe]

Linux drivers still have a way to go in my opinion (ATI's fault, not linux).

Yep, it's the red-headed step-child of graphics, only getting luke warm support from anyone.

I think the article could have been improved if there was some discussion on success/failure rate on installing drivers (a quick poll on fedora forum would have been edifying).

Not really. It would be like posting an Ati vs nV or AMD vs Intl poll here, not imperical data, just op-onion of a small cross-section, and usually more representative of people's current choices.

And if it weren't a graphics specific section within the fedora forum of people knowledgeable i the field, you end up with old news and stereotypes. How manyh n00bs here in this specialized forum still base their driver discussions on things 5 years ago?

Polls are for politics, not for reviews, unless it's to find out what people are using right now, not what works/doesn't.

 

[icthy]

I could certainly be wrong regarding a poll, but I was thinking questions such as "have you tried to install your proprietary ati/nvidia driver, and if so:

a) nvidia
b) ati

Was the driver install:

a) straightforward
b) i can't get the damn thing to work."


Granted it's still subjective, and forum uses aren't necessarily a true cross-section, but it does avoid asking for opinions on ati vs. nvidia.

I just suggested fedora forum because the article was on FC5. I'd definately be interested in the experience of others' distros.

But I'm happy Tom's is doing linux articles, as "StrangeStranger" pointed out. I hope future hardware reviews will consider linux compatibility.

 

[TheGreatGrapeApe]

True something along that line would be better, and avoid the AvsB scenario more.

The funny thing is I was all for Linux in the early yeara (heck I was an Xwindows, AIX, VMS guy in University in Mtl), but really it just became more hassle than it was worth (not saying I like windows ). Heck right now I love surfing for something small (like movie times, or BestBuy price on item in store) on my PSP, because by the time I've found the information and shutdown again, my PC hasn't finished booting up.

I agree I like seeing the Linux reviews, because I'd like to do dual boot in the future once I ge tthe dual-core laptop, and then I'd like to get back up to speed on Linux again, this helps.

 

[gman01]

I tired Fedora 5 and it dindnt work for me :?

I coudnt find a good guide about how to install the Nvidia drivers

You have to see what linux kernel ver you have, install the kernel for your GPU, some headers and the driver it self.

I tired for several days but i couldnt install it properly

you could have typed 'yum install xorg-x11-drv-nvidia*'

OR used add/remove software, but you would have to have know what your were looking for.... If you use fedoraforum.org you would get all the answer you need.

I would like to see something in linux like "add or remove programs" just like in windows

like I said above it has an add/remove software - you missed it somehow?

Cmon! You even need to dl some files to make mp3s work (at least on fedora)

that I can not defend(only fedora does).... but you just have to type in a comand or go to add/remove software....

Give fedora another chance.... It has a learning curve just like windows did...

 

[smlong]

I bought a 6800GT just for my Linux box, I'm tired of wasted time scanning for scumware and constant WGA/Security updates, I wanted a game box to Play Quake3 and Quake4. Id has ported both to Linux, I have them both flying on my rig. BTW, the money I saved on software made it possible to buy better hardware.
Additional Software for Windows:
MS Office
Photoshop
Illustrator
etc. = more $$$ (to support basic functions beyond Paint and Wordpad)

Office alone almost saved enought to fund my display adapter. All these funtions can be done on Linux without buying expensive software.
NVIDIA support is pretty good these days, installs and configures quite easily
compared to what was available just a few years ago.

Whatever 'free' alternatives you're running on Linux are more than likely available for Windows. So, the only thing you 'save' on software is by not purchasing Windows itself. But, if you bought an OEM PC, more than likely you would get a 'free' copy of Windows XP anyhow. I have checked around and a DVD copy of a decent Linux distro (I prefer SuSE) is nearly the same price as a copy of Windows XP from a cheap software house.

Linux supporters always exaggerate the cost of ownership .. but when cost is the only advantage, I guess you have to take what you can get. Why don't Linux users ever slam Apple for having inordinately expensive products?

Anyhow, sorry for digressing. From my experience, I was able to get both ATI and Nvidia drivers working fine. Although this was with older cards (Radeon 8500 and Gefroce Ti4200 respectively). Counter Strike worked fine on Cedega/Wine as well, but at about ~ 20 fps less than the Windows equivalent ..

 

[drcroubie]

Firstly, great article.
Second, here's my experience:

Started with a TNT card and Suse 9.1 (but never bothered with a graphics driver, no good bundled games anyway). Put Suse 10.0 on the beginning of this year. Thought i'd follow the "SuSE users: please read the SuSE NVIDIA Installer HOWTO before downloading the driver." from the nVidia website. yeah, great. someone forgot to metion on that page that "old" cards weren't supported (at least now there's a link to "latest legacy driver", wasn't before).

So after downloading the "nVidia driver patch" through YAST, i sat and waited and nothing happened. tried again, still nothing. after intense googling and reading (all using w3m, somewhere told me to shut my X down to install drivers).
Eventually i just downloaded the pure driver from the normal place, installed some kernel source, and had me a driver within minutes.

after a while, i came across two "new" cards. a TNT2 Vanta and a Matrox G450. As the Matrox had a twinhead, i thought i'd try it first. X wouldn't even start after booting. In went the TNT2, not only did X start, the 3d support was still there, didn't have to reinstall anything.

After more eBaying, i got my "newest" card, a GeForce 4 MX 440, 64MB. power down, unplug old, plug in new, power on, works great. (and my Tuxracer FPS went from 25-30 @800*600 to 100-130@1024*768, even on the old driver).
After a while, i got bored, and since this card was supported by the newest driver, i thought i'd try the YAST driver update again. still didn't work.
so back to the normal method. got the latest driver a lot easier this time (download, stop X, run .sh file, restart X). couldn't be easier.


So, after all of this, the moral of the story?
- Suse users, just install kernel source from the cds and run the .sh like any other distro (click 'no' to try to download precompiled, compile your own, it's easier).
- Even though i've never tried with an ATI driver (or ever owned an ATI card), i'm sticking with nVidia for my new AM2 or conroe system, because i know the system, and the system works (ditto staying with Suse, although i may try another distro at some point)

Also, question time:
- given the age of my hardware (should be in the siggy), can someone reccomend some good lingames? all i've got are the ones that come bundled with SuSE 10.0, and i'm getting bored with FreeCiv and Tuxracer.
- or is there an easy way to play my existing wingames on my linbox without VMing, WINEing or dualbooting? (unreal, blood2, half life, mechwarrior3, need for speed3, etc)
- on the overclocking front, the article mentioned that NVclock was only for GeForce fx/6/7. is there any way to overclock older cards?
- also, i think my TVout isn't working (but haven't properly investigated fully as my tv is now busted). do i need to do anything special to get TVout working?

 

[yyrkoon]

I bought a 6800GT just for my Linux box, I'm tired of wasted time scanning for scumware and constant WGA/Security updates, I wanted a game box to Play Quake3 and Quake4. Id has ported both to Linux, I have them both flying on my rig. BTW, the money I saved on software made it possible to buy better hardware.
Additional Software for Windows:
MS Office
Photoshop
Illustrator
etc. = more $$$ (to support basic functions beyond Paint and Wordpad)

Office alone almost saved enought to fund my display adapter. All these funtions can be done on Linux without buying expensive software.
NVIDIA support is pretty good these days, installs and configures quite easily
compared to what was available just a few years ago.

Uh, since when is it a requirement to buy MS office for a gaming rig ?! Photoshop ?! Adobe Illustrator ?! I suppose you never heard of OPenOffice ? Guess what . .. there is a windows port . . .Never heard of Paint.NET either eh ? Its free . . .

The ignorance concerning Windows products now days is truely astonishing . . .

 

[yyrkoon]

Ive tried both ATI, and nVidia products on Linux, console only, and X both. I've had bad experiences with both, sometimes one would work, while the other wouldnt. While I'm not really a linux guru, my distro of choice is Debian, never tried Fedora core x, and only have limited experience with slackware, and Redhat (including some Mandrake experience from years ago). Anyhow, I was never able to get OGL working correctly, even though I DID like the self compiling module from nVidia (even though for some reason it would not persist from reboot, to reboot, I must have done something wrong, and got tired of messing with it).

I can see how nVidia product would prevail in *NIX since they always have seemed stronger in the OpenGL arena. As for gaming on Linux . . . I dont really see the point, I mean I can understand the need for feeling free with your OS, but if you're a serious gamer, Windows is the only real way to go. Otherwise, you'll end up compromising on what titles you play, and how you play them.

Linux is very good as a server, and I can see running it on a dev box neither of which really needs all that fast of a graphics card. Now, I can also see using Linux being used to render models etc (when was the last time you had a rendering farm using windows machines?) I recall reading about The Lord of the Rings movies being rendered on 1000 dual CPU AMD boxen more than a year ago, you can pretty much bet they didnt use Directx / Windows to do this . . .