ATI and Linux... how's support?

stitch

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I'm coming into the market for a new video card about mid-october (my ol' GeForce3 Ti200 is going strong but probably won't cut it for the new crop of DX9 games...).

I've been sticking with nVidia for a long time, for two reasons that actually don't have much to do with performance: first, their unified driver makes it easy to swap cards between computers (happens more often than I like)--minor benefit to be sure.

The second is that I really like nVidia's support for Linux, and while I don't do much gaming while using that OS, I do at least a little--so good support for Linux is very important for me.

While nVidia's drivers are a bit opaque, at least they can be compiled to support your kernel; on the ATI site, it looks like the drivers for new cards are binary-only, and I'm worried about them supporting a variety of kernels. I'm probably moving over to the Debian distribution (my RedHat8 distro finally descended into RPM dependency hell and I thought I'd try a system that relied on APT and see if it's any better), so I want to make sure that's supported as well.

So basically, long-winded intro to a simple question: in case ATI's technology lead extends to the next quick series of cards, how is Linux support for ATI cards? Anyone with actual experience? I'm curious not only about native Linux games/OpenGL support but also gaming through Transgaming's WineX library.

-->Stitch
 

ufo_warviper

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I've hear that ATi support for Linux is getting better than it used to be. To be sure, I would wait for others to respond, as I have had little experience with Linux. I'm very interested in learning Linux. What is your current system specs? You'll probably do better than you think in the new games. According to some recent articles we've seen here, DX8 cards will be able to enjoy 90% of the eyecandy and the full texture resolution on Half-Life2 as well as decent performance. But if you want to experience DX9 games in the full might of their graphical splendor, than going with a DX9 based board wouldn't be a bad idea. Unfortunately, Nvidia's current FX line of Graphics cards will suffer horribliy when Pixel Shader 2.0 is automatically enabled for DX9 based FX boards. This time around, you might actually better with a Radeon 9600 Pro or 9700 non-pro in Linux in the DX9 games. I realize that ATi's support in the past could have been better for Linux, but I think they worked ok, they just weren't fully optimized for the Linxx OS. Driver support for Linux can change at anytime, and even now its supposedly better than it was. But like I saide, wait for some more replies on the matter.

My OS features preemptive multitasking, a fully interactive command line, & support for 640K of RAM!
 

stitch

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(reply and bump...)
System is a barton 2500+ overclocked to 3200+ levels or thereabouts, 512M ddr400 ram. I can't help but feel like my GeForce3 Ti200 is holding things up at least a tiny amount.

But the real reason that I want to replace it is that my wife is running almost identical specs (slightly lower cpu, and ddr333 memory) with a GeForce2MX, which DEFINITELY feels old. Where's the spousely love? Since I play more games than she does, I'm replacing my card and giving her the Ti200, which should do adequately for her gaming needs (Everquest).

(I'm getting a small raise in October, so replacing my vid card and hard drive about then... I have a 20G drive dual-booting Linux and Windows, so my XP partition is less than 10G... feels a bit cramped).

I may wait for the next generation of cards, but we'll see. If HL2 really comes bundled with the 9800xsomething, I may actually go for that depending on prices (since I'm going to buy HL2 anyway; depends on how much more pricey the 9800xthingy is).

Of course, that's only IF I think ATI's Linux support is acceptable. Jury's still out on that until I hear from Linux folks.

Thanks for the reply, though!

-->Stitch
 

ufo_warviper

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Just wondering, what version of Linux are you running and which Windows Port will you be using. Just some helpful questions that might clear things up whent the linux people get to this. I'm wondering If I'll be able to run Windows Games on Mandrake Linux. What's interesting about Hard Drives as that the bang/for buck ratio often gets better with the more money your willing to spend. It probably wouldn't hurt to have a dual boot system set on 2 seperate drives.

Alright Linux guys, help this dude out, plz!

My OS features preemptive multitasking, a fully interactive command line, & support for 640K of RAM!
 
Good places to start;

<A HREF="http://www.ati.com/support/faq/linux.html" target="_new">ATI's Linux Page</A>

and

<A HREF="http://www.xfree86.org/" target="_new">XFree86's page</A>

nVidia still has the best Linux support, but ATI is getting better. The best thing to do is to contact fellow Linux users/forums and ask them.

I gave up on Linux for the time being because of application availibility and hardware troubleshooting (Had first Corel, then Red Hat and Mandrake in their various incarnations [Mandrake 7.0 my last]). However there are alot of resources out there, you simply need to tap them.


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