ATI And Linux - Not So Much
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It has long since been believed that ATI cards are crap on Linux systems. And despite some Ubuntu vendors switching over to them for whatever reason, the fact remains that you will almost always be better off with NVIDIA or Intel whenever possible.
Well as this writer discovered first hand, ATI’s sucking knows no bounds. To point out that much of this could have been discovered with about 20 seconds of Googling, might seem a bit obvious to existing Linux users. Yet at the end of the day, we cannot expect people to be researching something as basic as ATI support for their desktop distribution of choice. To do this, is ridiculous.
Despite these woes, as I sit here quite happy with my NVIDIA card on my main desktop and Intel graphics on my notebook, ATI and VIA are both CRAP and should be avoided at all costs. Even considering ATI’s recent efforts to “suck less” on the Linux desktop, it appears that they have clearly fallen by the wayside somewhere along the line. Sad.
5 Comments
Mike Z
May 8th, 2009
at 5:47am
While I’ll agree that NVIDIA is a much better card under Linux, I run my main box at home (single monitor) and my main box at work (dual monitor) with ATI and have no problems at all. I’m not much of a gamer, so I can’t gauge that kind of performance, but I’ve run FreeBSD, Mandriva and Ubuntu and they’ve all just loaded up the correct drivers and worked.
David Myers
May 8th, 2009
at 9:40am
I’ll agree that NVIDIA is a better card under Linux, for two real reasons, One of them is the drivers. I’ve always had problems trying to get the drivers to even display videos properly. Second, the support. Just recently ATI’s update to the drivers made the 2xxx series of ATI Mobility graphics card become unsupported well before their time. Middle even reasonably High end laptops spouting anything below 3xxx HD mobility chips (including mine) got hung out to dry. Sorry, ATI. Next computer I gets running a NVIDIA
The Bear
May 13th, 2009
at 8:45pm
I concur, I have a reasonable Asus a9550 (ATI Technologies Inc RV350 AS [Radeon 9550]), when it works, it’s great and suits what I needed. Continuous recorded “Uptimes” were in the order of MONTHS and better!!!!
I finally dove into video editing which requires significantly better performance.
Since installing the closed driver from ATI, it’s now no more stable than Windoze xxxx was/is.
In most cases I backdoor the machine, kill off X-Windows, and unload the fglrx kernel driver, reload it and restart X. But the System BUS is already screwed and usually crashes sooner again, so backdoor and gracefull reboot is usually the order.
Fortunately Linux(Slackware) recovers fine from a crash, BUT IT IS NOT THE POINT.
As much as people may argue otherwise, I do BLAME M$ (microsoft) for this debarkle. Why?, well who started the utter crap of “let’s push the product out first with bogus claims, then if someone complains we’ll fix it later!!” F#%king Microsoft that’s who. And before someone makes some stupid comment about having no idea, I have been actively ‘embedded’ into IT since 1981 as a significant part of my personal life and as my Business. Even then, M$ Basic(usually ROM) which was included on several brands of Computers at that time(actually prior, but this is MY perspective), had bugs, the most prevalent I remember, was in the Maths Routines, which ultimately forced many programmers to write workarounds. Damn sad.
So the world follows…….
Nvidia is better, but by no means perfect.
Peter
July 19th, 2009
at 8:56am
I bought a desktop with a 64 bit AMD Athlon X2, with an integrated Radeon 2100 and I loved it!
At least until I realized that the fireGL drivers have dropped support for my chip. So, I’m stuck with the basic functionality drivers, and anything 3D is catastrophically slow, regardless of video settings. Blender, TrackMania, Sauerbraten(Cube 2), and most compiz effects.
I’m waiting for my nVidia 9600 to come in the mail tomorrow.
Any User
July 29th, 2009
at 7:01pm
Your comment is quite bias. I’m searching the net to see the level of support ATI provides on Linux, and actual tests conducted by people don’t paint this picture as bleak as you make it out to be.
http://www.hexus.net/content/item.php?item=18017&page=1