ATI/NVidia driver status?
Tom Forsmo
What is the current status of drivers for linux by ATI or NVidia?
I know they both provide proprietary drivers, but I am unsure how well
they work. The same goes for the open source driver, lacking information
and all that...
I am looking to buy a new graphics card for my Debian Opteron
workstation and my choices have come down to the following:
- Nvidia 8800 GTX
(the 9800 series is not supported by the proprietary drivers yet)
- ATI HD 3900
I am planning on running it with 1920x1200 resolution with KDE, emacs,
Konsole, web etc, no gaming or photo editing or stuff like that. (Gaming
will of course have to be done in Windows or Wii (or soon maybe; PS3))
Does the current drivers work for that? or will there be minor/major
problems?
Are the open source driver good/fast enough or must I use the
proprietary one?
regards
Tom
Bit Twister
> Hi
>
> What is the current status of drivers for linux by ATI or NVidia?
> I know they both provide proprietary drivers, but I am unsure how well
> they work. The same goes for the open source driver, lacking information
> and all that...
ATI is in the process of opening up their source code. They have some third
party code in it so they just cannot open it up completely.
I am hoping the Open source driver can fully support my RS480 [Radeon
Xpress 200G Series] (on board) video hardware.
Does pretty good on most things but fails to run Flightgear on my
Mandriva installation.
Aragorn
> Hi
>
> What is the current status of drivers for linux by ATI or NVidia?
> I know they both provide proprietary drivers, but I am unsure how well
> they work. The same goes for the open source driver, lacking information
> and all that...
Well, for a while already now, both ATi and nVidia have working proprietary
drivers, and the FOSS /nv/ driver for nVidia doesn't support hardware
acceleration but appears less pedantic in certain environments than the
proprietary driver.
I found that installing the proprietary ATi driver gave me all sorts of
difficulties, starting with the cumbersome installation.
Either way, the drivers work, and have been quite functional for a couple of
years already. So far in terms of proprietary drivers, nVidia had more
resources to develop their drivers than ATi - which will change now that
AMD has bought ATi and is planning on opening up the source code - and thus
nVidia's drivers were of higher quality, albeit that they weren't perfect
yet.
The problem with proprietary drivers is the same as with other proprietary
software, i.e. you can't get to the code. And with video drivers running
in kernelspace, it's always a leap of faith. :-/
> I am looking to buy a new graphics card for my Debian Opteron
> workstation and my choices have come down to the following:
>
> - Nvidia 8800 GTX
> (the 9800 series is not supported by the proprietary drivers yet)
I have an 8800 GTS in my Opteron system, albeit that it's still in the
process of being installed. It's supposed to be well-supported by the
proprietary drivers and also by the FOSS /nv/ driver - in the latter case,
without 3D acceleration, of course.
> - ATI HD 3900
>
> I am planning on running it with 1920x1200 resolution with KDE, emacs,
> Konsole, web etc, no gaming or photo editing or stuff like that. (Gaming
> will of course have to be done in Windows or Wii (or soon maybe; PS3))
Well, I believe that gaming should be done on gaming consoles, but if you
have to do it on a desktop computer, why not do it in a real operating
system? :-)
There are loads of games ported to GNU/Linux already, and others can be made
to work using Cedega, i.e. a special non-free version of /wine./
> Does the current drivers work for that? or will there be minor/major
> problems?
They will work just nicely, and have been for a number of years already. ;-)
> Are the open source driver good/fast enough or must I use the
> proprietary one?
For modern videocards, there are - to my knowledge - no Free & Open Source
drivers that offer 3D acceleration, short of the Intel ones perhaps, but I
have no experience with Intel graphics.
Depending on the video adapter you will eventually buy, some of the FOSS
drivers use actual hardware features of your adapter card, but other
adapter cards - such as the ones using a Kyro/Kyro II chipset - could only
be made to work with a VESA framebuffer driver, and will thus be the
slowest of them all. As long as you don't do any 3D stuff[1] with them,
they will work very well, though.
[1] 3D stuff is not just limited to gaming or CAD/CAM programs anymore these
days. A window manager like Compiz/Beryl also relies on hardware video
acceleration, and the OpenGL KDE screensavers also need that. Without it,
your screensaver would be hogging your CPU(s) so badly that you can barely
interrupt the screensaver again.
Other than all of the above, I refer to Bit Twister's advice. ;-)
--
*Aragorn*
(registered GNU/Linux user #223157)
Mark Hobley
> ATI is in the process of opening up their source code. They have some third
> party code in it so they just cannot open it up completely.
> I am hoping the Open source driver can fully support my RS480 [Radeon
> Xpress 200G Series] (on board) video hardware.
ATI have released technical specifications for their latest cards, so it
should be possible to write an open source driver.
I would definitely go for an ATI card rather than an Nvidia.
Regards,
Mark.
--
Mark Hobley,
393 Quinton Road West,
Quinton, BIRMINGHAM.
B32 1QE.
Markus Kossmann
> Hi
>
> What is the current status of drivers for linux by ATI or NVidia?
> I know they both provide proprietary drivers, but I am unsure how well
> they work. The same goes for the open source driver, lacking information
> and all that...
>
> I am looking to buy a new graphics card for my Debian Opteron
> workstation and my choices have come down to the following:
>
> - Nvidia 8800 GTX
> (the 9800 series is not supported by the proprietary drivers yet)
There is 173.08 (beta) which supports GeForce 9800 GTX and GeForce 9800 GX2
Tom Forsmo
discussion, its still relevant to both groups)
Markus Kossmann wrote:
>> - Nvidia 8800 GTX
>> (the 9800 series is not supported by the proprietary drivers yet)
> There is 173.08 (beta) which supports GeForce 9800 GTX and GeForce 9800 GX2
Have you used the driver and do you know how stable it is? and is it
usable for ordinary desktop work in KDE?
tom
Markus Kossmann
Well, I'am running it because I'am using a 2.6.25 kernel and not because I
need it for a 98xx card ( I'am actually running a 7800 GT) . I have seen no
problems so far for which I can blame 173.08.
And if you look into the nvnews forum (
http://www.nvnews.net/vbulletin/forumdisplay.php?f=14) there aren't many
bugreports for 173.08.
Tom Forsmo
Is it still so that game producers prefer one card over another? At one
time I remember begin told that if I am planning on doing any gaming I
should buy an nVidia, because thats the cards the producers optimised
their games for. Any comments?
Aragorn wrote:
> I found that installing the proprietary ATi driver gave me all sorts of
> difficulties, starting with the cumbersome installation.
When I have used ATI, its always been with one of the open source
drivers. That sometimes led to me having to test other variants of the
driver and one time I had difficulties even finding a driver that worked.
I have only used one nVidia card, at least as far as I can remember of
the last 10 years, and I had to use the proprietary driver because it
was the only one that supported TV-out. ATI linux did not.
So that's why I am asking, there has allways been some sort of problem,
so I wanted to hear the current status before I go and buy a card that
cost $600 in my country.
> Either way, the drivers work, and have been quite functional for a couple of
> years already. So far in terms of proprietary drivers, nVidia had more
> resources to develop their drivers than ATi - which will change now that
> AMD has bought ATi and is planning on opening up the source code - and thus
> nVidia's drivers were of higher quality, albeit that they weren't perfect
> yet.
>
> The problem with proprietary drivers is the same as with other proprietary
> software, i.e. you can't get to the code. And with video drivers running
> in kernelspace, it's always a leap of faith. :-/
Its not a production server so its no problem, and it cant go worse than
windows anyway... (albeit, they have improved a bit in the last years).
>> I am planning on running it with 1920x1200 resolution with KDE, emacs,
>> Konsole, web etc, no gaming or photo editing or stuff like that. (Gaming
>> will of course have to be done in Windows or Wii (or soon maybe; PS3))
>
> Well, I believe that gaming should be done on gaming consoles, but if you
> have to do it on a desktop computer, why not do it in a real operating
> system? :-)
>
> There are loads of games ported to GNU/Linux already, and others can be made
> to work using Cedega, i.e. a special non-free version of /wine./
And there are orders of magnitude more games available in Windows. I
love Linux and I dont want to use a Mickey Mouse OS any more than you
do. But I am not RMS, I have a little more practical sense. If there is
one thing I have learnt, its that you cant change other people just
because you want to. Windows is not going to go away just because we
wish so, they have far too much money and power for that. I wont, of
course, use windows more than necessary. I am not going to sit and use
wood and stone to light every fire just because someone has a patent on
the lighter. Once in a while things needs to happen faster, easier or
more pleasurable and then its better to to use the lighter.
Linux isn't perfect and drivers and games are among the issues, so is
PDF viewers and fonts issues.
> Depending on the video adapter you will eventually buy, some of the FOSS
> drivers use actual hardware features of your adapter card, but other
> adapter cards - such as the ones using a Kyro/Kyro II chipset - could only
> be made to work with a VESA framebuffer driver, and will thus be the
> slowest of them all. As long as you don't do any 3D stuff[1] with them,
> they will work very well, though.
This is what I am afraid of, bying a card which is not properly
supported so I end up using fb or vesa, with the resulting slow performance.
> Other than all of the above, I refer to Bit Twister's advice. ;-)
I have allways been partial to AVI, dont know quite why, except that for
a time they where better image wise than nVidia I was told. I seem to
remember doing some tests when setting up my multimedia box in 2002 that
AVI had much better picture quality and performance, but because of the
TV-out problem I had to go with an nVidia card.
thanks for the feedback
regards
Aragorn
> A last question and then some comments.
> Is it still so that game producers prefer one card over another? At one
> time I remember begin told that if I am planning on doing any gaming I
> should buy an nVidia, because thats the cards the producers optimised
> their games for. Any comments?
I wouldn't be able to comment on that as I'm not a gamer. ;-) Yet at this
very moment, I think nVidia and ATi are on par with eachother
performance-wise.
nVidia may still have a slightly bigger market share though, but this could
rapidly change, especially with Intel now also entering the market of
high-profile plug-in adapters, which are well-supported by Linux drivers.
All I know is that I have two machines with nVidia, and it has never let me
down. ATi has been problematic to me in the past, so...
Your mileage may vary... ;-)
> Aragorn wrote:
>
>> I found that installing the proprietary ATi driver gave me all sorts of
>> difficulties, starting with the cumbersome installation.
>
> When I have used ATI, its always been with one of the open source
> drivers. That sometimes led to me having to test other variants of the
> driver and one time I had difficulties even finding a driver that worked.
Yes, I had the same problem. ATi had only a small team of coders for their
drivers, while nVidia had a whole legion, so to speak. This caused nVidia
drivers to work far better than ATi's.
> I have only used one nVidia card, at least as far as I can remember of
> the last 10 years, and I had to use the proprietary driver because it
> was the only one that supported TV-out. ATI linux did not.
Ah, but TV-out is a feature I have never used or needed. ;-)
> So that's why I am asking, there has allways been some sort of problem,
> so I wanted to hear the current status before I go and buy a card that
> cost $600 in my country.
Mine was also something of that sort. I think you can't go wrong with an
nVidia card though, although I really hate the fact that they refuse to
cooperate with the FOSS community.
ATi cards are good hardware-wise and, like I said, on par with nVidia, but
as you could read in another poster's reply, they are opening up their
drivers, but parts of them can't be opened up because of licensing and need
to be rewritten from scratch first.
So for now, you'll still get crappy drivers, and with poor drivers, it
doesn't matter how good the card is.
>> The problem with proprietary drivers is the same as with other
>> proprietary software, i.e. you can't get to the code. And with video
>> drivers running in kernelspace, it's always a leap of faith. :-/
>
> Its not a production server so its no problem, and it cant go worse than
> windows anyway... (albeit, they have improved a bit in the last years).
Nah, *everything* will always be better than Crimosoft Losedows. :p
>>> I am planning on running it with 1920x1200 resolution with KDE, emacs,
>>> Konsole, web etc, no gaming or photo editing or stuff like that. (Gaming
>>> will of course have to be done in Windows or Wii (or soon maybe; PS3))
>>
>> Well, I believe that gaming should be done on gaming consoles, but if you
>> have to do it on a desktop computer, why not do it in a real operating
>> system? :-)
>>
>> There are loads of games ported to GNU/Linux already, and others can be
>> made to work using Cedega, i.e. a special non-free version of /wine./
>
> And there are orders of magnitude more games available in Windows. I
> love Linux and I dont want to use a Mickey Mouse OS any more than you
> do.
Oh, I absolutely refuse to use Windows on my own machines. If they were to
outlaw GNU/Linux tomorrow, I'd be running FreeBSD or maybe even OpenSolaris
the next day. :-)
I prefer a UNIX-style system, not a DOS-with-GUI-style system. ;-)
> But I am not RMS, I have a little more practical sense.
RMS is trying to make a political point, and he has to be radical in order
to get even half of it realized. If he hadn't been so radical, then we
would probably not have had GNU/Linux today. ;-)
> If there is one thing I have learnt, its that you cant change other people
> just because you want to. Windows is not going to go away just because we
> wish so, they have far too much money and power for that.
Oh, I am certainly not deluding myself in that aspect. But that doesn't
take away that Windows *is* crap by its very design - I am saying this from
the point of view of someone who (by himself) studied various operating
systems, not from the point of view of a disgruntled ex-Windows user.
I have never adopted a hardware manufacturer's choice of operating system,
simply because I was already aware of various operating systems existing
long before I had my first computer.
And yes, at one point I chose to run NT - for two years, and that was it -
as a compromise solution. Before that it was OS/2 (for over five years),
and since late 1999 it's been GNU/Linux. ;-) And GNU/Linux is the system
I've always wanted to have, even before I even knew that it existed - I did
have some minor UNIX experience before, but the GPL was a real
revelation. ;-)
> I wont, of course, use windows more than necessary. I am not going to sit
> and use wood and stone to light every fire just because someone has a
> patent on the lighter. Once in a while things needs to happen faster,
> easier or more pleasurable and then its better to to use the lighter.
If it has to be faster, easier and more pleasurable, then surely Windows
can't beat GNU/Linux. ;-)
> Linux isn't perfect and drivers and games are among the issues, so is
> PDF viewers and fonts issues.
PDF viewers? How many of them do you want? Fonts? How many of those do
you want? Most modern distros come with shedloads of each. ;-)
>> Depending on the video adapter you will eventually buy, some of the FOSS
>> drivers use actual hardware features of your adapter card, but other
>> adapter cards - such as the ones using a Kyro/Kyro II chipset - could
>> only be made to work with a VESA framebuffer driver, and will thus be the
>> slowest of them all. As long as you don't do any 3D stuff[1] with them,
>> they will work very well, though.
>
> This is what I am afraid of, bying a card which is not properly
> supported so I end up using fb or vesa, with the resulting slow
> performance.
This is past tense, because the two biggest video adapter vendors are ATi
and nVidia, and both are well-supported. nVidia still has a slightly
better reliability in terms of driver quality, though.
Yet, you must keep in mind that proprietary video drivers are usually not
included in the freely downloadable distributions because of the license.
So if you want those drivers to work out of the box and likewise for all
the proprietarily licensed multimedia plugins, I would advise buying a
boxed, shrinkwrapped distribution - Mandriva would be a good choice for
both novice users and more experienced users - and then all of that will be
set up for you at install time.
As a bonus, you'll get a printed manual on top. ;-)
>> Other than all of the above, I refer to Bit Twister's advice. ;-)
>
> I have allways been partial to AVI, dont know quite why, except that for
> a time they where better image wise than nVidia I was told. I seem to
> remember doing some tests when setting up my multimedia box in 2002 that
> AVI had much better picture quality and performance, but because of the
> TV-out problem I had to go with an nVidia card.
I take it you mean ATi, not AVI - the latter is a movie format. ;-) Well, I
actually find the opposite to be true. For me, nVidia simply has the
better image quality. ;-)
Chris Cox
> In comp.os.linux.hardware Bit Twister <BitTw...@mouse-potato.com> wrote:
>
>> ATI is in the process of opening up their source code. They have some third
>> party code in it so they just cannot open it up completely.
>> I am hoping the Open source driver can fully support my RS480 [Radeon
>> Xpress 200G Series] (on board) video hardware.
>
> ATI have released technical specifications for their latest cards, so it
> should be possible to write an open source driver.
Someone can counter this... but AFAIK, ATI has only release some
of the information for only some of their cards. Seem to be
trickling out of ATI. Lots and lots and lots of work to do
before anything will be viable (IMHO).
>
> I would definitely go for an ATI card rather than an Nvidia.
Ok... but having owned ATI and Nvidia cards throughout the years,
ATI always gives me the most headaches... Nvidia can cause problems,
but usually when people try to run unsupported/beta/experimental
drivers (or they overclock).
ATI's architecture changes from generation to generation leaving
some parts in the dirt (so to speak).
Mark Hobley
> Ok... but having owned ATI and Nvidia cards throughout the years,
> ATI always gives me the most headaches...
I only use ATI cards here, and have had no problems with the open source
drivers.
> Nvidia can cause problems,
My experience with Nvidia is that the drivers are built for specific
kernel releases. Although I must admit, these are on third party
machines. I would never buy a video card that cannot be driven using my
own software, so I would never buy an Nvidia card for my own machine.
Chris Cox
> In comp.os.linux.hardware Chris Cox <ccox_nop...@airmail.net> wrote:
>
>> Ok... but having owned ATI and Nvidia cards throughout the years,
>> ATI always gives me the most headaches...
>
> I only use ATI cards here, and have had no problems with the open source
> drivers.
The open source drivers only support a limited subset of cards and
even then, no accelerated 3d on most (and 3d only very recently
anyhow).
>
>> Nvidia can cause problems,
>
> My experience with Nvidia is that the drivers are built for specific
> kernel releases. Although I must admit, these are on third party
> machines. I would never buy a video card that cannot be driven using my
> own software, so I would never buy an Nvidia card for my own machine.
With Nvidia you build from scratch. I suppose you could trust them
for the very few binary builds they provide, but their installer is
very good at compiling from scratch against your kernel.
Chances are all of the software on your box is not owned by you. :)
I think what you meant to say is, you don't want to run anything
but GPL'd (or at least OSI approved) open source software.
And that was my point with regards to Nvidia today. Nvidia is
closed source, but with a pretty well built kernel installer.
End result is a pretty functional and fast fully accelerated
openGL driver. Same CANNOT be said about ATI today. And
AFAIK, not ever, since I do not believe the goal is to support
the whole gambit of ATI architectures out there... but probably
only something relatively contemporary (but possibly NOT
the very latest and greatest... sigh).
I'm glad that you have chosen (and it's somehwhat of a crap shoot)
compatible ATI cards all of this time. Certainly I run many
radeons here... and some with ATI's proprietary (closed source)
driver (due to lack of support ... that is completely
non-functional support of the open source radeon driver).
With that said, the open source nv driver does seem to support
a lot more Nvidia boards than the the open source radeon
driver supports ATI boards.... so as long as 3d isn't interesting
(your case), you probably have the option of going either way.
It is hoped that eventually an open source ATI driver will have
fully accelerated openGL/3d for at least a good portion of
ATI's radeon series... but only time will tell.
Darren Salt
> Mark Hobley wrote:
>> In comp.os.linux.hardware Chris Cox <ccox_nop...@airmail.net> wrote:
>>> Ok... but having owned ATI and Nvidia cards throughout the years,
>>> ATI always gives me the most headaches...
>> I only use ATI cards here, and have had no problems with the open source
>> drivers.
> The open source drivers only support a limited subset of cards and even
> then, no accelerated 3d on most (and 3d only very recently anyhow).
That would be "r5xx and r6xx cards, ignoring the older ones", right?
[snip]
--
| Darren Salt | linux or ds at | nr. Ashington, | Toon
| RISC OS, Linux | youmustbejoking,demon,co,uk | Northumberland | Army
| Let's keep the pound sterling
I'm the person that your mother warned you about.
Chris Cox
> I demand that Chris Cox may or may not have trolled...
>
>> Mark Hobley wrote:
>>> In comp.os.linux.hardware Chris Cox <ccox_nop...@airmail.net> wrote:
>>>> Ok... but having owned ATI and Nvidia cards throughout the years,
>>>> ATI always gives me the most headaches...
>>> I only use ATI cards here, and have had no problems with the open source
>>> drivers.
>
>> The open source drivers only support a limited subset of cards and even
>> then, no accelerated 3d on most (and 3d only very recently anyhow).
>
> That would be "r5xx and r6xx cards, ignoring the older ones", right?
Are you talking about the very recent advancement in having some
3d support? If so, I can't remember which cards were supported... but
still, it's progress. And yes, I know, the support is very limited....
at least today (that is limited 3d).
I'm hoping we'll see the first viable FOSS set of drivers for
accelerated 3d (that is, something that runs at least games made
5 years ago reasonably well). But today... if you want that...
Nvidia works the best.