Nvidia vs ATI [Archive] - Phoronix Forums

rudl

12-12-2008, 05:46 PM

HI

I want to by a new graphics card to replace my current 8500gt. And I need a card with a rather low power consumption, because my Power supply only has a maximum of 350W output (300 continous v1 12= 10w v2 12= 15w). The ATI 4670 just seems to be perfect for this.
So here is my question: How good is the Ati Linux driver right now. Does this card work with linux? dist is Ubuntu 8.10. Or are the nvidia cards still less problematik?

Or is a 9600gt the better choice? But I'm not sure wether a 9600gt is too much for my power supply or not.

The rest of my system is:
AMD6000+X2 @1.33 maximum vcore with cnq
500Gb HD
ASUS M2NPV-VM
Duallayer DVD
2GB DDR2@667

sc3252

12-13-2008, 04:13 AM

Do you know the exact amount of amps you can draw from your 12v? if its really low I would consider going with the 4670, unless you decide to also upgrade your powersupply.

300 continous v1 12= 10w v2 12= 15w

Not really sure what this means, are you talking about the two different rails on the power supply? you can pull 10amps off the first 12v rail and 15amps off the second?

rudl

12-13-2008, 05:23 AM

Yeas I meant amps

Here is a picture
http://img354.imageshack.us/my.php?image=dsc00014jd4.jpg

Duo Maxwell

12-13-2008, 05:42 AM

AMD/ATI to support the little guy and due to hopefully seeing some open source drivers. I'd go with this card in particular http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814161252 it comes with a dual slot, rear exhausting cooler, is factory overclocked and comes with 128-bit GDDR3.

Either one you get make sure you are getting the GDDR3 128-bit version of the card, most of your low end cards have lower end models that are memory bandwith bound due to one of those two or sometimes both crippling performance, overclockng the ram will help some, but the difference between the same ram on 64 and 128 bit is night and day, as is the difference between GDDR2 and GDDR3 seeing as 2 can't handle much more then 900Mhz, while 3 can be pushed up past 2Ghz. GDDR4 can be pushed even further, but it doesn't offer as big an improvement do to it's higher latency. But GDDr5 s quad pumped, so cards like the AMD HD4870 are often mmislabled as 1.8Ghz, instead of its actual speed of 3.6Ghz. GDDR5 has also been pushed as high as 4.8Ghz, expect it to be on all of the next gen high end cards.

Why not upgrade the psu as well? Would let you go with any gpu to go with anything in the 400-450 watt range but 500=650 is better as to give you more buffer, since the PSUs max output will lower over time. Better to run the system at no more then 60% max load.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817163109
Is a good PSU that covers pretty much all modern features, even has modular cables so you can just connect what lines you need to allow for better airflow in the case instead of having a rat's nest of unused wires wadded up in the corner.

rudl

12-13-2008, 05:51 AM

WELL i can buy PSU for 80 bucks and buy a gtx 260 for 200
or i don't change my Psu buy a 4670 for 70. or a 9600gt for 85. A 4670 won't draw that much more as a 8500gt. Moreover I play @1280x1024 that shouldn't be too much for this card.
I think almost every 4670comes with GDDR3, the 4650 is the slower one.
And yes a 128bit card scales very good with higher memory clock.

And the driver works without problems, in 3d apps too? Like quake1-4, Doom3 and openarena Compiz?

Duo Maxwell

12-13-2008, 04:45 PM

I've had no real trouble with the HD3650 after initial some on these forums though report that they have issues when gaming with wine or while ganing with compiz. I don't use either so I don't really care since everything else I tried worked at an acceptable framerate.

I recommended the better PSU as it's a good thing to have for the system as a whole, especially since you seem so concerned as to weither or not your skimpy little 300 watt will handle a more powerful GPU. While 300 watts may more then meet your max ower draw, our average load percentage is still pretty high, shortening the life of the PSU, which when it fails could take out pretty much everything else in your comp.

I just hope you aren't one of the newbs that think a 1Kw PSU means thas how much it draws, because it by no means doesn't. The rating is the max amount of watts in DC current it can make out of what you're getting from the wall, be it 120v us or 220, 230, 240 even depending on where you live. If you where to put unconverted wall power into just about any consumer device it wouldn't take more then a few secconds for it to be turned into a nice faming pile of boiling ooze.

Besides, as you say, you can got gor a better GPU when you get a PSU, you may upgrade your screen, want to play newer games that may be released for linux, such as the Steam games or maybe Doom 4 when it's out with everything maxed including AA and AF, skys the limit.

Either way it's your money, do what you like.

mlalkaka

12-22-2008, 09:58 PM

I've been trying to find the answer to this same question: does NVidia or ATI provide a better driver for its cards under Linux?

some on these forums though report that they have issues when gaming with wine

The results shown in the article "AMD Linux 2008 Year in Review" seem to support that claim.

I haven't decided for myself yet. I would take a look at the "AMD Linux 2008 Year in Review" article and the "NVIDIA Linux 2008 Year in Review".

NeoBrain

12-23-2008, 05:15 AM

I've had no real trouble with the HD3650 after initial some on these forums though report that they have issues when gaming with wine or while ganing with compiz.

My problems with fglrx and Wine were 1) that windows got corrupted very badly when running Wine and Compiz at the same time and 2) that fglrx ran out of virtual memory and thus fell back to software rendering when running Wine.
Number one got fixed apparently around 8.11 or 8.12
Number two will get fixed sometime in the future (it's something that must be fixed in Wine, so not fglrx's fault), but there exist some workarounds, which work as well. Also, I upgraded to 4GB RAM recently, so I'm experiencing this problem less than before.
Apart from these two things, Wine+fglrx works great for me.

alexv

12-23-2008, 01:12 PM

I've recently moved away from windows and now i'm standing on the same crossroad... I have to choose between 9800GTX+ and HD4850. The way i see it i have to weight between nvidia's better (for the time being) proprietary driver, or the possibility that eventually, because AMD/ATI releases documentation for their GPUs, there will be a better, faster, more feature-rich open driver. Right now however nvidia releases updates more frequently, has more features (OpenGL 3 and VDPAU, i'm not sure if fglrx has OpenGL 3) and better looking GUI for configuring the driver (on the other hand catalyst seems to have more options for configuring, and i prefer functionality before looks :confused: ). Another important thing to note is that right now i'm using jaunty + nvidia's 180.18 driver using a workaround i've found on the forums, while AFAIK ATI users are stuck with the open driver because fglrx doesn't work with the new xserver - intrepid all over again :rolleyes: (i might be misinformed). As i can't quite give up on gaming yet (i have all the newer native titles) if i had to choose right now, i'd go for nvidia because of this. If AMD starts releasing drivers that offer on-time support for distributions in their developing phase (where graphics breakages due to incompatibility are almost sure to happen) and maybe new features (i have fast cpu so i'm not in dire need for video acceleration, however i'd welcome it if i buy ATI GPU ^^) they'll make my decision easy - i'd buy their product because of their open source community support :) .

EagleDM

12-23-2008, 01:28 PM

Don't forget the basics:

WORKING VOLTAGE AND CLOCK THROTLE (with powermizer).

My 4870X2 is currently idling at 65 degrees in Vista and 85 degrees in Linux just becasue ATI didn't implement downclock and voltage control in their drivers, I just can't use this card on linux seeing how it converts my PC into a hot burner...

As of right now, I just bought a GTX260 for cheap, just to use Ubuntu and I'm installing as we speak, no other alternative to me, the 4870X2 will stay only for a second machine for Gaming in Vista.

mattmatteh

12-23-2008, 08:19 PM

I've been trying to find the answer to this same question: does NVidia or ATI provide a better driver for its cards under Linux?i think it all depends on the card. i tried amd (bad gigabyte board so i didnt get far) and fglrx seemed to work well on 780g with integrated graphics. the open source driver worked, but no acceleration for 3d or video. i wanted to support amd for their open source effort. (off topic reason is that i am not impressed with amd south bridge and nivida seemed better) and with 780g there is tearing with video playback, but hear there is hope. i was willing to tollerate it for a short while till there was a fix.

matt

EagleDM

12-24-2008, 07:29 AM

I'm in the same road as you, sure a NB is not the same thing as a 4870x2, thermally speaking and, for me, having a toaster inside my case is no joke :(

I really thanks AMD for their opensource effors, but, until I have a working powerplay in linux (either open or close) I'll switch to NVIDIA for now :(

mattmatteh

12-24-2008, 12:40 PM

I'm in the same road as you, sure a NB is not the same thing as a 4870x2, thermally speaking and, for me, having a toaster inside my case is no joke :(i dont have a toaster. infact i am going for the most efficient setup. fanless graphics card. would like a fanless cpu too.

mlalkaka

12-24-2008, 03:45 PM

Right now however nvidia releases updates more frequently, has more features (OpenGL 3 and VDPAU, i'm not sure if fglrx has OpenGL 3) and better looking GUI for configuring the driver

I don't think this is true anymore. I would really look at AMD Linux 2008 Year in Review (http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=amd_ayir_2008&num=1). This article has an awesome breakdown of the progress AMD has made in the past year. It has added support for lots of new features, and released more updates, more frequently, than NVIDIA. (See the NVIDIA Linux 2008 Year in Review (http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=nvidia_ayir_2008&num=1).)

Another important thing to note is that right now i'm using jaunty + nvidia's 180.18 driver using a workaround i've found on the forums, while AFAIK ATI users are stuck with the open driver because fglrx doesn't work with the new xserver - intrepid all over again :rolleyes: (i might be misinformed).

Again, I don't think this is true either: AMD Linux 2008 Year in Review (http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=amd_ayir_2008&num=1). The article discusses testing all the drivers released in 2008 under Ubuntu 8.10, Intrepid Ibex.

If AMD starts releasing drivers that offer on-time support for distributions in their developing phase ... and maybe new features ... they'll make my decision easy

One more time: AMD Linux 2008 Year in Review (http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=amd_ayir_2008&num=1). AMD released about 11 drivers versions in 2008 alone, and the drivers contained support for the latest and greatest graphics cards. In fact, on one occasion, they added support for a graphics card before the card was even released (according to the article).

I currently have an NVIDIA graphics card, because when I bought it, AMD didn't provide the support for GNU/Linux that they do now. However, now that their support is comparable, and arguably even better than that of NVIDIA, my decision is much more difficult.

Either way, keep it up, AMD and NVIDIA!

alexv

12-26-2008, 03:20 AM

@mlalkaka

With "intrepid all over again" i meant that they didn't have a working fglrx driver for intrepid untill it was released. So whoever installed the alpha/beta was forced to use the open driver. The same thing is happening now with jaunty. While nvidia also don't have a OTB working driver for 9.04, their drivers could be forced to work with a simple hack and you get fast 3D and all sorts of other benefits...

I'm not downplaying AMD's progress, they're definitely heading in the right direction, and unless you're using unstable distributions you won't have to worry about driver support :D.

hdas

12-26-2008, 05:28 AM

I might suggest you to get a NVidia GeForce 9800 GT. I got one, its a double decker EVGA, will run you about a little over 100 usd. Requires and external power supply, but shouldn't be too demanding. Runs very cool, never above 60-65 C. If you are not too hard on acoustics, the cooling should be ok for you. Performance is tremendous. Conservative cooling allows for some overclocking head room too.

If you are looking at half price, ~50 usd, and not after too much performance, 8600GT or 9600GT should be fine for you. I would say 8500GT and 9500GT are a bit low end for moderately high resolution gaming. And try get a card with 512MB GDDR3 memory.

The Nvidia driver support is tier 1 and nearly on par with windows. If blob doesnt bother you, it can't get much better.

Note : I personally have no idea about ATI cards. But I stay away from them like plague, looking at the issues with their linux drivers. Looks like the hardware is great though, and as mentioned, open source support may be there for you by another 2 years with xorg 8.0 :D. Note that their drivers do work for most basic functionality including basic 3d, but by and large it is half baked, notably video playback with composite and wine. The drivers effort is appreciable and on going, but any reasonable person would say that right now there is no competition between ATI and NVidia, and possible for another year or so. Also, for any long term concerns, Nvidia has been providing top quality drievrs for almost a decade. For more, see http://linuxhaters.blogspot.com/2008/06/nitty-gritty-shit-on-open-source.html :D.

RealNC

12-26-2008, 05:44 AM

I have an AMD/ATI card (HD4870) and I agree that everything I do with it in Linux is half-assed. It's crap with Wine, crap with Video, crap with composite, crap with the settings.

Janusz11

12-26-2008, 07:04 AM

Yup. And I have just changed from an ATi Radeon HD4870 to a nVidia GTX 260 (the new series with 216 processor cores instead of 192 standard). ATi may have done a lot this year to add new features and further improve their driver. But they are still far away from the nVidia driver quality.

Btw., comparing the two articles it may indeed appear like that ATi did the better job this year. But then again, as Phoronix has pointed it out already: nVidia had all the stuff included in their driver already that ATi is still trying to get working (decent video support anyone?).

Anyway, I'm happy now with my new nVidia card (again, as it is the second time that I've switched from ATi to nVidia) and will surely look for another nVidia card again in the future if I plan to buy a new one.

Dieselmachine

12-26-2008, 07:36 AM

I have an AMD/ATI card (HD4870) and I agree that everything I do with it in Linux is half-assed. It's crap with Wine, crap with Video, crap with composite, crap with the settings.

I just RMA'd my HD4870 to newegg because the thing is absolute garbage under linux. I worked for two weeks to get the damned thing up and running on my dual monitor system, and I finally gave up.

So I'm back on my geforce fx 5200, which is older than hell, but still manages to identify my monitors and use the correct resolutions. I'm looking into picking up a 9800GT with the refund from my RMA, but barring some amazing breakthrough, I am never buying ATI again.

If you aren't capable of producing working drivers, you should open source it so actual knowledgeable people can do the work.

pchristy

12-28-2008, 07:08 AM

I built myself a new core-2 duo machine about 18 months ago, and equipped it with an ATi card because of their commitment to support open-source. However, its been an uphill struggle, and about 6 months ago, I gave up and went and bought an NVidia card to replace it.

I don't use the computer for games, but I DO do an awful lot of video work. Under the ATi card, flashplayer was AWFUL, with slow and strobing video. However, even this wasn't what finished it for me. I keep my machine fairly up-to-date, and every time a new kernel came along, it broke the ATi driver! By the time the ATi driver was fixed, another new kernel was coming out! So I was constantly stuck running an older version of the kernel than I wanted.

In contrast, the NVidia drivers didn't seem to suffer from this compatibility issue. Having said that, 2.6.28 has broken the official stable NVidia drivers, but at least they've released beta drivers that seem to work just fine!

I would love to support ATi - but until they get their driver in step with kernel releases, I'm going to have to stick with NVidia!

--
Pete

RealNC

12-28-2008, 08:49 AM

The irony here is that the ATI drivers worked right away with 2.6.28 :P Probably a one-time occurrence though :D

t.s.

12-28-2008, 10:52 AM

The irony here is that the ATI drivers worked right away with 2.6.28 :P Probably a one-time occurrence though :D

eventhough, I still recommend nVidia over ATI, like others. IMHO, I think nVidia still won't open their driver cause they know they have none this far that can match their driver performance/stability. So, when nVidia open their driver, it is a signal for us to buy ATI card, heheh.

bridgman

12-28-2008, 12:14 PM

;)

I know it's a popular myth that we re-started support of the open source graphics community because we had "given up" on fglrx, but that just ain't the case.

As part of AMD, we picked up a number of new enterprise customers and those customers felt strongly that we needed at least basic open source driver support out-of-the-box with common distros. Something like the "nv" driver would probably have been sufficient at first, but with the transition to compositing desktops in full swing we felt it was worth going further and including both 3D and some basic video support in the open drivers.

RealNC

12-28-2008, 12:53 PM

So we can keep saying that AMD is evil. Because it would be good to not have "3D and some basic video" but "high-performance, stable 3D and full featured video with nothing lacking". :D

energyman

12-28-2008, 12:59 PM

I have a
X2 6000+
HD3870
4Gb of DDR2 800
Amd770+SB700 board
two Samsung 500GB harddisks.
A couple of usb devices
a hvd-scsi card
an audigy2 card
a tv card.
4 fans
I measured power consumption:

Desktop, KDE 4.2-svn: 106-108W
Desktop, KDE 4.2-svn, watching video: 106-110W
Desktop, KDE 4.2-svn, turned on composite effects: 106-108W
Desktop, KDE 4.2-svn, watching TV: 115-120W
Desktop, KDE 4.2-svn heavy compiling: up to 200W
virtual terminal, idle: 160W
ut2004: up to 295W

I am buying a new PSU soon - 450W. It will be enough.

bridgman

12-28-2008, 01:04 PM

I don't get the difference. We are providing enough HW info and sample code to implement high performance, stable 3D. Whether that happens or not is a different story -- high performance, stable 3D is godawful expensive to develop if you are looking for performance parity with Windows.

What I think you will get realistically is "decent performance and stable", unless some billionaire decides to fund maybe $50M worth of development work into the open source stack out of the goodness of his/her heart. You know the story with video. We will open up what we can that doesn't push us into high-risk territory w.r.t. DRM and related obligations.

If you want to call that evil I guess that's up to you :D

RealNC

12-28-2008, 01:10 PM

Melcar

12-28-2008, 01:17 PM

I usually don't attack the examples in conversations but the point instead, but in this case... $50M? Ah, come on! It can't be that expensive. No, seriously. :D I mean, you already have it working for Windows. Of course you (well OK, not *personally* you, but you know what I mean) don't want to open up the catalyst driver due to competition with NVidious. But in either case, calling you "evil" is justified anyway.

The development that has gone into the Windows driver is enormous. I don't know why everyone underestimates the resources, time, and effort needed to achieve the same performance level as the Windows proprietary driver.

RobbieAB

12-28-2008, 01:23 PM

As part of AMD, we picked up a number of new enterprise customers and those customers felt strongly that we needed at least basic open source driver support out-of-the-box with common distros. Something like the "nv" driver would probably have been sufficient at first, but with the transition to compositing desktops in full swing we felt it was worth going further and including both 3D and some basic video support in the open drivers.

And this is as blatantly as AMD are ever going to put it people: The open source effort wasn't really down to us, it was down to big OEMs leaning on them. Our joy and satisfaction with the effort is secondary at best.

bridgman

12-28-2008, 01:30 PM

$50M is probably low, if you're looking for Windows parity. If you were funding the current activity level, including both corporate and volunteer devs, you're probably looking at somewhere between $3M and $5M/yr in terms of what that work would cost to fund. I think you would need a minimum of 5x that activity for maybe 2 years to get where you want to be, and that works out to $50M pretty quickly.

If you can live with what we're expecting to see, which is solid drivers without any significant optimization work, then $50M is obviously high and we think that can happen with the resources currently available in the community.

If you're saying that we are evil because we don't want to open up our proprietary code and risk losing our ability to compete in the much larger Windows and MacOS markets then I guess I can live with that. Seriously, though, if you ask the developers who are doing all the work today I think they will tell you clearly that they don't want to work in our proprietary code anyways.

And this is as blatantly as AMD are ever going to put it people: The open source effort wasn't really down to us, it was down to big OEMs leaning on them. Our joy and satisfaction with the effort is secondary at best.

Yes and no. You all want more or less the same thing. The original impetus for the project came from our enterprise customers, but the plan was worked out with community developers who understand your needs as well as enterprise needs. Obviously gaming support and video playback are more important to you than to a typical enterprise IT department, but we are providing enough hardware information to cover all the bases.

If we have the right plan then everyone will think we more or less planned around their needs, but I'm not going to blow smoke and tell everyone "we did this only for you" :D

kraftman

12-28-2008, 05:15 PM

eventhough, I still recommend nVidia over ATI, like others. IMHO, I think nVidia still won't open their driver cause they know they have none this far that can match their driver performance/stability. So, when nVidia open their driver, it is a signal for us to buy ATI card, heheh.

Sorry, but nvidia drivers aren't stable. They're only reason why my Linux box hang sometimes. I wonder how nvidia drivers can have better performance than AMD/Ati - even vesa driver is usually faster than crap from nvidia in 2D (in KDE4 especially). They don't want to open their drivers, because they're not Open Source friendly. I never met with such crappy drivers - KDE 4 was unusable for more than half a year due to bugs and low performance in their drivers and it's still slow!

Kano

12-28-2008, 06:41 PM

energyman

12-28-2008, 06:45 PM

deanjo

12-28-2008, 07:11 PM

em, all nvidia cards below 6XXX are not supported anymore. And one thing I haven't seen so far with fglrx are xv caused X crashes. vt switching X crashes - yes. Xv not. And after seeing the big energy penalty on the vt, I certainly won't use it anymore if there is a way around it.

Horsecrap. Nvidia maintains drivers going all the way back to TNT's. Legacy does not equal unmaintained.

Riva TNT, TNT2, GeForce, and some GeForce 2 GPU 71.86.07 Released 10-29-08

GeForce 2 through GeForce 4 series 96.43.09 Released 10-29-08

GeForce 5 series 173.14.15 Released 11-03-08

RealNC

12-28-2008, 07:13 PM

until you use Win for gaming.

Please, don't refer to it as "Win". Really.

energyman

12-28-2008, 07:16 PM

'legacy' means unmaintained, if no new features are added or you have to wait many month for new kernels to be supported - and support for newer X may never come.

Melcar

12-28-2008, 07:16 PM

mattmatteh

12-28-2008, 07:22 PM

Please, don't refer to it as "Win". Really.
i have to agree, i hate that.

deanjo

12-28-2008, 07:27 PM

'legacy' means unmaintained, if no new features are added or you have to wait many month for new kernels to be supported - and support for newer X may never come.

Legacy does not mean unmaintained. Legacy in the case of nvidia and many other hardware manufacturers means obsolete hardware. The kernel for example is plastered full of legacy hardware but support for those devices goes on and is updated if required to maintain a working condition. A gravis ultrasound for example is legacy but it's drivers are still maintained to be in a working order even in the latest kernel.

Kano

12-28-2008, 07:31 PM

@deanjo

please read release notes of 71.86.07 - it does NOT support xserver 1.5 - the beta drivers for the rest do that. That's what i mean.

http://www.nvnews.net/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=122140

compare to 96.43.09 where xserver 1.5 is mentioned:

http://www.nvnews.net/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=122139

energyman

12-28-2008, 07:35 PM

and there last update for legacy drivers was in july.

deanjo

12-28-2008, 07:38 PM

deanjo

12-28-2008, 07:40 PM

and there last update for legacy drivers was in july.
http://www.nvnews.net/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=122140
http://www.nvnews.net/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=122139
http://www.nvnews.net/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=122423

Kano

12-28-2008, 07:42 PM

Well you have to stay with Xserver 1.4.x or buy a new card. What's your choice ;)

energyman

12-28-2008, 07:43 PM

http://www.nvnews.net/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=117036
july
http://www.nvnews.net/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=122139
october - and if I remember correctly - no Xorg 1.5 support
http://www.nvnews.net/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=122140
october, but again no 1.5 support

deanjo

12-28-2008, 07:48 PM

chrisr

12-29-2008, 08:21 AM

And one thing I haven't seen so far with fglrx are xv caused X crashes.

Install fglrx.
Install xine.
Enable Xv for xine.
Use xine to play (e.g.) a movie trailer file.
The Xserver will crash when playback completes.

This has been true with every single version of fglrx I've ever tried on my laptop. And I've had this laptop about 18 months.

energyman

12-29-2008, 10:41 AM

well, it hasn't been true for me. bad luck.

Jorophose

12-29-2008, 11:12 AM

I think you can buy the lowend ATI cards when you want to use the open source driver. Running a highend card with those is more or less wasted money - until you use Win for gaming. fglrx is really problematic, especially with onboard solutions - and when you have got a laptop you have got lost completely when it does not work. The benchmarks with fglrx do not look so bad so you might think it is getting better, but when you want to watch a movie than the problems begin. Crashing X server when xv is used seems to be the normal case... nvidia has problems too from time to time and you have to use a fairly new card too to get more driver updates (geforce 2 gts or lower seem to have lost too with xserver 1.5+). VDPAU makes nvidia cards even more attractive - but you have to disable the composite extension to get rid of tearing, not all might want this. It is very interesting to see how fast projects began to use it, so hardware accelleration is really needed it seems...

I'd have to agree with Kano here.

High end on Linux: nVidia right now
Mid range on Linux: ATI or nVidia (depends where you play your games)
Low end: ATI or nVidia (but this doesn't really apply here)
MythFrontend: nVidia right now with VDPAU

(I thought the 780G had good linux support, though?...)

Of course, I lean more heavily on ATI at this point. nVidia cut a lot of corners and ignored a lot of X.org infrastructure to deliver their driver and ATI is trying to do it with all the normal components. It's one of those rare cases where it's everyone's fault (ATI for not delivering open drivers, nVidia for cutting out Xorg's components, XFree86 for being morons, XOrg for not properly fixing the problems, us for putting the blame on developpers (DEVELOPPERS DEVELOPPERS!!!)).

So yeah. I'd take the HD4670 for 100, Alex.

t.s.

12-29-2008, 11:48 AM

Sorry, but nvidia drivers aren't stable. They're only reason why my Linux box hang sometimes. I wonder how nvidia drivers can have better performance than AMD/Ati - even vesa driver is usually faster than crap from nvidia in 2D (in KDE4 especially). They don't want to open their drivers, because they're not Open Source friendly. I never met with such crappy drivers - KDE 4 was unusable for more than half a year due to bugs and low performance in their drivers and it's still slow!

heheh... have you ever tried running linux 1.5 years ago on onboard chipset, like, radeon 200M? Yeah, they are 'STABLE'.. Easy install? yeah, 'of course'.

Oh, and I've been using KDE 3.5.x with my 8600GT on ubuntu 8.04 and have no problem so far, just one time driver error that easily fixed. Give them about 2 months and I'll surprised if there's still no fix for KDE 4.x from nvidia.

all nvidia cards below 6XXX are not supported anymore.
Well, at the time that my card, 8600GT, is not supported anymore, I most probably have another card (maybe ATI card if they continue their effort like now). But again, I think it's years ahead. And who know in the future nVidia --forced-- to open their source, no?

@ everybody that said: AMD is evil?
no... you're wrong! every VGA chipset makers (cmiiw) ARE EVIL! Do intel willingly open their source? nah.. I think that because they can't compete with ATI and nVidia on GPU power. So do VIA. Imagine that they have product that surpass both ATI and nVidia. Will they open their source? If we speak of today, maybe yes, but if we speak of 2 years past or more? nah...

...but of course, I have have money, I'll go for ATI too, for what they 'try to achieve' (but with 9600 GSO on my backup-tools) :)

energyman

12-29-2008, 11:51 AM

8600GT? ah - that is one of the cards with a high probability of failure.
Nvidia is so open source friendly that even their 'free' 2d driver is obfuscated....

kraftman

12-29-2008, 01:09 PM

heheh... have you ever tried running linux 1.5 years ago on onboard chipset, like, radeon 200M? Yeah, they are 'STABLE'.. Easy install? yeah, 'of course'.

And what? I have nvidia card and its drivers just sux. I'm not interested in problems with Ati right now.

Oh, and I've been using KDE 3.5.x with my 8600GT on ubuntu 8.04 and have no problem so far, just one time driver error that easily fixed. Give them about 2 months and I'll surprised if there's still no fix for KDE 4.x from nvidia.

I was talking only about KDE 4. You must be kidding, we (I and MANY nvidia card owners) are waiting MORE THAN HALF A YEAR (maybe even one year) for fixed drivers. If you don't know anything about this just don't irritate others. If Ati makes better Linux drivers I'll switch, if not I'll stay with nvidia, but their drivers are crap.

Jorophose

12-29-2008, 03:54 PM

Considering ATI have held their promise and seem to have just released the 3D code (unless Phoronix is run by sickos who love to toy with my mind, which it isn't) I'd definately go for the HD4670 now that you have a "fallback" driver.

Of course, if you do your gaming on linux, maybe not so much... I'd still go nVidia in that case.

RobbieAB

12-29-2008, 04:28 PM

em, all nvidia cards below 6XXX are not supported anymore.

Not actually true, all DISCRETE nVidia cards below 6XXX are not supported, some of the mobile cores are still.

I have a GeForce FX Go5200, it's still supported by the main drivers.

Kano

12-29-2008, 05:54 PM

Well 173.xx (gf5), 96.xx (gf2mx to gf4) series work with xserver 1.5, just 71.xx (riva tnt to gf2gts) series does not. When you think of ati, they dropped dx7 only cards with everything newer than 8.28.8 fglrx - but those can be used with oss. 173.xx series is for dx9, 96.xx for dx8 and newer dx9 parts. 180.xx is for newer dx9 (gf6) and dx10 cards. If you own those old cards you can be a bit worred because nvidia does not help for example the nouveau project to get em running with an oss driver. I guess gf6/7 will be the next legacy products...

RobbieAB

12-29-2008, 06:23 PM

Which is why I have basically taken to only buying cards with OSS drivers supported by the manufacturer. So Matrox, and now Via and ATI.

Kano

12-29-2008, 08:14 PM

Matrox always had a binary hal.

energyman

12-29-2008, 08:19 PM

back in the mystique 220, millenium2 days, the drivers were open. Days long gone ...

RealNC

12-29-2008, 10:34 PM

back in the mystique 220, millenium2 days, the drivers were open. Days long gone ...

Matrox's gone too :D

energyman

12-29-2008, 10:41 PM

Matrox still exist. Selling overprixed Parhelia's and video wall driving hardware.

Kano

12-30-2008, 05:44 AM

The drivers are open, but for all features you need an entry hal binary blob.

kraftman

12-30-2008, 12:32 PM

The drivers are open, but for all features you need an entry hal binary blob.

This hal:
http://madwifi-project.org/wiki/news/20081129/sam-leffler-releases-hal-source

:>

energyman

12-30-2008, 12:48 PM

of course not. there are a lot of HALs - and they are all evil.

t.s.

12-31-2008, 12:51 AM

8600GT? ah - that is one of the cards with a high probability of failure.
Nvidia is so open source friendly that even their 'free' 2d driver is obfuscated....
Yep.. I heard 8800 more 'ugly' when came to 2D. But do I have choices? Don't have money to buy an ATI now, have intel 3100 chipset onboard that have --major-- regression recently (you can digg from this forum too). And I'm not gonna hunt for older --but more supported-- card.

And what? I have nvidia card and its drivers just sux. I'm not interested in problems with Ati right now.
So do I. But seems that they're on a right track now (compare to nVidia)

AI was talking only about KDE 4. You must be kidding, we (I and MANY nvidia card owners) are waiting MORE THAN HALF A YEAR (maybe even one year) for fixed drivers. If you don't know anything about this just don't irritate others. If Ati makes better Linux drivers I'll switch, if not I'll stay with nvidia, but their drivers are crap.
Well, sorry if you feel irritated. What I mean is give them another 2 month to fix that from now. Oh, IMHO, if I'm on nVidia position, I think I won't gave supports to something that considered not mature/stable enough (kde 4.0.x, back then). Too risky, and to much wasted time.

And so far, I'm not satisfied with nvidia, ATI, or intel. Hope this condition will change on the not-to-distant-future.

bridgman

12-31-2008, 12:58 AM

A while back we kicked off two initiatives - improving consumer support in the fglrx driver, and supporting open source driver development again. At the time, everyone thought ATI sucked and Intel/NVidia were wonderful.

Now apparently we all suck.

That is not what I was trying to accomplish :D

Kano

12-31-2008, 03:35 AM

Really funny *g*

energyman

12-31-2008, 06:54 AM

12 month ago there was no choice. There was Nvidia or eternal pain.
And the troubles I had back in the rage128 days didn't made a good case for ATI either. I was sure:
never again ATI.
6 month ago I was so fed up with Nvidia's driver that I jumped. I got a nice 3870 for a very good price. And I never looked back. 2D was and is not perfect - but so much better. The only thing I initially missed was temperature readings - and ATI delivered.
Today I can choose between 3 drivers when it comes to 2D - and soon for 3D too. There is no reason for me to recommend or buy Nvidia. ATI/AMD got better with every driver release (from my POV - while with nvidia there were and are long periods of nothing with short bursts of activity.
DAAMIT (to use theinquirer speak) made me a happy user again.

Nvidia's 2d sucked so much, I was even tempted to install windows (I have winxp, xp 64 and a vista business - legal of course), the switch 'saved' me from that.

So brigeman&co - you do not suck, I am very gratefull of your attempts - just don't let the whiners drain your energy.

Lykos

12-31-2008, 07:07 AM

kraftman

12-31-2008, 09:44 AM

Well, sorry if you feel irritated. What I mean is give them another 2 month to fix that from now. Oh, IMHO, if I'm on nVidia position, I think I won't gave supports to something that considered not mature/stable enough (kde 4.0.x, back then). Too risky, and to much wasted time.

And so far, I'm not satisfied with nvidia, ATI, or intel. Hope this condition will change on the not-to-distant-future.

No problem, but nvidia drivers were driving me mad sometimes ;) KDE 4.3 is very stable for me, but there can be some bugs in nvidia drivers that are hard to find/fix and that's why it takes so long. 3D performance doesn't matter to me so much and I will probably use nouveau driver right now instead of closed one.

acreda

01-02-2009, 05:38 AM

I USE ati. And I could see the great steps they were making the last year with my own eyes. Before I had a NVidia Card, it worked well.
Then I compared ATI and NVidia and chose ATI. At the first moment I thought this was a fault, but now I am beginning to think this was the right direction. The ATI-Supplied Shell-Script works hardly always (for hardly any software) and the drivers are getting real good. But there are still Memory leaks if you know how to produce them ;-) But they don't show up anymore. And the driver crashes sometimes when switching X-Sessions.
I am mostly pleasant with the ATI-Drivers now and I am very happy to see the first hardware-accelerated Triangles with open source software.
Go on like this ATI!
They did what they promised, thats much in times like these...

I have just changed fro NV to ATI and I thought that I would share my thoughts as well

I have gone from a passive 7300GT to the new Asus 4830 card and obviously due to the hardware being much better, I do actully see some 3D issues I had clear up. I am normally on ut2004 all the time and since the last few drivers from nvidia the 3D models would become transparent and some redering would be incomplete with wepons fire and sencery leading to some wired and wonderful colours!

Also on a the flightgear simulator I would get radom 2d shaped across the whole field of view randomly leading me to have to restart it again.

These have now disapeared completley, which I didnt expect maybe I am not suffering all these video problems due that I am using a more modern card with the atomBIOS and better drivers at the moment.

this is the first time I have used an ATI card so I cant releate to most of the problems people are facing but I did go for it to reward ATI for doing so much for the opensource community comparied to Nvidia.

Hopefully ATI will get better with each release and start to really show NV up, I would just be nice to gett some proper fan control because it seems to be on full and this is an Arctic cooling solution Asus have used, they are not normally this loud!! heres hoping for a new cataylist centre/control Module can do it soon.

t.s.

01-04-2009, 11:42 PM

Today I can choose between 3 drivers when it comes to 2D - and soon for 3D too.
Sorry, I just want ONE driver to rule them all :D (2D and 3D)

..from my POV - while with nvidia there were and are long periods of nothing with short bursts of activity.
..but IMO, they can cover many of their bug with those 'short bursts of activity'.

Nvidia's 2d sucked so much, I was even tempted to install windows (I have winxp, xp 64 and a vista business - legal of course), the switch 'saved' me from that.
It's a well known problem with modern card from nvidia. A tip for u, before you ever feel tempted to install windows again, please send your windows cd to me (with your activate-code of course, and then erase it from your note, mail, etc that contain that code). With that, You will never feel tempted again (just feel sorry, I guess, for giving away something for free, heheh). :p

..and the drivers are getting real good. But there are still Memory leaks if you know how to produce them ;-) But they don't show up anymore. And the driver crashes sometimes when switching X-Sessions.
Hm.. I wouldn't say 'real good' for those existing problem.

No problem, but nvidia drivers were driving me mad sometimes KDE 4.3 is very stable for me, but there can be some bugs in nvidia drivers that are hard to find/fix and that's why it takes so long. 3D performance doesn't matter to me so much and I will probably use nouveau driver right now instead of closed one.
you mean KDE 4.0.3? I've used that before, and I think that's not stable enough. I'm migrating to opensuse 11.1 now, with KDE 4.1.3 (well, I felt tempted, so I give it a try):D. Sadly, It still have issues like plasma crashing sometimes (this one's from nvidia driver I guess, if I looked to Plasma.kcrash file), konqueror have a glicth, etc. Oh, I use nvidia driver v180.16 beta. It work great so far, but still it can draw some problem on KDE 4.1.3, like Plasma's systray will have artifacts if I enabled desktop effect, plasma 'crashing-but-still-usable' problem. I'll see if there is another Issues later.

If you have onboard intel chipset, I think it will be better if you switch to that (Intel) cause it sure more stable --now-- than nvidia. I've planned to used my x3100 chipset for opensuse 11.1 with KDE 4.1.3, but I still want to play some good game. Oh well... :p

Oh, and back to topic:
IMHO, if you desperately want to gaming on linux NOW, go for nvidia. If you plan for your future, go for ATI (sorry Intel, you're out of league). Of course it still can change on future, like, --if-- nvidia open their source, larabee arrive soon with stable driver, ATI forced to abandon their support for their open source driver, or something like that; like ones said, "the future is not certain.."

energyman

01-05-2009, 12:15 AM

that doesn't help - I am registered msdnaa user - I can always get a new serial ;)

t.s.

01-05-2009, 02:19 AM

that doesn't help - I am registered msdnaa user - I can always get a new serial ;)
Damn, I think that's a good plan.
Can't you switch your msdnaa to me then? :p

Me too have Vista, eval version. Whenever I tempted for better games (windows sure have a tons of better games), I'll install it (dual boot). Hm.. it sure can attract me.

Thinking to swap off my nvidia card and use only x3100 chipset when ubuntu 9.04 arrive.

RealNC

01-05-2009, 01:14 PM

For games people usually go XP, not Vista (games perform worse there).

deanjo

01-05-2009, 03:00 PM

For games people usually go XP, not Vista (games perform worse there).

That isn't so much the case nowdays. In fact Vista outperforms XP in many of the newer games.

RealNC

01-05-2009, 03:09 PM

That isn't so much the case nowdays. In fact Vista outperforms XP in many of the newer games.

Any game I tested performs worse except for Oblivion. Sometimes the difference is dramatic (Assassin's Creed: 70FPS in XP, 50FPS in Vista.)

deanjo

01-05-2009, 03:16 PM

Any game I tested performs worse except for Oblivion. Sometimes the difference is dramatic (Assassin's Creed: 70FPS in XP, 50FPS in Vista.)

Are you running both in DX9 mode? If not then comparing DX9 vs DX10 modes is not a fair comparison. Plus ATI has optimized their drivers for Vista very well and Nvidia took a long time to bring theirs up to snuff. With the latest 180+ series though there were some drastic improvements in their vista speeds.

t.s.

01-06-2009, 02:27 PM

Are you running both in DX9 mode? If not then comparing DX9 vs DX10 modes is not a fair comparison. Plus ATI has optimized their drivers for Vista very well and Nvidia took a long time to bring theirs up to snuff. With the latest 180+ series though there were some drastic improvements in their vista speeds.

Yep. Some games have tweaked to play better with DX10 (which own by vista exclusively), and the other tweaked to play better with DX9. Therefore, like deanjo said, comparing games with different DirectX version is not fair.

I'm playing playstation 2 game(s) with pcsx2, where the video plugin (gsdx) have a better performance with DX10. So, of course vista have a better performance here.

rudl

01-07-2009, 10:25 AM

Thanks to everyone for posting :)
Still haven't read everything.

So ATI drivers are still a bit glitchy.
Does Compiz run well?

Won't change my gfx card now because I'm very busy now. (I'll do that in february march)
So maybe there is 55nm version of the 9600gt. (Or rebranded as GT1XX card) And maybe the ATI drivers improve.

About upgrading my PSU: No

1) Because I can't put a big dualslot 4870/GTX260/9800GTX in my mobo because there is a Sata port in the way
2) so possibilities are 4850/9800gt/9600gt/4670
The 9600gt(maybe) and 4670 should work with my 350 PSU I think.

My system:
AMD 6000+ @ 1,33vcore (not sure wether its an 6000+EE or not default is between 1.40-1.45V)
M2NPV-VM micro ATX Motherboard
2GB DDr2 667
500GB HDD
wlan-card
DVD drive
Card-reader
8500gt

energyman

01-07-2009, 10:51 AM

instead of buying a new graphic card - maybe you should buy better ram?

rudl

01-07-2009, 10:58 AM

Nope

DDR800 makes no sense because it will run @750 Mhz I think
http://forums.devshed.com/cpus-104/will-amd-6000-run-at-lower-memory-speed-with-ddr2t-457688.html

and
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/ram-speed-tests,1807-8.html

-> does not make sense

energyman

01-07-2009, 11:17 AM

the tomshardware test is completly meaningless for you because they tested core2 and pentium4.

edit:
I have a 6000+, 4gb ram, 3 harddisks, a770crossfire board and until monday a liberty 500. Energy consumption was between 106 (kde desktop) 160 (vt) and 300 (ut2004) watt. So my new is a be quiet straight power 450.
400 is a bit low - several 'calculators' put me around or above 400W. And if you plan to buy a new card, I wouldn't go below 400W either. 350W is not the 'real' output of your psu. It is just a marketing number. You have always calculate with a bit of headroom. 400W could be fine, with 450 you are on the save side.