Is ATI now a better bet?

[Porse]

I'm searching for a new laptop to run Linux and XP. This may actually be a good time to do it, as AMD's turnaround might make ATI graphics the better choice. Should I bank on this, or stick with NVidia for their track record?

[Michael]

Well, it really comes down to if you're in it for the long haul or not... Right now there are still a number of people running into issues with the 8.41 driver, but those should be corrected in 8.42 and 8.43. AMD is also funding the development of the open-source driver but that will not happen overnight but will take several months.

NVIDIA on the other hand as their binary driver that has basically remained the same over the past year or so and then there are the Nouveau folks reverse engineering the binary blob.

What specifically are you looking to do with this laptop?

[Porse]

This laptop is replacing my older one, which broke and was sent back to be replaced under warranty (which ebuyer took to mean "refund" and i can get something better now :) ). I'm not expecting to run Half-Life 2 on it (even though I'm going to try) but I do want some 3D performance for Compiz and some older games. The laptop I've got my eyes on now has the same graphics chipset (Xpress 200M) so I have an idea of its performance. Also, I'm more familiar with ATI under Linux than I am NVidia.

[1c3d0g]

Don't waste your time, stick with NVIDIA.

[yoshi314]

it you can wait a while - go for ati.

[ioannis]

Don't waste your time, stick with NVIDIA.

...and have the GLX_EXT_texture_from_pixmap out-of-memory bug haunting you[1], among other things.

no one is perfect. I would go with AMD/ATI though. In the long run, it should be a better deal.


[1] the new driver addresses it, but doesn't really fix it.

[DeepDayze]

Why not wait and see what shakes out of the ATI/AMD tree. If the fruit seems rotten, then just stick with nVidia.

[d2kx]

Why not wait and see what shakes out of the ATI/AMD tree. If the fruit seems rotten, then just stick with nVidia.

Nicely said.

[Kano]

Well the problem with the future is that is is not really predictable... If you need it NOW then you should get definitely Nvidia otherwise you come back every month and blame the fglrx driver because of it's new faults ;)

[yoshi314]

or you would come back every week moaning about slow progress of radeonhd (which i cannot blame anybody for - it cannot be done any faster) :)

[FunkyRider]

I would say go for nVidia and keep an eye on ATI for some months.... right now? no

[chikamichi]

AMD announcements are for real, and they seem to move fast now, I'd say consider ATI.

[Kano]

Just don't use Xserver 1.4 for a while ;)

[AchingTomato]

I would still buy a Nvidia-card if I were in a market for a new graphics card. The ATi/AMD-drivers are still not on par with Nvidia's, and as far as I know Nvidia is still "better" than ATi/AMD in terms of raw power ...

[Karel]

ATI is about one year and a half behind nVidia (consider when nVidia had to start developing stable Linux drivers - months before they were released).

[Valio]

I think I'm going to buy an nvidia card then regarding this topic.
Or were there any changes since then?