ATI driver features

[Qaridarium]

Sure, but it is used.

Fu!k... ... ....... .......

[transwarp]

- I'm on Kubuntu Karmic at the moment and the effects work. Sometimes it crashes (usually when login into a session), but I can always enable them again. Window transformation (resizing, maximizing, etc.) is painfully slow; you can apply some fixes like using a patched xserver or changing some window specific KDE options, but it's far from ideal. Also, while the effects are on my card runs in 3D mode; while this is not a big problem for me, I would imagine that on a laptop it would be a concern (additional heat, lower battery life). Have not gotten an answer on this last issue yet from either the AMD guys or the KDE folks, so it might just be something odd with my particular setup .

The KDE power management profiles have the option to disable compositing. If I unplug my laptop (old x300) it flickers and I get a notification that compositing is being turned off, and how to turn it back on. The opposite happens if I plug it back in. I think that's the default. Presumably, this lets the card switch off the 3D hardware.

[Melcar]

The KDE power management profiles have the option to disable compositing. If I unplug my laptop (old x300) it flickers and I get a notification that compositing is being turned off, and how to turn it back on. The opposite happens if I plug it back in. I think that's the default. Presumably, this lets the card switch off the 3D hardware.

It's a desktop, so those power options really don't work. Besides, I want composition on, but it's odd that it's forcing my card into high power mode like that. When I had KDE on my laptop battery life was worse than crappy I suspect due to this; that same laptop can go on for 45min. on GNOME with Compiz on. I will try another distro and see if it's not a Kubuntu quirk.

[tball]

I just bought another laptop with Amd/Ati. Would I do that if it sucked? The answer is no.

Fglrx is running just fine with my two laptops. I have to download a patched xserver (no backfill version) though, but thats not that hard.
After that, compositing is working great in both kde4 and gnome.

I also tried the oss drivers with kms. Impressive piece of work. Tried them for ~1 month ago, so they weren't quite stable that time and powersavings didn't work. But as far as I know powersaving features is on the way.

[Guilo]

Thank you for allyour interesting answers.

I guess experiences vary. I haven't had a 3D-related crash on HD 4550 in over a month.

The open drivers do require a recent kernel and the mesa stack built from source (I believe there are packages for Ubuntu). They provide good OpenGL 1.5 acceleration, and GLSL is coming soon. Not as fast as fglrx yet. Tear-free XVideo. KDE4 effects work great.

There is only very basic powersaving now (and none if you use KMS). There is no decode acceleration, and likely won't be any for at least half a year, as it will be built on top of the Gallium driver, which is nowhere near ready yet.

This is the state of the open-source stack. I've never used fglrx, so I'll let other people answer that.

Good. Full of hope for the future.

I am interested in this laptop : VAIO VGN-FW54E

It is based on Intel motherboard. Is it really a problem as it has been suggested ? Is the card enough powerfull to handle 1080p ?

Indeed, HD decode (with speed and tear free) is the main feature I am looking for. 3D performance are not that important.

[yotambien]

Based on the answers you got in this thread alone, I think you would have to be completely nuts if you bought a laptop with an ATI card on it...

[Guilo]

Yes I agree with you but it is hard to find a laptop that suit my needs with nvidia card. Is nvidia planning to come back on that market ? (Please I don't want a fight between nvidia or ati)

Thanks

[yotambien]

Yes I agree with you but it is hard to find a laptop that suit my needs with nvidia card. Is nvidia planning to come back on that market ? (Please I don't want a fight between nvidia or ati)

Thanks

Samsung have several laptops with Nvidia cards, but I don't know how good they are. The R710 looks nice, though. Here's a list of Nvidia powered laptops, although I don't think is up to date...

[Panix]

Hi all !
- I am planning to keep my kubuntu with KDE4. Are 3Deffects well supported by the driver ? I remember the time where these effects where hard to get working with the ATI driver.

- And last question : what about the open-source driver ? Where is the developpement heading to and what can be achieved as of now with this driver ?

Thanks a lot for all your answers, I am anxious at the idea of leaving nvidia.

Support for the open source drive is lousy. At least, with older hardware. I can't speak from experience with newer hardware. I would check with various forums and see what they're saying. It seems to me that 'ATI-equipped laptops' are not a good idea. Not right now. I would go for a laptop with Nvidia still. ATI still mostly cares about maintaining their Windows share (whatever it is).

You don't have a choice to switch video hardware with a laptop in most cases so you are stuck with what you get. Therefore, I recommend checking out the Ubuntu and Kubuntu forums, maybe even Fedora and other ones as well for the overall feedback of ATI users and the owners of ATI laptops and their experiences. I think a lot of those owners aren't too enthusiastic with ATI drivers.

[Hoodlum]

Heh unfortunately this is an annoying situation what with the nvidia hardware issues recently for laptop cards.
Some revisions of the 200 mobile series melting the same way that *all* 8800s (desktop ones too, the design is faulty - they all melt eventually) did. This is why ATI are in most new laptops now btw - there was a big replacement squabbling debacle between Nvidia and the vendors. HP, Dell & Apple dropped nvidia in new products because of this.

So basically you have a choice between potentially faulty hardware with nvidia or the ati option where you have improving (but still not great) fglrx drivers. Open drivers are a great initiative but they aren't very advanced yet. So yeah the graphics situation on Linux is really coming to a head right now. Hopefully it'll only be a few years before we have open drivers that can do everything fglrx can do (or better) without the bugs.