Phoronix Redblog

[James]

In ATIs defence, they've gotten a lot better over the past couple years. I'd certainly be willing to try them again next time I go video card shopping.

[niniendowarrior]

Michael,

Please don't stop the blog! I know there's only a few days, but I always felt it was a little too short for anything.

Features... hmmm... how about the TV-out feature? I noticed the tab was removed in later drivers in the control panel. What happened to that feature?

I think ATi is a competent group, they are just focused on different things. Stability and performance of the FGLRX is not something ATi is concerned about, so I'm making sure I stay away from those cards.

[Michael]

Michael,

Please don't stop the blog! I know there's only a few days, but I always felt it was a little too short for anything.

Features... hmmm... how about the TV-out feature? I noticed the tab was removed in later drivers in the control panel. What happened to that feature?

I think ATi is a competent group, they are just focused on different things. Stability and performance of the FGLRX is not something ATi is concerned about, so I'm making sure I stay away from those cards.

Well, so far in this time-frame, I have been able to cover pretty much all of the popular native Linux games and their quality/performance, various features (PowerPlay, Big Desktop), overall performance, etc... There isn't too many significant ATI items that are left to be discussed where it could be kept up on a daily basis.

However, it may be an interesting thing to take up in 6 months or a year from now to see how the performance and features have evolved.

TV-out is currently not supported by the Radeon X1000 series (though it will hopefully come soon), however, for the remainder of the ATI cards, that all still can be enabled/disabled through aticonfig. There is also the very nice dynamic display management options for that. The feature is still very much in the drivers, they have simply removed it from fireglcontrolpanel.

Why would you say that ATI doesn't focus on stability? In my experience thus far, I have run into absolutely no stability problems. I realize there are a few extraneous cases where on GDM/KDM login or logout it may lock up with some users, or like problems, but once you're up and running, it would almost be safe to say that the drivers are at least as stable as NVIDIA's.

[niniendowarrior]

The way I see it. If ATi was focusing on that, we would already have at least an official workaround from them (kdm/gdm lock ups)... or even a sign of any acknowledgement that they are working on it.

I've tried driver after driver since 8.16 and none of them ever fix that problem.

[niniendowarrior]

Hey Michael,

I think it would be nice to have to have Image Quality comparisons Windows vs Linux drivers and see how the Linux drivers perform.

[Michael]

Well well, the day has finally come. It is now day number 50; the final day for this ATI Linux trial. With that said, it's about time for me to share some concluding remarks regarding ATI's recent Linux efforts with their monthly fglrx display drivers. On the first day, I didn't know whether I would be able to survive without going green (no pun intended), but towards the end of this experience, it was almost like achieving nirvana...

http://www.phoronix.com/redblog/inde...=blog&i=NDg1MA

Feel free to discuss.

[wazoo42]

I'd like to bring up one point that hasn't been mentioned yet (I skimmed the earlier posts, so if it has please forgive me), and that is XGL/Compiz. One place where ATI needs work is playing nicely with the new 3D desktop. I realize this isn't a show stopper, especially now since XGL/Compiz are still in their infancies, but I think it will become an issue very soon. Perhaps this will be resolved with xorg 7.1 support, but as for right now I have to say that not even being able to start the x server b/c it hardlocks the machine is a very bad thing.

[niniendowarrior]

http://www.phoronix.com/redblog/inde...=blog&i=NDg1MA

Feel free to discuss.

Hey Michael, thanks for the blog and your insight. I appreciate the effort and I hope we hear from ATi soon about great driver improvements.

[lusikka]

First of all, I'd like to thank you for your great blog! Secondly, in my opinion, the installation process is a piece of cake, it's just that the drivers are sucky.
There was some problems("failed to dependencies") with Livna, when the packages got renamed and some people are still having problems. Couple of days ago I found a way to install the Livna-drivers, and the problem seems to be in YUM. If someone's interested, read http://lusikka.laatikko.org/blog/?p=39.
Keep up the good work!

[Rob Williams]

Thanks for the detailed read Michael, it was a great run. In the end, I am happy to see where ATI is going, but I demand the best gaming performance so I am going to stick with NVIDIA. I may pick up some cheapy ATI card in the future just to test it out though.