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Dave
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 Posted: Tue Nov 18, 2008 6:00 pm Post subject: Radeon or Nvidia ? |
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Just wondering what people feel about the present state of support in
Linux for a new build.I was considering a Radeon 4670,of course find a
lot of horror stories about getting it to work.Look at the Nvidia
equivalents and find just as many horror stories.
Dave
--
Registered Linux user # 444770
It is never wise to let a piece of electronic equipment know that you
are in a hurry. |
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Dave
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| Posted: Tue Nov 18, 2008 10:35 pm Post subject: Re: Radeon or Nvidia ? |
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On Tue, 18 Nov 2008 21:06:52 +0000, Stefan Patric wrote:
| Quote: | On Tue, 18 Nov 2008 18:00:28 +0000, Dave wrote:
Just wondering what people feel about the present state of support in
Linux for a new build.I was considering a Radeon 4670,of course find a
lot of horror stories about getting it to work.Look at the Nvidia
equivalents and find just as many horror stories.
The problem with horror stories is that only those who are having the
problems are complaining. You never hear much from the ones who aren't.
Well, here's one who's aren't.
My current system, custom built in January 2008, is mostly Nvidia from
the motherboard's (Abit KN9, Socket AM2, AMD Athlon64 64-bit cpu) NF4
Ultra chipset to the GeForce 6600 graphics card. I've never had a
problem. However, I do not use the stock Nvidia drivers from Nvidia,
but the custom compiled ones from the Livna Fedora repository, which is
recommended.
I initially ran Fedora Core 6, both 32-bit and 64-bit, on it, and
currently use Fedora 9 64-bit. Skipped 7 and 8.
Stef
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Nice to hear that because I was leaning toward Fedora 9 or 10.Thanks for
the feedback.
Dave
--
Registered Linux user # 444770
It is never wise to let a piece of electronic equipment know that you
are in a hurry. |
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Dave
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| Posted: Tue Nov 18, 2008 10:44 pm Post subject: Re: Radeon or Nvidia ? |
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On Tue, 18 Nov 2008 21:00:29 +0000, Dan C wrote:
| Quote: | On Tue, 18 Nov 2008 18:00:28 +0000, Dave wrote:
Just wondering what people feel about the present state of support in
Linux for a new build.I was considering a Radeon 4670,of course find a
lot of horror stories about getting it to work.Look at the Nvidia
equivalents and find just as many horror stories.
Not in my experience. I would not even consider getting an ATI card for
a Linux box. Nvidia's support of Linux is outstanding, and their driver
works perfectly. It's really a no-brainer.
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I thought I read that ATI was doing better at supplying open source
drivers along with the proprietary stuff.I'm not a purist,I'll use binary
blobs if that's what works the best.Might be the cards I'm looking at are
too new and the Linux drivers need to catch up a little.Think a Nvidia
9600 GT would be better supported?(leaning to Fedora as the main OS)
Dave
--
Registered Linux user # 444770
It is never wise to let a piece of electronic equipment know that you
are in a hurry. |
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ray
Guest
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| Posted: Wed Nov 19, 2008 1:05 am Post subject: Re: Radeon or Nvidia ? |
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On Tue, 18 Nov 2008 18:00:28 +0000, Dave wrote:
| Quote: | Just wondering what people feel about the present state of support in
Linux for a new build.I was considering a Radeon 4670,of course find a
lot of horror stories about getting it to work.Look at the Nvidia
equivalents and find just as many horror stories.
Dave
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IMHO - the Intel chips seem to be best supported now. |
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Dan C
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| Posted: Wed Nov 19, 2008 3:00 am Post subject: Re: Radeon or Nvidia ? |
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On Tue, 18 Nov 2008 18:00:28 +0000, Dave wrote:
| Quote: | Just wondering what people feel about the present state of support in
Linux for a new build.I was considering a Radeon 4670,of course find a
lot of horror stories about getting it to work.Look at the Nvidia
equivalents and find just as many horror stories.
|
Not in my experience. I would not even consider getting an ATI card for a
Linux box. Nvidia's support of Linux is outstanding, and their driver
works perfectly. It's really a no-brainer.
--
"Ubuntu" -- an African word, meaning "Slackware is too hard for me".
The Usenet Improvement Project: http://improve-usenet.org |
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Stefan Patric
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| Posted: Wed Nov 19, 2008 3:06 am Post subject: Re: Radeon or Nvidia ? |
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On Tue, 18 Nov 2008 18:00:28 +0000, Dave wrote:
| Quote: | Just wondering what people feel about the present state of support in
Linux for a new build.I was considering a Radeon 4670,of course find a
lot of horror stories about getting it to work.Look at the Nvidia
equivalents and find just as many horror stories.
|
The problem with horror stories is that only those who are having the
problems are complaining. You never hear much from the ones who aren't.
Well, here's one who's aren't.
My current system, custom built in January 2008, is mostly Nvidia from
the motherboard's (Abit KN9, Socket AM2, AMD Athlon64 64-bit cpu) NF4
Ultra chipset to the GeForce 6600 graphics card. I've never had a
problem. However, I do not use the stock Nvidia drivers from Nvidia, but
the custom compiled ones from the Livna Fedora repository, which is
recommended.
I initially ran Fedora Core 6, both 32-bit and 64-bit, on it, and
currently use Fedora 9 64-bit. Skipped 7 and 8.
Stef |
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Aragorn
Guest
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| Posted: Wed Nov 19, 2008 7:50 am Post subject: Re: Radeon or Nvidia ? |
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On Tuesday 18 November 2008 23:44, someone identifying as *Dave* wrote
in /comp.os.linux.hardware:/
| Quote: | On Tue, 18 Nov 2008 21:00:29 +0000, Dan C wrote:
On Tue, 18 Nov 2008 18:00:28 +0000, Dave wrote:
Just wondering what people feel about the present state of support in
Linux for a new build.I was considering a Radeon 4670,of course find a
lot of horror stories about getting it to work.Look at the Nvidia
equivalents and find just as many horror stories.
Not in my experience. I would not even consider getting an ATI card for
a Linux box. Nvidia's support of Linux is outstanding, and their driver
works perfectly. It's really a no-brainer.
I thought I read that ATI was doing better at supplying open source
drivers along with the proprietary stuff.
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ATi is now the property of AMD, and AMD has indeed committed itself to
supplying open source drivers for their ATi-inherited technology, but this
process is still very much in its infancy, the problem being that AMD has
to rewrite all the drivers from scratch due to the fact that by inheriting
ATi's technology, they've also inherited a substantial amount of
copyrighted proprietary code which they are by law not allowed to disclose
as the rights remain with the original developers.
| Quote: | I'm not a purist,I'll use binary blobs if that's what works the best.
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In the event of nVidia, there are and have been a few problems here and
there - e.g. the rendering of the content of moving windows in KDE 4.1 -
but the overall quality of their driver code is fairly good and their
drivers do offer you an excellent picture. ATi's drivers sucked so badly
that they couldn't even get decent colors out of their cards and kept on
crashing the whole time.
Of course, the fact that nVidia has a lot more people working on their
driver code while ATi only had a handful of driver developers surely played
a big hand in that.
| Quote: | Might be the cards I'm looking at are too new and the Linux drivers need
to catch up a little.
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I don't think it's a matter of catching up, considering that you're talking
of proprietary drivers from the hardware vendors themselves, and these
drivers are released together with their Windows-specific counterparts.
| Quote: | Think a Nvidia 9600 GT would be better supported?
(leaning to Fedora as the main OS)
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If the card is supported in Windows, then it'll be supported in GNU/Linux,
because nVidia releases those drivers at the same time, and to my knowledge
they now only use two branches of drivers, i.e. the drivers for all current
cards and the drivers for legacy cards (like the Riva TNT et al).
The type of GNU/Linux distribution you are using should also not be any
problem, because most GNU/Linux distributions today use X.Org as their X
Window System - for as much as there are any differences with the XFree86
codebase, from whence it forked - and at present, the nVidia driver
comprises of a binary-only driver core and a source code kernel interface
which is compiled locally against the actual kernel you're using, or which
comes prebuilt along with the driver if your distribution supplies
proprietary drivers - which, as I understand it, would not be the case for
Fedora Core, given that it's a community distribution. So you'll most
likely have to download the driver package from nVidia's website yourself,
and then follow the instructions.
--
*Aragorn*
(registered GNU/Linux user #223157) |
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Dan C
Guest
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| Posted: Wed Nov 19, 2008 8:44 am Post subject: Re: Radeon or Nvidia ? |
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On Tue, 18 Nov 2008 22:44:33 +0000, Dave wrote:
| Quote: | Just wondering what people feel about the present state of support in
Linux for a new build.I was considering a Radeon 4670,of course find a
lot of horror stories about getting it to work.Look at the Nvidia
equivalents and find just as many horror stories.
Not in my experience. I would not even consider getting an ATI card
for a Linux box. Nvidia's support of Linux is outstanding, and their
driver works perfectly. It's really a no-brainer.
I thought I read that ATI was doing better at supplying open source
drivers along with the proprietary stuff.I'm not a purist,I'll use
binary blobs if that's what works the best.
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"Doing better" can be translated as "catching up". The Nvidia binary
drivers are indeed what works the best.
| Quote: | Might be the cards I'm
looking at are too new and the Linux drivers need to catch up a
little.Think a Nvidia 9600 GT would be better supported?(leaning to
Fedora as the main OS)
|
Nah, a 9600 is not that new, and is certainly supported. Look here:
http://www.nvidia.com/object/IO_18897.html
Not sure if there's a Fedora package for it, but it's trivially easy to
download and run the installer directly from the Nvidia website. Works
perfectly on every Nvidia card I've tried, which has been a LOT of
different models. Newest one I have is a 7950 GT, but that 9600 GT will
work just fine.
--
"Ubuntu" -- an African word, meaning "Slackware is too hard for me".
The Usenet Improvement Project: http://improve-usenet.org |
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Dave
Guest
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| Posted: Wed Nov 19, 2008 12:35 pm Post subject: Re: Radeon or Nvidia ? |
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On Wed, 19 Nov 2008 02:50:32 +0100, Aragorn wrote:
Thanks for the extensive reply.I can see I've been operating with a few
misconceptions,happens when you read too much too quick.I figure the time
is right to buy before Xmas so I've got some time to stop,take a breath
and re-evaluate what I need.Thanks again.
Dave
--
Registered Linux user # 444770
It is never wise to let a piece of electronic equipment know that you
are in a hurry. |
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Dave
Guest
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| Posted: Wed Nov 19, 2008 12:43 pm Post subject: Re: Radeon or Nvidia ? |
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On Wed, 19 Nov 2008 03:44:23 +0000, Dan C wrote:
Thanks for the pointers.I'll be watching the Xmas sales here in the next
few weeks and this gives me a little more guidance.(first build).So far
I've only got the case and a lot of ideas.
Dave
--
Registered Linux user # 444770
It is never wise to let a piece of electronic equipment know that you
are in a hurry. |
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Scott Hemphill
Guest
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| Posted: Wed Nov 19, 2008 7:51 pm Post subject: Re: Radeon or Nvidia ? |
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Dave <nodlee5spam@fuse.net> writes:
| Quote: | On Tue, 18 Nov 2008 21:06:52 +0000, Stefan Patric wrote:
On Tue, 18 Nov 2008 18:00:28 +0000, Dave wrote:
Just wondering what people feel about the present state of support in
Linux for a new build.I was considering a Radeon 4670,of course find a
lot of horror stories about getting it to work.Look at the Nvidia
equivalents and find just as many horror stories.
The problem with horror stories is that only those who are having the
problems are complaining. You never hear much from the ones who aren't.
Well, here's one who's aren't.
My current system, custom built in January 2008, is mostly Nvidia from
the motherboard's (Abit KN9, Socket AM2, AMD Athlon64 64-bit cpu) NF4
Ultra chipset to the GeForce 6600 graphics card. I've never had a
problem. However, I do not use the stock Nvidia drivers from Nvidia,
but the custom compiled ones from the Livna Fedora repository, which is
recommended.
I initially ran Fedora Core 6, both 32-bit and 64-bit, on it, and
currently use Fedora 9 64-bit. Skipped 7 and 8.
Stef
Nice to hear that because I was leaning toward Fedora 9 or 10.Thanks for
the feedback.
|
I used to buy nothing but ATI because of their leanings toward open
source and my perception that the hardware had a slight edge. But I
had to live with slow software drivers and lack of functionality. My
most recent purchase was a few Nvidia 8600GT based cards, and I'm
using the binary drivers, and they are wonderful. In fact, I built a
box for playing DVD movies using the cheapest Celeron processor
available. The processor would not be capable of decoding MPEG2 in
full 1080p resolution, but that task is handled by the 8600GT, fully
supported under Linux.
Rather that build kernel modules for my Fedora 8 systems, I've used
the Livna repository. Note that Livna has recently merged with
Freshrpms and Dribble, and is now located at http://rpmfusion.org/
Scott
--
Scott Hemphill hemphill@alumni.caltech.edu
"This isn't flying. This is falling, with style." -- Buzz Lightyear |
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Anton Ertl
Guest
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| Posted: Wed Nov 19, 2008 7:58 pm Post subject: Re: Radeon or Nvidia ? |
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Dave <nodlee5spam@fuse.net> writes:
| Quote: |
Just wondering what people feel about the present state of support in
Linux for a new build.I was considering a Radeon 4670,of course find a
lot of horror stories about getting it to work.Look at the Nvidia
equivalents and find just as many horror stories.
|
No free 3D drivers for Nvidia cards, so if you buy Nvidia, first you
support a company that does not support free software; second, in
practical terms this means that you make yourself dependent on updates
from Nvidia; e.g., if you want to upgrade your favourite Linux
distribution, but the Kernel of X server in that distribution is not
(yet?) supported by Nvidia (and such things have happened), you have
to forego the upgrade, or switch back to the 2D-only free driver.
Therefore I only buy ATI cards (Intel would also be an option, but
their performance is not there yet). However, free driver support
lags quite a lot behind hardware availability. E.g., I have recently
bought a Radeon X1650 Pro. I get no 3D acceleration in Debian Lenny,
apparently because the chip is not yet known to the driver; 3D works
with Ubuntu 8.10, though.
So, concerning the 4670, it may take several years until it's fully
supported by free drivers on your distribution. I'd rather buy
something older. You can see what works with which class of cards at:
<http://wiki.x.org/wiki/RadeonFeature>
<http://wiki.x.org/wiki/RadeonProgram>
So you might consider an R500-based card, maybe an X1950 Pro.
- anton
--
M. Anton Ertl Some things have to be seen to be believed
anton@mips.complang.tuwien.ac.at Most things have to be believed to be seen
http://www.complang.tuwien.ac.at/anton/home.html |
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Stefan Patric
Guest
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| Posted: Wed Nov 19, 2008 11:50 pm Post subject: Re: Radeon or Nvidia ? |
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On Tue, 18 Nov 2008 22:35:03 +0000, Dave wrote:
| Quote: | On Tue, 18 Nov 2008 21:06:52 +0000, Stefan Patric wrote:
On Tue, 18 Nov 2008 18:00:28 +0000, Dave wrote:
Just wondering what people feel about the present state of support in
Linux for a new build.I was considering a Radeon 4670,of course find a
lot of horror stories about getting it to work.Look at the Nvidia
equivalents and find just as many horror stories.
[snip]
I initially ran Fedora Core 6, both 32-bit and 64-bit, on it, and
currently use Fedora 9 64-bit. Skipped 7 and 8.
Nice to hear that because I was leaning toward Fedora 9 or 10.Thanks for
the feedback.
|
If you do decide to go with Fedora, this link will help you immensely:
http://www.mjmwired.net/resources/
Particularly with 64-bit.
Stef |
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Darren Salt
Guest
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| Posted: Fri Nov 21, 2008 1:03 am Post subject: Re: Radeon or Nvidia ? |
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I demand that Anton Ertl may or may not have written...
[snip]
| Quote: | No free 3D drivers for Nvidia cards, so if you buy Nvidia, first you
support a company that does not support free software; second, in practical
terms this means that you make yourself dependent on updates from Nvidia;
e.g., if you want to upgrade your favourite Linux distribution, but the
Kernel of X server in that distribution is not (yet?) supported by Nvidia
(and such things have happened), you have to forego the upgrade, or switch
back to the 2D-only free driver.
|
Similar consideratons apply if you want to compile your own kernels. I do, so
I stick with known-supported ATI hardware or Intel hardware since I want
reasonable 3D support too.
| Quote: | Therefore I only buy ATI cards (Intel would also be an option, but their
performance is not there yet). However, free driver support lags quite a
lot behind hardware availability. E.g., I have recently bought a Radeon
X1650 Pro. I get no 3D acceleration in Debian Lenny, apparently because
the chip is not yet known to the driver; 3D works with Ubuntu 8.10, though.
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Nice to know... looks like Ubuntu is using packages based on what's in Debian
experimental.
[snip links]
| Quote: | So you might consider an R500-based card, maybe an X1950 Pro.
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I'm using an X300; not spectacular, but certainly good enough for what I
want. (Buying something similarly low-end now, I'd look at the X1050.)
For laptops, I've invariably gone for Intel in new hardware.
--
| Darren Salt | linux or ds at | nr. Ashington, | Toon
| RISC OS, Linux | youmustbejoking,demon,co,uk | Northumberland | Army
| <URL:http://www.youmustbejoking.demon.co.uk/> (PGP 2.6, GPG keys)
You can't get there from here. |
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Dave
Guest
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| Posted: Fri Nov 21, 2008 8:01 pm Post subject: Re: Radeon or Nvidia ? |
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On Fri, 21 Nov 2008 17:07:47 +0000, Anton Ertl wrote:
| Quote: | Concerning the Radeon 4670 that interested the OP, today I tested a 4650
(which uses the same chip) with the Ubuntu 8.10 Live CD.
The system came up with X with the proper resolution (1600x1200) for the
monitor. It used the "vesa" driver (AFAIK no acceleration whatsoever),
which performed quite acceptably (I have bad memories of sluggisch
window movements from earlier times).
I then tried using the "radeonhd" and "radeon" drivers:
- There is no "radeonhd" driver in Ubuntu 8.10. Maybe that driver is
not yet usable enough for Ubunto to include it. Interestingly, the
attempt to start the X server with this driver (in another VT) still
resulted in funny colours in the X server using the vesa driver.
- The "radeon" driver included in Ubuntu 8.10 does not know the RV730
chip and therefore the X server did not start up. But the list of
supported chips given by the driver in the Xorg.*.log file already
reported the Radeon 4800, so I gues that support for the 46x0 will be
there in the next Ubuntu release, and maybe already in earlier
distributions such as Fedora 10.
- anton
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Thanks for that bit of research.From what I'm reading in the Fedora forums
the success is coming from the ATI Catalyst proprietary drivers right now
with the 4xxx cards.I might go down a few notches from the 4670,just
thought with Xmas sales I might get more card than I need for the same
money.More for less is always better.Thanks again.
Dave
--
Registered Linux user # 444770
It is never wise to let a piece of electronic equipment know that you
are in a hurry. |
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