If NVIDIA and Intel can manage to deliver one driver...
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| Author | Content |
|---|---|
| caitlyn May 29, 2012 5:38 PM EDT |
If NVIDIA and Intel can manage to deliver one driver that works across all distros then AMD should be able to manage it as well. I'm also not happy to read that they are dropping support for some legacy cards. That's a sure way to anger the Linux community further. |
| tracyanne May 29, 2012 5:43 PM EDT |
I thought AMD were doing Open Source Drivers. If so what's the problem? |
| caitlyn May 29, 2012 5:50 PM EDT |
They don't work and don't deliver the features that Windows drivers offer. They are also dropping support for cards/chipsets that are still in use. Those are real problems. |
| cmost May 29, 2012 6:39 PM EDT |
I always recommend NVIDIA. |
| tracyanne May 29, 2012 6:45 PM EDT |
Quoting:They don't work and don't deliver the features that Windows drivers offer. Yes but aren't they supposed to be open source, you know, as in people other than AMD programmers, like, foe instance kenrel driver developers can work on the code? |
| caitlyn May 29, 2012 7:07 PM EDT |
No, AFAICT there are still proprietary drivers. It's like NVIDIA. There is an inferior FOSS driver if you don't mind sacrificing features and performance. |
| tracyanne May 29, 2012 7:38 PM EDT |
Oh, I thought they had done the open source thing. I even recall some shill telling us all that AMD had shot themselves in the foot by doing so. |
| claudecat May 29, 2012 10:12 PM EDT |
AMD drivers are indeed a steaming pile of crap... every kernel/xorg version brings changes with which they fail to keep up. The FOSS drivers are marginally better in this respect, but are hit or miss with regard to 3d support. NVIDIA is undoubtedly the way to go for linux graphics (though still not perfect) and nouveau has actually become quite usable of late (at least for me and my GE 240 card). Avoid AMD gpus like the plague if you have better things to do than tearing your hair out trying to make things work. |
| tracyanne May 29, 2012 10:12 PM EDT |
I did it again. I was thinking ATI. |
| caitlyn May 29, 2012 10:31 PM EDT |
I've also had good luck with Intel and VIA graphics. Of course, that isn't high end stuff, but neither is the NVIDIA chipset in my desktop. |
| claudecat May 29, 2012 11:31 PM EDT |
My experience with Intel graphics (HP Mini 110) has been mostly good as well Caitlyn. I'm always amazed that desktop effects are even possible on the little beast, yet they almost invariably work well - the exception being the latest Kubuntu release (soon to be replaced by something-or-other). |
| Koriel May 30, 2012 2:08 AM EDT |
Oooh they admitted it, and ive been harping on about their cr@p drivers now for nigh on two years, what took them so long to get a clue.
It was the worse purchase I ever made. I have a sneaky suspicion my NVidia card in my media unit is about to expire, getting some artifacts on occasion but its over 6 years old so i think its time for a replacement anyways and you can bet its not gonna be AMD probably another NVidia as they have been rock solid and reliable for me. |
| PsynoKhi0 May 30, 2012 12:55 PM EDT |
@tracyanne : "fglrx" is the proprietary drivers suite that officially supports a set list of distros: Red Hat, SUSE, Ubuntu and Mandriva. I.e. historically it's been aimed squarely at the workstation market. Radeon-grade products that can run fglrx are all HD series, although HD2000 through HD4000 will have to content with the FOSS driver soon: they are directx 10 products, win8 is coming out soon and ms prolly wants everybody to pretend vista never happened, so yeah... "fglrx" shares a common code-base with the windows counterpart too. Unfortunately few consumer Linux desktop applications require more horsepower. The FOSS "radeon" driver is developed based on the documentation AMD releases. AMD hired a couple of engineers recently to get things moving. Performance with those compared to "fglrx" depends on usage and what card you run. There are truck loads of benchmarks on Phoronix. Feature-wise, they are lacking some "basic" stuff like dynamic clocking (especially interesting for notebooks) and fancier bits like CrossFire. See http://www.x.org/wiki/RadeonFeature |
| BernardSwiss May 30, 2012 5:06 PM EDT |
Hmmm, What should I make of this? http://www.free3d.org/#high-end_3000_fps_benchmark_reports If that's a meaningful source of information, then ATI-based cards seem to lead the way for FOSS graphics-card drivers / FOSS graphics-card performance. |
| PsynoKhi0 May 30, 2012 5:40 PM EDT |
glxgears is usually regarded as a poor tool to compare performance from different vendors. http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=radeon_ma... http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=nouveau_l... http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=intel_lin... Those are bit closer to real-case scenarios... Not HardOCP close, but better than glxgear. Comments to those articles are usually worth reading too. |
| lxerguest May 31, 2012 10:35 AM EDT |
Thanks for all the info guys.After analyzing all this data, I guess I will not bother adding a discrete graphics card to my open source powered Intel mainboard.(I'll check back again in a year ;)) |
| JaseP May 31, 2012 12:30 PM EDT |
Quoting: I have a sneaky suspicion my NVidia card in my media unit is about to expire,... Mine bit the dust about a month ago,... I think the things are pre-programed for end of life... I had to do a reinstall,... That's how badly my X-server system got screwed up... Went to Kubuntu, with Cairo-dock too. Less clipping, and smoother operation than the nVidia graphics versus the internal Intel GMA3150. Although the nVidia was faster at OpenGL when it was working... |
| Koriel May 31, 2012 1:36 PM EDT |
@JaseP I got lucky, I just upgraded to the latest NVidia driver and the artifacts disappeared so fingers crossed it stays that way. Its probably about time I upgraded anyway as its so old it doesn't have much in the way of video acceleration or vdpau. VLC handles movies fine at 1080p, but flash without acceleration can't go beyond 720p without going into slomo. |
| CFWhitman May 31, 2012 1:41 PM EDT |
Quoting:I did it again. I was thinking ATI. ATI and AMD are the same thing when you are talking about graphics cards, since AMD bought ATI a few years back (and AMD never made graphics chipsets before that as far as I am aware). I've had a decent experience with AMD/ATI cards recently with the fglrx drivers by setting all my media playback software to output to OpenGL. Of course, the open source drivers seem to work fine for everything other than serious OpenGL performance. The open source drivers actually do OpenGL better than many combinations of open source drivers with various hardware, but they still pale very much in comparison with the proprietary drivers for AMD or NVidia (for OpenGL). |
| Koriel May 31, 2012 3:09 PM EDT |
I use The Register's term for the AMD/ATI merger which is DAMMIT. |
| BernardSwiss May 31, 2012 6:15 PM EDT |
@CFWhitman I don't think you wrote what you actually meant to say ??? |
| BernardSwiss May 31, 2012 6:25 PM EDT |
Can you get even get an Intel graphics card? I suppose there are a few others for highly specialized uses (CAD, DTP, etc) that I would never see, but I'm talking about desktop systems. Every discrete card I see seems to be based on ATI or nVidia, or very occasionally Matrox. |
| Khamul May 31, 2012 6:38 PM EDT |
I'm surprised Matrox is even in business. According to their website, they even have Linux drivers for their cards (at least the M-series ones), though it doesn't say if they're open-source or not (doubtful). It looks like they've basically abandoned the consumer market and are targeting the high-end workstation market exclusively. |
| CFWhitman Jun 01, 2012 3:12 AM EDT |
@BernardSwiss I don't think there was anything wrong in my post, but I edited it slightly for clarification now. Intel drivers are not for discrete cards, but for motherboard graphics chipsets. There used to be other popular makers of discrete video cards like S3, Matrox, and PowerVR, but at this point the market is almost entirely dominated by NVidia and AMD. |
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