On Tue, 2005-06-14 at 11:14 -0400, M. Todd Smith wrote:
Mike,
The default install of Suse 9.2 (I don't know about 9.3) will recognize ATI cards but will not give any 3d performance whatsoever. It's the same as with the nVidia cards in that respect.
I've done the install about 25 times now on several different types of machines. Across the board no 3d performance.
ATI makes horrible linux drivers that give half the performance of the equivalent Windows ones. I don't have anything to compare linux vs windows performance of the ATi driver, but I'll tell you this: My cheap-o Radeon 9250 128mb (64bit) comes very close to my housemate's ASUS GeForce FX5700 128mb (128mbit) of almost three times the price. Gears give 1430 odd fps on the ATi, 1600 odd on the nVidia. In games the performance is much closer.
Their support and performance under OpenGL doesn't seem to be half of what it is for DirectX. I'm dissapointed by them daily.
The radeon driver is installed by default, and while this is compatible with my cards, it is not the driver that offers the best performance (the fglrx driver is, which has to be downloaded from ATI's website and installed). Getting 3d to work is a cumbersome exercise, and should be quite easy, it isn't. I've been working with linux for over 10 years and it still took my two days to get 3d running. Have a look at the drivers and README in ftp://ftp.suse.com/pub/suse/i386/supplementary/X/ATI/suse93/i386/fglrx/8.14.13/
It's really not hard if you follow the instructions. The only thing that's a little unclear is the Sax part of it. Don't select "enable 3d" - don't bother with that, it doesn't make a difference. SUSE 9.3 comes with a fglrx driver, which is suspect is just a renamed radeon driver. It doesn't give 3d. You have to delete its source in /usr/src/kernel-modules and compile the one that comes with the ati driver. Make sure you're using the right version of the module! I think the included fglrx driver is just to make it easier for them to setup sax and every thing to make it easier for the user to set up the driver. Just drop the correct fglrx driver in and go. That's pretty much all I had to do. -- Kind Regards Hans du Plooy SagacIT (Pty) Ltd hansdp at sagacit dot com