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. 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. 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. His general statement isn't wrong. Its correct, if you are using 3d or looking for a better driver, if you just use it for plain 2d then the radeon driver is fine, but lets not be apologists for ATI's shoddy drivers. With that said I'll be looking into the latest driver shortly, I'll report back with my findings. Cheers Todd -- Systems Administrator ---------------------------------- Soho VFX - Visual Effects Studio 99 Atlantic Avenue, Suite 303 Toronto, Ontario, M6K 3J8 (416) 516-7863 http://www.sohovfx.com ---------------------------------- mike wrote:
On Tuesday 14 June 2005 06:44, D'Arcy MacIsaac wrote:
or an ATi based card. Any comments or insights would be greatly appreciated! Thanx... -Ubence
Go with the Nvidia, unless you're really into pain and massive annoyance. I imagine both have great lines of cards, but in terms of linux (and bsd) friendliness, nvidia's the only serious game in town (stupid easy SINGLE driver install for most of their models (by single I'm comparing it to that monstrosity of a web site that ATI has you hunt around to find just the right driver for your particular card), and great performance).
Gosh, that's strange. The ATI drivers were included with the distro. Didn't have to download them. And they installed without any problems.
ATIs on the other hand are an abhorrence in Linux. I should know, my Linux desktop at work (a Dell optiplex 280) has an ATI X300 on it. I did try their most recent driver (with the gui installer and all), and the best I've gotten with it now is 2D, 3D doesn't work. I did have 3D working at one point with the card, on SUSE I believe using the older fglrx drivers that were on the 9.3 dvd, but not now. Even when I've seen 3D working on it though (under linux), performance has been subpar. My old GeForce2 would've given better results I think.
I picked up the latest from SUSE. Same as the ATI site, installed and work flawlessly. BTW the card is a 9800pro on a dual AMD platform. AS for yours, I wouldn't even purchase a dell. Most that I've seen, and we have about 125 of them at work, are the worst excuse for a computer I've seen. Shoddy workmanship and cheap parts.
If you can't get it to work, that's fine. But your general statement is just plain wrong.
Mike