Well, I don't know about ATI drivers. But, outside of a few problems getting the drivers in certain releases to behave I have had pretty good results with Nvidia in linux. In fact if I have to futz with them I have always found a way to got them to work. I have had repeated problems with M$ OS and any video drivers. I used to own a Voodoo3-2000 and also have had a few Nvidia cards. And it just doesn't matter what card/drivers you use, it's usually always the same with M$ OSes. In Windows the best way, of course, is to completely uninstall the old drivers before updating to a newer version. This is to avoid having old registry entries and possible cross-linked *.dll's (which can at times wreek havoc). Generally in Linux I usually just have to do either and "rpm -Uhv", with an occasional "--force and/or --nodeps" or just a "make install" and all the old stuff is over written. No registry, maybe an edit of the X config. Try that in Windows, muck the registry and see how well the OS boots - HA! I have been intrigued by ATI's 9700, especially since I understand the chip is much more programmable, down to the assmebly level in some cases. Means that the program can make some specific calls and utlilze the hardware on a deeper level. It has been kicking the crap out of Nvidia cards in benchmarks and real world tests. I really hope that ATI gets the drivers for Linux up to speed though. All in all, my GF3-Ti200 is still giving me nice fps and good T&L. Cheers, Curtis
Get back to me when the old ATI *open* specs get good implementations. I heard so much about the ATI community support, and yet I could never get any to work worth a damn. nvidia's drivers just work.
Anders