[opensuse] ATI Graphics Cards on openSuse
Greetings all, I have moved away from ATi cards for a year or so now, and am considering upgrading the card on one box. Before I blindly go out a get an Nvidia card I wanted to check here to see if the situation with the Ati drivers had improved. Does anyone have any recent experiences with these newer card and openSuse, good or bad. Thanks, Jim F -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org
Jim Flanagan wrote:
Greetings all,
I have moved away from ATi cards for a year or so now, and am considering upgrading the card on one box. Before I blindly go out a get an Nvidia card I wanted to check here to see if the situation with the Ati drivers had improved. Does anyone have any recent experiences with these newer card and openSuse, good or bad.
Thanks,
Jim F
In my experience, ATI proprietary drivers have steadily improved in quality, and for the most part work quite well. I have no problem with them. YMMV Their installers work better each time, so much so that I do longer use the command line version of their installers. -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org
John Andersen wrote:
Jim Flanagan wrote:
Greetings all,
I have moved away from ATi cards for a year or so now, and am considering upgrading the card on one box. Before I blindly go out a get an Nvidia card I wanted to check here to see if the situation with the Ati drivers had improved. Does anyone have any recent experiences with these newer card and openSuse, good or bad.
Thanks,
Jim F
In my experience, ATI proprietary drivers have steadily improved in quality, and for the most part work quite well. I have no problem with them.
YMMV
Their installers work better each time, so much so that I do longer use the command line version of their installers.
My own experience has been that the drivers work well, but if you are planning to get compiz or something alike, depending on the model (I have a Radeon 1600), you may have to be prepare to do a some xorg.conf tweaking before you can get it to work properly. -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org
I have moved away from ATi cards for a year or so now, and am considering upgrading the card on one box. Before I blindly go out a get an Nvidia card I wanted to check here to see if the situation with the Ati drivers had improved. Does anyone have any recent experiences with these newer card and openSuse, good or bad.
In my experience, ATI proprietary drivers have steadily improved in quality, and for the most part work quite well. I have no problem with them.
The drivers are better, but anything would be better than the mess they were in for so long. Generally speaking.. for normal desktop use, they do work OK, but there are still a lot of gotchas. For example, there is some weirdness in the driver (even the latest one) that breaks things horribly if you run MythTV. Without tweaking, using an ATI card with MythTV can mean full system lockups at worst, or more often scrambled video when changing channels on a TV tuner, painfully slow menu transitions, and unresponding menus (all happens on my system with the ATI card). This is all known and loads of discussion on the web about it... how to get around some probs.. others you just have to live with. Personally, I really regret buying a computer with an ATI card (I have a dedicated PC for my MythTV media center). C. -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org
Clayton wrote:
I have moved away from ATi cards for a year or so now, and am considering upgrading the card on one box. Before I blindly go out a get an Nvidia card I wanted to check here to see if the situation with the Ati drivers had improved. Does anyone have any recent experiences with these newer card and openSuse, good or bad.
In my experience, ATI proprietary drivers have steadily improved in quality, and for the most part work quite well. I have no problem with them.
The drivers are better, but anything would be better than the mess they were in for so long.
Generally speaking.. for normal desktop use, they do work OK, but there are still a lot of gotchas. For example, there is some weirdness in the driver (even the latest one) that breaks things horribly if you run MythTV. Without tweaking, using an ATI card with MythTV can mean full system lockups at worst, or more often scrambled video when changing channels on a TV tuner, painfully slow menu transitions, and unresponding menus (all happens on my system with the ATI card). This is all known and loads of discussion on the web about it... how to get around some probs.. others you just have to live with.
Personally, I really regret buying a computer with an ATI card (I have a dedicated PC for my MythTV media center).
C.
Thanks to all for the good advise. Sounds like ATI is getting in gear with Linux. I may try one again, depends on what's on sale. Many thanks, Jim F -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org
Thanks to all for the good advise. Sounds like ATI is getting in gear with Linux. I may try one again, depends on what's on sale.
Many thanks,
Jim F
If you're planning on doing anything at all that requires 3D acceleration, go with nvidia. I made the mistake of sticking with ati despite everything when I bought my laptop 3 years ago and I regret it every month they release a new driver. I swore off the ati driver this past year because there was always one major thing broken or unsupported and a handful of (usually minor) things fixed each release. Case in point, the latest driver still doesn't support xserver 1.5, which means if you're going to be using opensuse 11.1, you might as well just use the radeon driver because you get the same performance from both. At least until next month, or whenever it is they get around to supporting the latest xserver. I used to be a gamer and most games I've tried didn't work or were rendered so badly they were unplayable. I couldn't even get blender to work properly with some of the releases. Granted my card is an X700 and I'd hope newer cards get better treatment. On the opposite end of the spectrum, I've had practically zero headaches using the radeon driver. It handles 3D acceleration a lot more gracefully than the fglrx driver though it's touch and go when using wine. The only advantage fglrx has over the opensource driver is framerate. Save yourself the trouble - either get a nvidia card or be prepared to use the opensource radeon driver. Nkoli -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org
If you're planning on doing anything at all that requires 3D acceleration, go with nvidia.
Oh yah, I forgot about that since I don't game at all on the computer that has an ATI card. If you want to play games... particularly if you venture into Cedega or Wine for playing some more mainstream Windows games in Linux, ATI cards are often explicitly named as not supported (ie you take you chances) or not working at all (ie exactly that.. 100% not working) where nVidia cards work fine. It all comes down to what you want from your video card. General desktop, pretty much any card will do, including ATI. If you want the extras for gaming etc, then, as Nkoli said, skip ATI and go with nVidia. C. -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org
On Tue, Dec 16, 2008 at 9:14 AM, Nkoli <coomac@gmail.com> wrote:
If you're planning on doing anything at all that requires 3D acceleration, go with nvidia.
I have no problem with 3D on the ATI card in my laptop (X1400 or something). This is not to say I haven't struggled with it in the past, due to a couple of releases where opensuse and ATI disagreed about what directories things belonged in, and therefore a few odd bits were left laying around after an update. But it works well now. My view, going forward is that ATI is in a better position to succeed than is Nvidia, because Intel will prevent AMD from collapsing (to avoid monopoly restrictions). -- ----------JSA--------- Someone stole my tag line, so now I have this rental. -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org
If you're planning on doing anything at all that requires 3D acceleration, go with nvidia.
I have no problem with 3D on the ATI card in my laptop (X1400 or something).
Do you do any gaming? I know that Cedega explicitly states that on some games ATI will not work with any video driver up to the current release. Again, it all comes down to what you're using the vid card for. For gaming and for MythTV, ATI is a bad choice. For regular desktop, either card works fine. C. -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org
John Andersen wrote:
On Tue, Dec 16, 2008 at 9:14 AM, Nkoli <coomac@gmail.com> wrote:
If you're planning on doing anything at all that requires 3D acceleration, go with nvidia.
I have no problem with 3D on the ATI card in my laptop (X1400 or something).
My view, going forward is that ATI is in a better position to succeed than is Nvidia, because Intel will prevent AMD from collapsing (to avoid monopoly restrictions).
Interesting point. I remember way back when Microsoft invested something like $300 million in Apple, just to keep them alive to prevent monopoly issues. At the time I thought that was A LOT OF MONEY. Now with all the recent bank bailouts this seems like a pittance. I'm sure MS would, now, think it was way to much, esp after watching the I'm a Mac/PC commercials. -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org
John Andersen wrote:
Jim Flanagan wrote:
Greetings all,
I have moved away from ATi cards for a year or so now, and am considering upgrading the card on one box. Before I blindly go out a get an Nvidia card I wanted to check here to see if the situation with the Ati drivers had improved. Does anyone have any recent experiences with these newer card and openSuse, good or bad.
Thanks,
Jim F
In my experience, ATI proprietary drivers have steadily improved in quality, and for the most part work quite well. I have no problem with them.
YMMV
Their installers work better each time, so much so that I do longer use the command line version of their installers.
Jim, What John says has held true up through the last two ati-driver releases. the 8.9 driver works fine. The 8.10 and 8.11 driver suffer from performance issues .. and .. the 8.11 driver will not build on anything later than 10.3 due to missing code. See: https://bugzilla.novell.com/show_bug.cgi?id=444912 However, these are just the normal growing pains and I would have no hesitation in buying another ATI card for my linux boxes. Currently I have 6 boxes running ATI cards and 4 boxes running nvidia. I'm happy with both cards. I usually just go with whatever gives the most bang for the buck. It's hard to pass up a new 8800GT w/512M for $90 and even harder to pass up a new OEM ATI X800 PE w/256M GDDR3 for $35. -- David C. Rankin, J.D.,P.E. Rankin Law Firm, PLLC 510 Ochiltree Street Countdown for openSuSE 11.1 Nacogdoches, Texas 75961 http://counter.opensuse.org/11.1/small Telephone: (936) 715-9333 Facsimile: (936) 715-9339 www.rankinlawfirm.com -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org
On Tue, Dec 16, 2008 at 10:31 AM, David C. Rankin <drankinatty@suddenlinkmail.com> wrote:
What John says has held true up through the last two ati-driver releases. the 8.9 driver works fine. The 8.10 and 8.11 driver suffer from performance issues .. and .. the 8.11 driver will not build on anything later than 10.3 due to missing code. See:
And for the record David, 8.12 is out TODAY https://a248.e.akamai.net/f/674/9206/0/www2.ati.com/drivers/linux/catalyst_8... -- ----------JSA--------- Someone stole my tag line, so now I have this rental. -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org
John Andersen wrote:
On Tue, Dec 16, 2008 at 10:31 AM, David C. Rankin <drankinatty@suddenlinkmail.com> wrote:
What John says has held true up through the last two ati-driver releases. the 8.9 driver works fine. The 8.10 and 8.11 driver suffer from performance issues .. and .. the 8.11 driver will not build on anything later than 10.3 due to missing code. See:
And for the record David, 8.12 is out TODAY
https://a248.e.akamai.net/f/674/9206/0/www2.ati.com/drivers/linux/catalyst_8...
Sorry for the late reply. I've been dealing with this little pneumonia thing that has damn near killed me. One hell of a Christmas present ;-) The 8.12 driver has issues. 3D is broken and that funky performance issue that we have seen in now 8.10-8.12 is still there. I have posted separately about that and I've talked with Dirsch about it. More growing pains I guess. Evidently ATI/AMD doesn't have time for these Linux issues right now. So I'm not sure whether I should be looking forward to 9-1, or just real damn happy that 8-9 is still working flawlessly for me. -- David C. Rankin, J.D.,P.E. Rankin Law Firm, PLLC 510 Ochiltree Street Nacogdoches, Texas 75961 Telephone: (936) 715-9333 Facsimile: (936) 715-9339 www.rankinlawfirm.com -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org
On Mon, 15 Dec 2008 23:38:53 +0100, Jim Flanagan <linuxjim@jjfiii.com> wrote:
Greetings all,
I have moved away from ATi cards for a year or so now, and am considering upgrading the card on one box. Before I blindly go out a get an Nvidia card I wanted to check here to see if the situation with the Ati drivers had improved. Does anyone have any recent experiences with these newer card and openSuse, good or bad.
If you plan to use it as a media center, don't go ATI. I have several radeons and all of them suffer from video tearing.. Kjartan -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org
On Mon, Dec 15, 2008 at 17:38, Jim Flanagan <linuxjim@jjfiii.com> wrote:
Greetings all,
I have moved away from ATi cards for a year or so now, and am considering upgrading the card on one box. Before I blindly go out a get an Nvidia card I wanted to check here to see if the situation with the Ati drivers had improved. Does anyone have any recent experiences with these newer card and openSuse, good or bad.
I have heard of these "Issues" with the ATI drivers, but personally never had an issue. I install from the ATI repository since openSUSE 10.3, on various cards, and it always worked. The only issue on openSUSE 11.0 with ATI 3200HD is that if you switch from graphics to text mode (e.g. with ctrl+alt+f1) the text mode is distorted and if you go back to graphic mode it also is distorted. But why would you do that on a working system, when you can instead open the Konsole program? -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org
The only issue on openSUSE 11.0 with ATI 3200HD is that if you switch from graphics to text mode (e.g. with ctrl+alt+f1) the text mode is distorted and if you go back to graphic mode it also is distorted. But why would you do that on a working system, when you can instead open the Konsole program?
Maybe if X crashes/locks and you have to Ctrl+F1 to tty1 to recover? It happens :-) That distorted graphic/text mode thing sounds like a fairly major issue.. not something minor. Do you play 3D accel games (eg using Cedega/Wine)? Do you use multimedia tools (eg MythTV with it's real problem of video tearing on ATI cards)? If you do these thigns with an ATI card I'd like to know how you manage it since I have yet to see AT work right, or even at all in some cases. C. -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org
participants (8)
-
Andrew Joakimsen -
Clayton -
David C. Rankin -
Jim Flanagan -
John Andersen -
Jose -
Kjartan Geble Olsen -
Nkoli