Ati Radeon X300 support

mr98ai · Posted: Sat Sep 18, 2004 2:40 pm Post subject: Ati Radeon X300 support

Does anybody know if there is support for the x300 card? I am thinking of purchasing this card, but I would like to know how well supported it is first. The x300 uses the new pci-express instead of agp... not sure if that makes it more difficult or not. When I go to ATI website and try and download linux drivers, it lists most (if not all) of the 9xxx cards, both pci and agp, but I can't find the x300 listed at all.

If you have (not) managed to get this card working, please give me a brief description of what you done.

Thanks in advance.

njs12345 · n00b Joined: 13 Mar 2004 Posts: 7

Do yourself a favour and go with nVidia - their cards are much better supported in general under Linux (and indeed are probably faster)

mr98ai · Posted: Sat Sep 18, 2004 3:36 pm Post subject:

Thanks for your response, but I cannot agree with your advice. For me (this is not meant to be a flame), ATI has almost always been on top. My co-worker and I build computers once in a while, and while he has been an nvidia fan, I think he is slowly switching over to ATI.

It is possible that nvidia has better linux support, i.e. easier to get your card working, on average, then a comparable ati card, but if you can get the ati configured it will perform very well. Empirically, I have found that the nvidia's burn out quicker.

Wedge_ · Posted: Sat Sep 18, 2004 3:57 pm Post subject:

Have you used ATI cards on Linux before? The current Linux drivers will not give you the same level of performance as the Windows drivers do, and can often be difficult to get working. They also don't appear to be improving very quickly at the moment, and I'm pretty sure the X300 isn't supported yet. They were relatively quick to get X800 support added, so it presumably shouldn't be too hard to add X300 support as well. However, you'll probably need to wait a month or two for an updated driver. You shouldn't rule out going for an nvidia card, or maybe waiting a month or so and seeing what happens. It may be worth contacting ATI and see if they can tell you when X300 support will be available.
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mr98ai · Posted: Sat Sep 18, 2004 4:01 pm Post subject:

Wedge_ · Posted: Sat Sep 18, 2004 4:32 pm Post subject:

Well, if you're sure, then go for the X300, but like I said, it may take some time for support to become available.

Out of interest, when you say "UT", do you mean the original, or 2003/2004?
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Per Ardua Ad Astra
The Earth is the cradle of the mind, but we cannot live forever in a cradle - Konstantin E. Tsiolkovsky
Gentoo Radeon FAQ

mr98ai · Posted: Sat Sep 18, 2004 4:44 pm Post subject:

Wedge_ · Posted: Sat Sep 18, 2004 4:55 pm Post subject:

mr98ai · Posted: Sat Sep 18, 2004 5:02 pm Post subject:

I have heard that Unreal switched from an opengl type implementation to a directx implementation. If that is true, could that not be a reason for slower performance in ut 2004? Not that directx is slower than opengl, but just that these particular drivers have poor directx support, or better opengl support?

Wedge_ · Posted: Sat Sep 18, 2004 5:59 pm Post subject:

The newer UT games were written using DirectX, and since Linux has no DirectX support (excluding what you can do with Wine), the Linux port uses OpenGL. The Windows version runs faster using D3D than it does in OpenGL IIRC, and I think they spent less time on the OpenGL code than the D3D code. It probably doesn't help the Linux performance, but the drivers could definitely be better as well. The fastest drivers I've used were actually the old 2.9.12 and 2.9.13 versions, which I think were the last ones released before ATI moved development to Canada. After that, performance went down a bit, and hasn't really gotten back to where it was, although they have fixed several problems and made some stability improvements along the way.
_________________
Per Ardua Ad Astra
The Earth is the cradle of the mind, but we cannot live forever in a cradle - Konstantin E. Tsiolkovsky
Gentoo Radeon FAQ