Nvidia or ATI: driver quality

Message

dentharg · Post by **dentharg** » Wed Apr 02, 2008 8:17 am

I am about to buy a new graphics card and wandering what horse to bet on. I've heard that ATI drivers recently got better under Linux and nVidia's are bad under Vista (which unfortunately I will have to use).

So: what quality are nvidia vs. ati drivers under Linux? Is nvidia support for Linux still significantly better then ATI's?

Thanks for your opinions.

tarpman · Post by **tarpman** » Wed Apr 02, 2008 10:14 am

nvidia was still the king last I heard.

Veldrin · Post by **Veldrin** » Wed Apr 02, 2008 10:28 am

nvidia is still better, but it lacks hibernation support - which is rather annoying on a laptop/notebook

dentharg · Post by **dentharg** » Wed Apr 02, 2008 10:51 am

But is nVidia much much better than ATI?

And if ATI's drivers get better - how soon do you assume they can reach nVidia's quality?

Currently I am using Intel GMA on my mobo but need better rendering speeds. And if nVidia fails to deliver good quality drivers for Vista - this is a problem for me. So: sooner nVidia will deliver good drivers for Vista or ATI for Linux?

col · Post by **col** » Wed Apr 02, 2008 10:54 am

My ATI card has no support for video playback with the latest ATI driver.....RADEON HD3200.

now thats pretty lame. Do yourself a favor & get an Nvidia.

dentharg · Post by **dentharg** » Wed Apr 02, 2008 11:14 am

Looks like nvidia again

cwstjdenobs · Post by **cwstjdenobs** » Thu Apr 03, 2008 6:21 am

I'm also stuck with Vista for some things and haven't had any problems with either the Linux or Win drivers for my 8800 gt. ATI's windows drivers have always been fast but a bit crash happy, and I've never managed to get there Linux drivers to work. If you're more bothered about things working and looking right, go for Nvidia. If you want high 3DMark scores and are not too bothered about system stability and things not working/looking like they should go for ATI. Oh and ATI's Linux drivers are never feature complete and tend to be 6 months to 2 years behind there windows ones.

tarpman · Post by **tarpman** » Thu Apr 03, 2008 6:24 am

Veldrin wrote:nvidia is still better, but it lacks hibernation support - which is rather annoying on a laptop/notebook

Say what? Suspend to RAM and hibernate (tuxonice) are both working nearly perfectly (just fails resume from suspend to RAM once in a while) with recent (169.*) nvidia drivers. Don't even have to kill compiz first any more.

dentharg · Post by **dentharg** » Thu Apr 03, 2008 6:37 am

I'll go for nVidia again then

Aquiles · Post by **Aquiles** » Thu Apr 03, 2008 6:38 am

I don't know about the quality, but what I can say is that it has always been more difficult for me to get working an ATI card than an Nvidia (I mean with 3D acceleration and all the stuff).

So, as long as it's easy to get an nvidia working, I'll stick with it.

Veldrin · Post by **Veldrin** » Thu Apr 03, 2008 7:39 am

tarpman wrote:
Veldrin wrote:nvidia is still better, but it lacks hibernation support - which is rather annoying on a laptop/notebook
Say what? Suspend to RAM and hibernate (tuxonice) are both working nearly perfectly (just fails resume from suspend to RAM once in a while) with recent (169.*) nvidia drivers. Don't even have to kill compiz first any more.

Hmm.. from my experience, tuxonice does not work - well it suspends, but it never comes back. suspend2ram works flawless for me.

Any hints, on how to get it working - or what did you do to get it working?

cheers
V.

d2_racing · Post by **d2_racing** » Thu Apr 03, 2008 11:43 am

Hi, I have a ATI FireGL 256 Meg ,a each time that I upgrade the driver, like 8.45 to 8.47, I have some bugs that was resolve a long time ago and they came back, again and again.

Go with a Nvidia

depontius · Post by **depontius** » Thu Apr 03, 2008 12:29 pm

Don't forget that the picture is changing. I'll have to agree that as far as binary drivers go, nVidia has been doing better than ATI.

But now that AMD/ATI is releasing the documentation for ATI chipsets, I expect serious improvements in the OSS (think "radeon"++) drivers. Perhaps the ATI closed-source drivers will continue to offer the highest 3D performance for some time, but I expect the OSS drivers to become "adequate", especially for non-gaming usage, within the next year or so. I would also expect the OSS drivers to offer better stability across platform variations.

shazam75 · Post by **shazam75** » Sat May 31, 2008 11:01 am

thanks all, this has also helped me decide - I was thinking of ATI but will have to stick with NVIDIA for now.

Cheers
Shelton.

sips · Post by **sips** » Sat May 31, 2008 5:10 pm

My old laptop (ACER) had Radeon Xpress 1100 (or something) card and it just worked with open source drivers, but my old machine burn'd down (somehow).
So i bought a new one (DELL) with NVIDIA graphics (8xxx series) and it is just crap (for ex. *.avi playback, opengl screensaver, a.s.o. are hacking).

It seems that ATI rock's.

El Tazar · Post by **El Tazar** » Sat May 31, 2008 10:34 pm

d2_racing wrote:Hi, I have a ATI FireGL 256 Meg ,a each time that I upgrade the driver, like 8.45 to 8.47, I have some bugs that was resolve a long time ago and they came back, again and again.

Go with a Nvidia

Same here, I've always had to postpone upgrading the drivers to when I would have the time for fixing them - Today I had it with the proprietary drivers and went for the open-source versions but they're still some way behind.

sonicbhoc · Post by **sonicbhoc** » Sat May 31, 2008 11:41 pm

For now, stick with nVidia. But maybe in the next few generations, once the ATI open source drivers get good, and the released specs help the current drivers get better, I'm going ATI all the way.

d2_racing · Post by **d2_racing** » Sat May 31, 2008 11:56 pm

If the Open Source driver is great in a couple of years, ATI will be #1 in the Linux World, no doubt about that.

NaterGator · Post by **NaterGator** » Sun Jun 01, 2008 4:01 am

The open source ATI drivers have seemed to make leaps and bounds in the past 5 months or so. There are relatively few developers working on them, but they churn out improvements almost weekly and a milestone almost monthly these days.

If you are planning on running a new ATI card though, expect to be building Xorg, mesa, ati drivers, etc from git. Then again you are a gentoo user, so that shouldn't phase you too much.

i92guboj · Post by **i92guboj** » Sun Jun 01, 2008 4:03 am

Don't buy an ATi if you plan to use a dual head setup. It's just plain doesn't work, at least, with the 2600 I tried a couple of weeks ago.

enzobelmont · Post by **enzobelmont** » Sun Jun 01, 2008 4:36 am

just two words:

ATI SUCKS

here the reasons:
i'm an ati user since 2 years now and its support is the worst in the linux world. AMD bought ati and things got better, but just a little.

AIGLX support took soo looooong to get my card working on compiz. and it runs slow. if you want to know a little more, go to phoronix forums and check a year ago threads.... and compare. there were very annoying bugs (resolution problems, no hibernation/suspend, no dual head, etc.)

ati now releases a new driver every month, but it looks the same (very minor changes)

at present moment my ATI card runs in a decent way except for a problem in refresh rate. (maybe i've get used to it poor performance).

I know that problems are caused by driver, because in windows my ati card works fine.

in these two years no hardware of my own has dissapointed me as much as my ati card. (seriously no joke)

That was my laptop.

in my desktop i've a NVIDIA. And it works very well. (nothing more to say)

sorry my english... (if i could xpress me in my native language i would warn you more specificly... sorry)

one last advice:

STAY AWAY FROM FGLRX driver.

NaterGator · Post by **NaterGator** » Sun Jun 01, 2008 4:45 am

AMD/ATI just hopped on the open source/linux bandwagon for real. You can't expect them to have a fully developed linux driver in two months that allows you to run crysis on a 30" LCD at 60fps.

Both the OSS and fglrx drivers are getting better. The OSS driver seems to be getting better faster, but the fglrx driver is apparently slated for a big leap in usability in like the next 3 releases.

Saying that ATI sucks and they can't write a linux driver because you tried them a year ago is weak, IMO. The drivers are far from great at this point, but IMO ATI makes a better card than nVidia these days and it's not going to be long before ATI's linux drivers are fully usable and shortly thereafter getting mature.

SeaTiger · Post by **SeaTiger** » Sun Jun 01, 2008 5:38 am

Well, with linux, if you want to have some reasonable performance (video playback, compiz-fusion effect) today and NOT tomorrow, NOT hopefully in 3 months, but today, go with nvidia.

enzobelmont · Post by **enzobelmont** » Sun Jun 01, 2008 5:38 am

NaterGator wrote:the fglrx driver is apparently slated for a big leap in usability in like the next 3 releases.

he he he ATI will not cheat on me again.

10-23-2007 was the "big leap" date.
lets be realists: we are waiting for about 2 years for this "leap", and nothing happens.

sorry my hope on ATI is over.

AMD Catalyst 8.4 Linux Driver
8.3 - Can't restart/kill X or log out of xdm/gdm/etc.
8.42 - No direct rendering!
8.02 "Another Cr*ppy Release Edition" ACRE
Problem with 8.01: "Failed to initialize ASIC in kernel"

as you comment in your previous post the TRUE linux hope lies on RadeonHD (free driver for x500+ based cards) and xf86-video-ati (xorg driver for x300 cards) not on ATI.

NaterGator · Post by **NaterGator** » Sun Jun 01, 2008 7:01 pm

enzobelmont wrote:
NaterGator wrote:the fglrx driver is apparently slated for a big leap in usability in like the next 3 releases.
he he he ATI will not cheat on me again.

10-23-2007 was the "big leap" date.
lets be realists: we are waiting for about 2 years for this "leap", and nothing happens.

sorry my hope on ATI is over.

AMD Catalyst 8.4 Linux Driver
8.3 - Can't restart/kill X or log out of xdm/gdm/etc.
8.42 - No direct rendering!
8.02 "Another Cr*ppy Release Edition" ACRE
Problem with 8.01: "Failed to initialize ASIC in kernel"

as you comment in your previous post the TRUE linux hope lies on RadeonHD (free driver for x500+ based cards) and xf86-video-ati (xorg driver for x300 cards) not on ATI.

Kinda like my hope with nVidia ended when they refused to address the issue of writing a driver for nForce 3 GART managment in Vista so I could use my dual core machine (hence the reason I switched to linux)

nVidia promised compatibility and then gave us all the finger. So neither company is a bed of roses; nVidia is ahead of AMD's linux drivers right now, but IMO AMD writes better overall drivers and will catch up and surpass nVidia sometime in the future. You gotta decide if the waiting is worth it.