Hi. Anyone here use new ATI Radeon graphics cards under Linux? I'm looking at buying a new mid range graphics card. Ie, either an nVidia 5700 Ultra or ATI Radeon 9600XT. The supplier I'm looking at is out of stock on the nVidia cards. So I'm considering an ATI. I've never used an ATI video card. I moved from Voodoo's to nVidia way back when Quake 3 came out. In particular I'm interested to know if dual display and TV out works with ATI video cards under Linux. I'm pretty sure this works with nVidia boards under Linux. Anyone here doing things like that on an ATI? Regards -- Oliver Jones » Director » oliver.jones(a)deeperdesign.com » +64 (21) 41 2238 Deeper Design Limited » +64 (7) 377 3328 » www.deeperdesign.com
Oliver Jones wrote:
Hi.
Anyone here use new ATI Radeon graphics cards under Linux? I'm looking at buying a new mid range graphics card. Ie, either an nVidia 5700 Ultra or ATI Radeon 9600XT. The supplier I'm looking at is out of stock on the nVidia cards. So I'm considering an ATI.
I've never used an ATI video card. I moved from Voodoo's to nVidia way back when Quake 3 came out.
In particular I'm interested to know if dual display and TV out works with ATI video cards under Linux. I'm pretty sure this works with nVidia boards under Linux.
Anyone here doing things like that on an ATI?
The dual display in the Radeon Mobility 320M on my laptop doesn't work properly. The hardware supports driving the lcd and the ext monitor at different framerates and XF86 claims to support it too but it doesn't work. The last time I looked at this was in August so it may have changed by now. The advice I was given regarding ATI or Nvidia by a guy who programs with OpenGL under Linux for a living was to go with Nvidia because the drivers always work. Unfortunately with laptops your choice is limited and I ended up with an ATI chipset. Not sure if that is true but I'm told that nvidia use the same source tree for their win and Linux drivers so you'd expect them always to work at least as well as the windows ones. HTH g -- Glenn Ramsey <glenn(a)componic.co.nz> http://www.componic.co.nz
Not sure if that is true but I'm told that nvidia use the same source tree for their win and Linux drivers so you'd expect them always to work at least as well as the windows ones.
Yes this is the case. They use a unified source tree. Which is cool. It is just a pity they're not more open. But I don't think you could find a graphics company that supports Linux better with binary only drivers than nVidia. Anyone else had any experiences with ATI and Linux? Regards -- Oliver Jones » Director » oliver.jones(a)deeperdesign.com » +64 (21) 41 2238 Deeper Design Limited » +64 (7) 377 3328 » www.deeperdesign.com
Yes this is the case. They use a unified source tree. Which is cool. It is just a pity they're not more open. But I don't think you could find a graphics company that supports Linux better with binary only drivers than nVidia.
Anyone else had any experiences with ATI and Linux?
Craig Box has an ATI card running under linux. His notes are at http://www.wlug.org.nz/RadeonNotes. Daniel
On Fri, 2003-12-19 at 00:56, Oliver Jones wrote:
In particular I'm interested to know if dual display and TV out works with ATI video cards under Linux. I'm pretty sure this works with nVidia boards under Linux. Anyone here doing things like that on an ATI?
I have a Radeon 9000 configured as a dual-head card. The biggest pain with it is you need XFree86 4.3, and there's no official Debian packages for that yet (even unstable). This also means you need a 2.6 kernel, or the patch for 2.4 with the 4.3 DRI driver. Though I discovered, on the 9000 at least, that DRI doesn't work if the card is configured for dual-head display, and there's only plans to support accelerated 3D on the primary display anyway. On the positive side, the ATI driver supports the xinerama extension, and gnome-2.4 is fully xinerama-aware and does a great job of sorting windows onto one display or the other, unlike under nVidia's 'twinview' system where windows would often end up split between the two displays. With the tradeoff being twinview gives you accelerated 3D on both displays, I'm looking at getting a nice dual-DVI GeForce 5700 sometime after xmas when I have money again. -- Colin Palmer <colinp(a)waikato.ac.nz> University of Waikato, ITS Division
On Thu, 2003-12-18 at 11:56, Oliver Jones wrote:
In particular I'm interested to know if dual display and TV out works with ATI video cards under Linux. I'm pretty sure this works with nVidia boards under Linux. Im running dual head on a Radeon 7500. The drivers in X 4.3 have 2d and 3d support for cards up to the FireGL8800, and 2d only support for the 9500 Pro and 9700 Pro.
If you want 3d support on the newer cards, ATI has binary drivers on their website.
Anyone here doing things like that on an ATI?
As i said im running 2 monitors. I haven't tried TV out. DRI doesn't work on dual-head, and it will probally not be resolved untill at least X 4.4 I have an email from Mike Harris (X hacker at redhat) which gives a rundown of the support of ATI cards if you want a copy Alastair -- (o< - A l a s t a i r P o r t e r //\ V_/_ alastair(a)linuxexperience.com
As Daniel points out, I have got a Radeon card (9500 Pro) working under both kernel 2.4 and 2.6. By all accounts NVIDIA have better support, better drivers, better installation procedures, a more regular driver update (through ATI have hired a new guy and are going for a release every 3 months) and have it all going for them, but when you get the ATI card going, it does what it needs to do. Both dual head and TV out work on the Radeon. (Just as I'm writing this your message saying you've decided NVidia comes through) - good choice. -----Original Message----- From: Oliver Jones [mailto:oliver(a)deeper.co.nz] Sent: Thursday, 18 December 2003 11:57 a.m. To: Waikato Linux Users Group Subject: [wlug] ATI Graphics cards. Hi. Anyone here use new ATI Radeon graphics cards under Linux? I'm looking at buying a new mid range graphics card. Ie, either an nVidia 5700 Ultra or ATI Radeon 9600XT. The supplier I'm looking at is out of stock on the nVidia cards. So I'm considering an ATI. I've never used an ATI video card. I moved from Voodoo's to nVidia way back when Quake 3 came out. In particular I'm interested to know if dual display and TV out works with ATI video cards under Linux. I'm pretty sure this works with nVidia boards under Linux. Anyone here doing things like that on an ATI? Regards -- Oliver Jones > Director > <mailto:oliver.jones(a)deeperdesign.com> oliver.jones(a)deeperdesign.com > +64 (21) 41 2238 Deeper Design Limited > +64 (7) 377 3328 > <http://www.deeperdesign.com> www.deeperdesign.com
participants (6)
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Alastair Porter -
Colin Palmer -
Craig Box -
Daniel Lawson -
Glenn Ramsey -
Oliver Jones