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The first ATI r5xx/6xx X11 driver releaseThe first ATI r5xx/6xx X11 driver releasePosted Dec 1, 2007 22:58 UTC (Sat) by louie (subscriber, #3285)Parent article: The first ATI r5xx/6xx X11 driver release
I would love a 'cranky editor reviews video cards' article :) I'd like to upgrade the video in my current desktop box (very, very old card) but have had a hard time figuring out what (if anything) will get me decent dual-head performance with a Free driver. (I don't care about 3D, but I imagine others care about that too.)
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Yes! A grumpy editor video card review please! Posted Dec 2, 2007 2:07 UTC (Sun) by xuxa (guest, #29601) [Link] I second that emotion! I'd love to see a comparison of video cards that run well will free software (no closed-source drivers)...
Me too. Posted Dec 2, 2007 6:08 UTC (Sun) by undefined (guest, #40876) [Link] i third that, though feel free to disregard my opinion as i'm not a subscriber (but i don't block the non-flash ads and i try to post "polite, respectful, and informative" comments ;-). on my desktop i'm running an ati 9250 because it (in order of personal importance): 1. is a foss driver 2. supports dual head (separate screens, not xinerama, as the monitors are different resolutions and the secondary one always shows sysadmin stuff: ssh sessions, tail -f syslog, gkrellm) 3. has at least one dvi port 3. supports accelerated 2D 4. supports Xv 5. supports accelerated 3D well (definitely not fast, but very reliable/stable) the last motherboard i bought for my household (6 months ago) uses a K8M890 (openchrome) because though it has its problems, it's at least foss and actively developed/supported (and in a socket 939 miniatx form factor). the motherboard has a PCIe x16 slot, but currently there's nothing significantly better than the integrated K8M890 (where "significantly better" == "foss, 2D accel, 3D accel, Xv, XvMC"). there's a lot of good stuff on the horizon (ati documentation release & follow-on radeonhd driver, on-going nouveau development, rumors of discrete intel graphics, etc), but nothing quite there yet (from the regular video driver coverage i'm reading over at phoronix). in a year or two there will probably be mature foss drivers for all three vendors (intel, amd/ati, nvidia), but for the immediate future we need a grumby editor's review!
Unpleasant task in sight. Posted Dec 2, 2007 10:34 UTC (Sun) by xav (subscriber, #18536) [Link] I'm afraid our grumpy editor will get veeery grumpy when he tries various graphics cards under various graphic loads. In my experience, the r300 driver is the Free 3d driver that drives the fastest cards (ATI x850), and: - it's not the fastest driver around (fglrx and catalyst are way better on same hardware) - it has a tendency to lock the machine solid under 3d load - generally the 3d framework under linux isn't mature enough (try blender under compiz) But it's the best thing we have right now.
Video cards Posted Dec 2, 2007 14:41 UTC (Sun) by rfunk (subscriber, #4054) [Link] Short answer: G450-G550 Matroxes are best for 2D and for multi-head. Though for some weird reason my G450 didn't work in the latest Ubuntu. :-( (I only installed it because my ATI Radeon R100 stopped working due to a bug in the radeon driver!) I ended up getting a used Radeon 9200, which works great. Haven't tried to go dual with it yet though. It seems to be easier to get working cards if you don't care about DVI output, since there seems to be a small window between when manufacturers started supporting DVI and when they stopped providing open specs.
Video cards Posted Dec 2, 2007 17:03 UTC (Sun) by jwb (subscriber, #15467) [Link] Luckily you can get a DVI daughtercard for the G400 series. It's a bit sad that this is still one of the best cards you can get for X.org. Oh well. At least you can play Quake on it.
Video cards Posted Dec 3, 2007 16:50 UTC (Mon) by DG (subscriber, #16978) [Link] I'll second the G550 - they're quite cheap on ebay, and seem very reliable. Unfortunately they have no 3D capability, and are probably 5+ years old - hence I /think/ I'm missing out on 'new' stuff. I've also not found a distro that will magically generate the appropriate xorg.conf file for it, and have to revert to using my own each and every time. David.
Video cards Posted Dec 4, 2007 10:19 UTC (Tue) by zdzichu (subscriber, #17118) [Link] Sorry, that is simply not true. G550 has 3D capability, I'm using it to play Quake 3 Arena.
Careful of the G550 and DVI Posted Dec 5, 2007 8:48 UTC (Wed) by k8to (subscriber, #15413) [Link] G550 is a solid piece of kit, and a modern version has a nice small IC, and is very power efficient. However, it cannot reliably drive 1600x1200 over DVI. If your monitor has this resolution, or larger, and is a digital device like an LCD, then yuou should look elsewhere if you care about image quality.
Careful of the G550 and DVI Posted Dec 5, 2007 8:49 UTC (Wed) by k8to (subscriber, #15413) [Link] That is.. if you have this resolution or larger you'll be using VGA, and decoding in your monitor back to pixels, resulting in a slightly offset (and degraded) image, most of the time.
Video cards Posted Dec 5, 2007 21:01 UTC (Wed) by zooko (subscriber, #2589) [Link] I just bought a new workstation, or more precisely a set of components that can be built into a new workstation once my wife and I have an evening or two in which to do it. I bought a nice shiny new Radeon 9250. Also a super high-performance new Athlon64 3800+ (2.4 GHz, 512 KB L2) 65 nm Lima. Hooray for trailing-edge technology! Cheap, well-understood, and supported by Free/Open Source Software.
The first ATI r5xx/6xx X11 driver release Posted Dec 4, 2007 5:01 UTC (Tue) by Cato (subscriber, #7643) [Link] I'd like this too - video cards are one of the hardest bits of hardware to choose, given the various tradeoffs. It would be good to have recommendations based on (1) best card with FOSS driver and (2) best card overall, covering both low to mid end 2D/3D (enabling Compiz etc) and maybe higher-end gaming as well.
The first ATI r5xx/6xx X11 driver release Posted Dec 4, 2007 20:13 UTC (Tue) by oak (subscriber, #2786) [Link] The problem with that is that the grumpy editor needs the video cards to do the testing. Unlike open source, they are not free...
The first ATI r5xx/6xx X11 driver release Posted Dec 5, 2007 0:36 UTC (Wed) by louie (subscriber, #3285) [Link] Yeah, though grumpy editor has Ways of Making People Talk, which hopefully he could use to drastically narrow down the scope of cards he's looking at before buying, especially if he limits it to free drivers, and cards available as standalone cards (which knocks out all the intels, for example, AFAIK.)
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