NVIDIA's graphics announcements [LWN.net]

NVIDIA Corporation has announced a series of new corporate initiatives that include a technical support program for end users and professional customers; a new software driver package that includes performance enhancements and new features for NVIDIA's advanced graphics features, including NVIDIA's CineFX(TM) architecture delivered by NVIDIA's Unified Driver Architecture (UDA); and support for the latest PC technologies, including AGP 8X and OpenGL(R) 1.4.

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NVIDIA Extends Graphics Leadership to Linux Platform

Posted Dec 12, 2002 19:21 UTC (Thu) by rknop (guest, #66) [Link] (5 responses)

I'm still grouchy about binary-only drivers, and as long as that's the case, I'll be trying to buy video cards from ATI or somebody else who supports the DRI project.

-Rob

NVIDIA Extends Graphics Leadership to Linux Platform

Posted Dec 12, 2002 19:31 UTC (Thu) by louie (guest, #3285) [Link]

Not just binary only, but buggy binary only. Taking screenshots or making selection boxes on the desktop using nautilus2 can both cause X hangs or segfaults using their drivers, and (oddly) not with anyone else's.

NVIDIA Extends Graphics Leadership to Linux Platform

Posted Dec 13, 2002 0:31 UTC (Fri) by Mithrandir (guest, #3031) [Link] (3 responses)

Hmmm... maybe it's just because I'm Australian, but I seem to find myself supporting the underdog. But technical superiority is also a big factor. So, yes, ATI, Linux, AMD. It's an emotional thing as well as a technical thing.

NVIDIA Extends Graphics Leadership to Linux Platform

Posted Dec 13, 2002 6:58 UTC (Fri) by darthmdh (guest, #8032) [Link] (2 responses)

ATI isn't the underdog, anyway. Check out the benchmarks of their Radeon 9700 PRO versus the GeForce 4 ti4600 on tomshardware... of course, in a few months it'll be interesting to benchmark the Radeon 9700 PRO against the GeForce GX (??? the NV30 in any case) :-)

This is all good news from nVidia, I note there's a few really cool things tucked away in that press release which are severely understated! Definately take the time to read the whole thing.

On the bad side, I hope the FreeBSD crowd don't get too annoyed with nVidia classing them as a Linux distribution ;)

NVIDIA Extends Graphics Leadership to Linux Platform

Posted Dec 13, 2002 16:30 UTC (Fri) by zed (guest, #3994) [Link] (1 responses)

Well, if you're going to extend the discussion of drivers up to the ATI Radeon 9700 series, note that you have to use ATI's binary-only drivers to get 3d support working on them as well. And you can get 2d support for NVidia cards by using the free software drivers.

As far as I can see, there isn't a whole lot of difference between the two companies.

NVIDIA Extends Graphics Leadership to Linux Platform

Posted Dec 13, 2002 21:08 UTC (Fri) by dmantione (guest, #4640) [Link]

Oh yes there is. For Nvidia, the technical documentation of their cards is a deep secret, they won't share it with anyone else. Therefore open-source drivers for Nvidia cards are based on reverse engineering, a very slow process on such complex devices like video cards.

For ATi, you need a fill in a web-form to register your self as developer. You then send one e-mail about your nice open source project, and you get their excellent programming manuals, example programs and their developer relations department will answer any technical question you have.

Until a while, ATi relied on the community to write drivers. Unfortunately, the open source community is too slow and provides inferior drivers than Nvidia does have.

So, in addition to any open source drivers, ATi wrote their own. Now it would be nice if these were open source, but ATi decided not do to this. (BTW. Among the programming examples for the Radeon 8500 was a very early version of ATI's driver in source code.) They made them binary only. I prefer open source drivers, but I can understand it. They propably used lot's of tools and libraries they use for their WIndows drivers which are not open source.

Sadly, nobody started work on an open source R300 driver yet.