ATI / Linux?

[Tsuwamono]

Im by no means a linux guru or even a windows guru, i would consider myself more of a hardware guy. So i need to ask for a buddy of mine(and for my self in the future) Does ATI not work with Linux?

I have 2 friends that had the exact same thing happen. They installed Linux SUSE on their system and loaded up Medal of Honor Allied Assault(Old game.. i get like 600 FPS in it) and they got about 3FPS while running linux.. but when they reinstalled their system hog Windows they get about 100 fps...

I have an explination that someone told me that sounds plausable but not probable. ATIs cards dont like Linux.. They both have ATI GPUs and the same thing happened to both. Now if they had an Nvidia card would it still happen? I am asking because for my August build im thinking about going with linux to skip around Vista(because it blows in my opinion) However as my sig says i have an ATI GPU.. Would the same happen to me?

And on a side note does linux support SLI or Crossfire(providing i was wrong about ATI not likeing Linux)?

This could be my decision making between Linux and Windows for my August build.

 

[Nothinman]

ATI devices work fine as long as you install the drivers from ATI, they're not distributed with the OS because they're non-free and ATI won't allow redistribution (I assume).

nVidia cards also work fine and IMO the drivers are a lot better than those from ATI. But the same issue is still there in that you have to install them yourself after the initial OS installation.

 

[cleverhandle]

Yeah, just install the drivers and it should work. I haven't looked at Suse lately, but I would think that there's even a special task for this in Yast. That said, other things being equal (i.e. price and performance), I would pick nVidia over ATI for Linux. They tend to be quicker at incorporating driver features than ATI. Their cards also tend to be better tested by Cedega and other Linux gaming groups.

Video card vendors aside, if gaming is your primary interest then Linux is only going to frustrate you. Stick with Windows if that's the case.

 

[bersl2]

Originally posted by: cleverhandle
Yeah, just install the drivers and it should work. I haven't looked at Suse lately, but I would think that there's even a special task for this in Yast. That said, other things being equal (i.e. price and performance), I would pick nVidia over ATI for Linux. They tend to be quicker at incorporating driver features than ATI. Their cards also tend to be better tested by Cedega and other Linux gaming groups.

Video card vendors aside, if gaming is your primary interest then Linux is only going to frustrate you. Stick with Windows if that's the case.

True, absolutely hardcore gamers will be frustrated; but those less intense than that can be satisfied with Linux gaming.

 

[cleverhandle]

No doubt, hence I said "primary concern". Linux gaming works for me. Though spending the better part of a day getting freaking Diablo II to work has left a bit of a bad taste in my mouth at the moment.

 

[drag]

Free software drivers support ATI cards both 2d and 3d:

ATI 7000-ish cards through the r200 series (ATI 8500, ATI 9200,)(not exactly sure when the r200 series started)
The r200 DRI drivers provide 3d and there is 2d drivers for X.org.

The also support the R300 to R400 series cards. These are AGP cards numbered higher then 9250 and PCI-express cards up to the X800 and X850 (more or less).
The r300 drivers provide 3d acceleration for r300 and r400 cards. However they are not currently stable enough and most distros have them disabled by default to avoid causing instability. I am currently using a x800 PCIE card successfully with these drivers to play pretty much any game, but I had to compile them manually from freedesktop.org CVS servers. If you don't know what a cvs server is, then it's going to be a huge pain in the rear to get these things working at this time. Another few months when the next X.org release happens they should be aviable to most people.

I have the r300_dri driver along with the Mesa libGL and related libraries compiled from CVS. I have the DRM stuff compiled from CVS including the kernel modules. This is the X.org configuration that I use:

Section "Device"
Identifier "x800"
Driver "radeon"
Option "EnablePageFlip" "on"
#Option "BackingStore" "on"
Option "AGPFastWrite" "on"
Option "GARTSize" "64"
Option "BusType" "PCIE"
Option "ColorTiling" "on"
#Option "UseFBDev"

#Option "RenderAccel" "off"
EndSection

Don't worry if that doesn't make sense. It's just information for other people that may be interested.


There is no support 2d or 3d for cards like the X1300 or newer. Any card with a X and 1000 or higher number. These are the r500 series cards. There is a X.org developer sitting on very basic (600 lines of code) 2D drivers but ATI refuses to let him release it since he is under a NDA.

I would seriously advise avoid buying any x1300 or similar r500 series ATI card if your planing on using Linux.


For the ATI propriatory drivers:
https://support.ati.com/ics/support/def...?deptID=894&task=knowledge&folderID=27
ATI propriatory drivers would offer better performance and game compatability then the free software drivers I described above, theoreticly, but they often cause instabilities. They do not offer Windows-level performance though.

However, I am told that they've increased in quality fairly recently, both in performance and stability. These propriatory drivers is what the vast majority of people using ATI cards in Linux use.

All ATI cards from the ATI 8500 cards and newer should be supported by these propriatory drivers both AGP and PCI express. Including, I beleive the x1300 and other similar r500 series cards.

There are a couple good guides for getting these drivers installed and working under Ubuntu.
Such as:
http://wiki.cchtml.com/index.php/Ubuntu_Installation_Guide

Also there are guides on that wiki page for other distros:
http://wiki.cchtml.com/index.php/Main_Page

Distributions

ATI's Linux drivers explicitly permit repackaging and redistributing of the drivers. Here is a sampling of distributions that either are directly packaging ATI's Linux drivers or have community packages.

* RedHat Enterprise
* Fedora Core
* SuSE/OpenSuSE
* Debian
* Ubuntu
* Gentoo
* Mandriva
* Slackware

Or view all distributions.

If your a gamer wanting to have highest game compatability and highest performance aviable in Linux then you should look at obtaining a Nvidia card. Nvidia drivers, at their core, are the same basic ones used in Windows and offer comparable if not slightly better performance in Linux.

 

[Tsuwamono]

great, thanks guys. Ill look into taking the plunge into Nvidia territory. I think im going to set a deadline for me so i cant turn back. If the Crossfire 3200 boards for AM2 arent out by late august(when im building) ill get Nvidia SLI board and from then on ill be on linux with Nvidia cards.

 

[drag]

I thought the crossfire stuff was ATI?

Personally I wouldn't bother with SLI stuff. It's a bit of a snake oil thing. A marketting thing, at least that's my impression. Under Linux your going to find relatively limited support for that sort of stuff anyways.

Also Nvidia sucks with their support on their motherboards. It's very common for people to have niggling issues with drivers and you'd probably want a seperate little ethernet card for the install since most of the time Nvidia's network adapters are troublesome without special drivers.

I always used to get AMD proccessors on Via-based motherboards. Generally that enjoyed good Linux support from both AMD and Via. Lately it seems though that Via has fallen behind in their motherboard technology and everything is either Nvidia or ATI. So for the first time I forgo the whole AMD thing and I bought a Intel Pentium-D 930 CPU and a ASUS motherboard with the 945g chipset.

With that combination most everything was supported out of the box. SATA, hardware sensors, network, even 2-D and 3-D the onboard video. Asus tends to have good Linux support, but it's not uniform for all motherboards. Intel does a decent job making sure that Linux has good drivers for their chipsets.

So if your planing on building a computer for Linux use Intel-based motherboard is a pretty good shot. But always make sure to google around when picking out a specific one and see what people have to say about it.

edit:
Otherwise if you don't want to worry about it there are now some Desktop-oriented Linux vendors that seem pretty nice, although I haven't tried them personally. The stuff they sell will have very high Linux compatability and they'll preinstall Linux (as well as Windows if you'd like) so you don't have to mess with it.

For instance:
http://system76.com/ which favors Ubuntu or
http://www.shoprcubed.com/ which favors Fedora.

It's worth it enough to check out their specs and such. Especially Rcubed on how they setup Fedora Core 5 and programs they pre-install. Even if you don't buy from them they may give you good ideas of what to do. (keeping in mind that Linux you use repositories and package management tools to install stuff generally instead of going to (say) firefox and downloading a installer from their website)

 

[daniel49]

pclinux os has an iso you can download with ati drivers already installed.

 

[Nothinman]

pclinux os has an iso you can download with ati drivers already installed.

I'd be leery of using it then beceause they're most likely violating ATI's EULA.

 

[pardasaniman]

I'm unfamiliar with the ATi model numbers, What are the NVidia equivalents to an
R200
R300
and R400 ?

 

[silverpig]

IIRC the r200 is the 8xxx series of cards basically. So the radeon 8500 is an example. I believe those went up against the GF3 Ti 500 type cards.
The r300 is the 9xxx series (again, I believe there are a few exceptions). So the 9800 pro is a good example. These went up against the GF4 Ti 4x00 cards.
The r400 is the x800 type cards. x800xl x850xt etc. These are roughly equivalent to the GF 6800 series.

 

[daniel49]

Originally posted by: Nothinman

pclinux os has an iso you can download with ati drivers already installed.

I'd be leery of using it then beceause they're most likely violating ATI's EULA.

blah blah blah...

d) In addition to the license terms above, with respect to portions of
the Software in source code or binary form designed exclusively for use
with the Linux operating system ("ATI Linux Code"), you may use, display,
modify, copy, distribute, allow others to re-distribute, package and re-
package such ATI Linux Code for commercial and non-commercial purposes

blah blah blah...
Text

 

[drag]

The R200 series cards include ATI 8500 and ATI 9200 and ATI 9250. The 8500 is the fastest r200 card. (ironicly considuring the lower number)

The R300 series cards include ATI 9600, ATI 9800 (which doesn't work so hot with the r300_dri.so driver), and such.

The R400 series are mostly the newer things to R300 and essentially are just updated versions of R300. Just a bit faster with faster ram and different manufacturing proccess. Also generally with PCIe support. These extend up to the x800/x850 series cards. (there is a x800 agp version) Those are basicly top of the line.

The R500 are anything with the x1000. Or X followed by a above 1000 number.


Wikipedia has very very good descriptions of these things.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R200 For r200 overview.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R300 For r300 overview.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X800 For r420 overview.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radeon_R520 for R500 overview.

 

[Canterwood]

Well I recently switched from ATI to Nvidia when I upgraded my video card because of the better Linux support.
In hindsight this was the wrong thing to do as Nvidia sucks (in comparison to ATI) in Windows, so I was left feeling disappointed.

Just wish ATI would release some decent Linux drivers so I could switch back again. :frown:

 

[drag]

Write AMD I suppose.

AMD traditionally has been one of the best companies to deal with from a Linux perspective.. and ATI has become one of the very worst.

It will be interesting to see what comes from this.

Don't expect them to release the code to their propriatory drivers.. though (this would be the best most ideal situation for Linux compatability) This will NEVER happen. To much software patents to deal with that they licensed from competitors, to many other companies building parts for their video cards. What would be best I figure we would expect would be for AMD/ATI to release partial documentation and pay a company like Tungstan graphics to write open source drivers (like what Intel did)


If they did that then Distros would be able to provide 3d acceleration for ATI cards out of the box. Eventually you wouldn't have to install drivers or anything like that. It would 'just work'. You would use your normal distro bug track system to file bugs and the distros would be able to cooridinate with the upstream developers on resolving usability issues, bug issues, and patching.

It would be much better then propriatory driver mess we have to deal with now.

 

[Kibbo86]

The major reason many distros don't ship proprietary software is not that it violates ati's EULA, but that it does not allow them to licence their distro under the GNU GPL.

Not to get too off topic, I have ati's latest drivers installed and running fine under ubuntu, with a 9800 pro. This latest driver has a bug that freezes my computer on shutdown. I havn't rolled them back just because it's pretty easy to just powerdown from a tty.

Next time, I go nvidia.

 

[drag]

Originally posted by: Kibbo86
The major reason many distros don't ship proprietary software is not that it violates ati's EULA, but that it does not allow them to licence their distro under the GNU GPL.

Nobody ships their entire distro as GPL'd software. It wouldn't be to practical and it probably would be impossible for most distros. Probably over 70% of software in the distro is GPL, but that doesn't affect teh stuff that isn't. You can ship it bundled with different incompatable licenses if you'd like. Just not linking or derived stuff.

The problem is that:
* Binary only drivers can't be supported to the same level as other drivers. For instance Redhat will refuse to support you if your running nvidia's propriatory drivers (and probly others)
* Binary only drivers are illegal to be used with the Kernel. The kernel is under the GPL and the GPL forbids shipping software that is linked to or derived from GPL'd software.
* The goal for most Linux developers is to produce teh best open source and Free software operating system you can. If you have a meg or so of binary only drivers in your kernel and 10 megs of binary only software on your system that you depend on then it kinda defeats the purpose.

For instance the Debian project has a sort of consitution it uses and it specificly forbids shipping closed source software and supporting closed source software in it's distro. It's Free Software or bust.

A lot of it is moral or ethics. For instance FreeBSD can link and distribute Nvidia propriatory drivers easily. There is no legal barrier like you have with Linux-based systems, but they still aren't going to do that.

Also note that as far as the GPL is concerned there is no restrictions on the end users. You can write software that uses it. You can link closed source stuff with it all you want. The clauses in the GPL only kick in when you want to redistribute the software to other people.

 

[KGH]

I'm very new to Linux. I'm using Mepis 3.4 with a Powercolor X800GTO. Every distro of Linux I tried has problems loading with the resolution set at 1280x1024. Mepis 3.4.3 worked the best

On my old HP with a ATI 9600 all-in-wonder i loaded several distros of Linux without a problem. That box is running Mepis 6.0 in a dual boot system but it has an older monitor & 1024x768 is resolution is the better choice.

I don't believe Mepis recognizes my 550 pro TV tuner.

I hope better support is coming since AMD aquired ATI.

KGH