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Radeon 9800 Pro or 5900FX for Linux?

A

Alphanos

Member
I know this question involves video cards, but this is really an os question.

Basically, I need to know whether ATI or nVidia has better Linux support. From what I understand both vendors have closed-source drivers, which is fine with me, but I really haven't been able to tell which company supports Linux better. No offense, but please don't use this thread to debate which is a better card under Windows; I will NOT be running a dual-boot machine, and am only interested in Linux drivers/support/performance.

Everything I've read seems to say that hardware-wise the two cards are more or less neck and neck, but I have not yet seen a Linux review🙁. Any help will be greatly appreciated.
 
Traditionally Nvidia has had better drivers then ATI for linux. But I think there maybe some issues with the newest cards and the unified driver stuff so you may want to double check and make sure that it specificly states that it will support the type of card your getting.... 🙂 I have a geforce4 mx 420 pci and a geforce 2 gts-v and both work fine in my box.
 
Also there is some question about whether ATI is continuing to support linux. Apparently they redesigned their site and linux was listed as unsupported. Whether this was an oversight, or they just aren't ready with the latest drivers I know not. I didn't care enough to follow the story (not having an ATI card and not planning on buying one).
 
nVidia is heads and shoulders ahead of ATI when it comes to Linux support, esp. for 3D hardware acceleration.
 
I have a Radeon 9700 and I'm not a big fan of their Linux drivers. My OGL performance is very, very bad. I've heard there are ways around it, but the only thing that I use OGL for in Linux is screensavers, so it doesn't really matter to me.

I also have strange refresh rate problems. I had no problems with my GeForce 4.
 
If you have an nForce 2 motherboard, I think that you can only run an nVidia card with 3D acceleration on it, or I think I remember reading something like that. Also, nVidia do in house work on Linux drivers, while I believe ATi has a more hands off approach (although I think there is an ATi guy who does do drivers for Linux, but they're not official.
 
In games like quake3 how does the framerate compare to their window's counter parts (nvidia/linux is about even with nvidia/windows.)
 
Originally posted by: drag
In games like quake3 how does the framerate compare to their window's counter parts (nvidia/linux is about even with nvidia/windows.)
Click to expand...

In RtCW it was about 25% faster in Linux for me. I only played Q3 in LInux, not in Windows, but it ran quite well on my Viper V330 when the demo came out. It was cool because it came out on Linux first. Everyone was asking how good it was, I kept saying, go get a Debian CD and try it out. 🙂
 
Originally posted by: drag
In games like quake3 how does the framerate compare to their window's counter parts (nvidia/linux is about even with nvidia/windows.)
Click to expand...
Quake3 is 2-5% faster on Linux for me
(GF MX 440).
 
Originally posted by: Haden
Quake3 is 2-5% faster on Linux for me
(GF MX 440).
Click to expand...
Around the same here. Consistently faster. And I must pass on some kudos to Bioware for such a great effort with NWN for linux.

As for the various ATI things, I don't know why you guys are all up about them sucking. It's true, they didn't officially support linux until very recently, but I know someone using a Radeon 8500 (9100?) with dual monitor outs just fine, and he can play Quake 3 too!

 
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