On Saturday 19 October 2002 11:48 am, Gary Greene wrote: > > I would say go for nvidia. Currently, they are the only cards with > > decent GL drivers out there. Yes, some people have some issues with the > > drivers, but at least nvidia stands behind them. > > No, they don't. NViDIA releases their linux drivers "As is." They haven't > an ounce of support. Additionally, another nail in the coffin for them is > the fact that they won't let the XFree team even a glimpse of the spec to > build better more reliable and intellegently written drivers.
Nearly every company releases their software "as is." They also don't have a warranty for them. My point is that they have a forum and an email address that can be used to get support. With ATI, you're on your own. Speaking about the specs: I have not had one glitch with their drivers; they are the most stable and best-performing drivers I have used in a while. And I have yet to see an XFree86 driver that is "intelligently written" and "reliable." Most are slow, glitchy, or unstable. If the XFree team wants to write drivers, they can do so - for the ATI cards, which you praise so much, and which don't have good drivers. Nvidia binary drivers on Linux are used for creating movie special effects and other 3D work - it's the standard. I haven't heard of many companies that use ATI cards for 3D production. Also, the new UT2003 game only runs on nvidia cards because others don't support some OpenGL extension. > > ATI desktop support is horrible, and mobile is even worse. Don't buy > > ATI. The best you could hope for are incredibly bad binary drivers that > > work half the time and are actually intended for a different card. > > That's what the 8500 drivers are like. The 9000 and up don't even have > > drivers yet, and they probably won't come out until the card is obsolete. > > Not true. ATI (at least up until recently) actually allowed access to their > specs. This allow2ed drivers to be written with true 3D acceleration > support. AFA the 8500 and 9000 series, I'll conceed taht ATI isn't as nice > to community as they used to be. :( WHO CARES about the specs when you don't have official working drivers? For example, the Radeon 8500 XFree drivers are STILL in alpha, even though the card was released a while ago and is quickly becoming obsolete. ATI released some binary drivers for some other card that happen to work with that one, but they are glitchy and unstable. If your idea of using a videocard is writing drivers for it, by all means, get an ATI card. I was just under the impression that the person who was asking for help choosing the card actually wanted to use it for games and applications, and not for writing drivers. -- -- Igor
