Ati & nVidia on GNU/Linux: Am I naive?

[parityboy]

Here's my logic. Both of these companies produce graphics cards. Both of these companies produce two tiers of graphics cards: consumer and professional. Both of these companies differentiate between the two tiers with better driver qualification and better support for their professional customers.

All of these things I understand completely. What I don't understand is this. Many of these companies' professional customers run GNU/Linux workstations in areas like CAD/CAM, 3D modelling and video port-production. The cards in these machines run essentially the same chips as the consumer cards, but with better drivers which switch on support for things like more accurate rendering and better OpenGL performance.

These customers would not put up with things like bad rendering of windows in 2D mode, so obviously those things would be fixed, especially for a company paying $5000 for a card, if not more.

So what happens to the work to fix all the bugs in the professional drivers? Does it not waterfall down to the consumers, or is it held back?

[bridgman]

Here's my logic. Both of these companies produce graphics cards. Both of these companies produce two tiers of graphics cards: consumer and professional. Both of these companies differentiate between the two tiers with better driver qualification and better support for their professional customers.

All of these things I understand completely. What I don't understand is this. Many of these companies' professional customers run GNU/Linux workstations in areas like CAD/CAM, 3D modelling and video port-production. The cards in these machines run essentially the same chips as the consumer cards, but with better drivers which switch on support for things like more accurate rendering and better OpenGL performance.

These customers would not put up with things like bad rendering of windows in 2D mode, so obviously those things would be fixed, especially for a company paying $5000 for a card, if not more.

So what happens to the work to fix all the bugs in the professional drivers? Does it not waterfall down to the consumers, or is it held back?

The usage scenarios are a bit different. To your example about 2D windowing, consumer users tend to run with compositors on while workstation users almost always have the compositor off, so if 2D performance was poor only when a compositor was running a consumer user might wonder "why would anyone buy this ?" while a workstation user would never see the problem. Just an example, but you get the idea.

[gbeauche]

Many of these companies' professional customers run GNU/Linux workstations in areas like CAD/CAM, 3D modelling and video port-production. The cards in these machines run essentially the same chips as the consumer cards, but with better drivers which switch on support for things like more accurate rendering and better OpenGL performance.

I think you are indeed a bit naive. Both companies produce different lines of HW but the driver is the same. There is no "better driver" for professional customers. Why would they duplicate efforts in maintaining two branches of the driver? Better (worse?), when a bug is fixed, you have to wait for the next beta build, i.e. there is no driver built specifically for a customer to check a bug is actually fixed. So far, only Intel builds specific drivers for us, and this varies from 1 day to 5 business days depending on whether approval from marketing people(!) is needed or not. I have never seen that on the ATI or NVIDIA side, for Linux.

As bridgman said, professional customers usually don't see certain bugs because they have different configurations and needs. However, there are some customers whom absolutely want to use the whole set of features advertised. Then, they get terribly upset when they realize this doesn't meet the promises. In the meantime, they paid for the chips at full price...

[bridgman]

Strictly speaking the "as advertised" "promises" also clearly state that this support is for specific Windows OSes only. The most we have said for feature equivalence between Windows and Linux is that they are "approaching" equivalence.

I realize that doesn't make anyone feel any better

[gescom]

you can hack the driver in 5 minutes to use the FireGL driver.

Could you please share those 5 minutes to hack it. Thanks!

[droidhacker]

Could you please share those 5 minutes to hack it. Thanks!

The big question here is DO YOU REALLY WANT IT?
Probably not.
Remember that the firegl is intended for a different type of use that probably doesn't coincide with YOUR use as a consumer.

[gescom]

The big question here is DO YOU REALLY WANT IT?
Probably not.
Remember that the firegl is intended for a different type of use that probably doesn't coincide with YOUR use as a consumer.

Yes I do need it. Using Maya/Nuke. Thanks again!