To the AMD people: Money wasted.

[Mr James]

I got a lousy 3 gigabyte per month limit 3G mobile broadband for a ridiculously expensive price. Can't get ADSL in the country I reside in currently...

[Gps4l]

I got a lousy 3 gigabyte per month limit 3G mobile broadband for a ridiculously expensive price. Can't get ADSL in the country I reside in currently...

I realize I am lucky. It's an advantage of a small tight populated country.

Because of the competition, all (not for telephones) internet subscription are flat rate.

[t.s.]

..If I feel the support/resources/money seems low for what you get, then why can't one criticize that? Is AMD not a big company?..

So true. Just 4 Developers for VGA driver. I recall making drivers are something that difficult, is it not? And VGA driver among the hardest one to write (program).

Sigh. I want to enjoy near perfect linux-AMD-open-source-driver ASAP.

[bridgman]

For clarity, there are 10-30 developers working on the open source driver at any given time, although the core group is probably 5-6 FTEs.

Most of those developers do not work for AMD but that doesn't make their work any less valuable.

[Gps4l]

For clarity, there are 10-30 developers working on the open source driver at any given time, although the core group is probably 5-6 FTEs.

Most of those developers do not work for AMD but that doesn't make their work any less valuable.

Well Amd has still got my sympathy.

Even if it were only 4 people, that's still 4 more then nvidia.

[t.s.]

Ati does not develop the OSS drivers themselves. They never did, they never said they will do, they don't actually *need* to do this. All they said is that they will release specs for the community to peruse at its leisure.

The fact that they are hiring people is indeed a big deal.

If they add, say, 4 more developer, they (AMD) won't bankrupt, right? And then they'll have many advantage with it. Think that's worth it. Dunno how the way they think

[t.s.]

I got a lousy 3 gigabyte per month limit 3G mobile broadband for a ridiculously expensive price. Can't get ADSL in the country I reside in currently...

With slow dog connection, right? Hm....ndonesia??

[mirv]

If they add, say, 4 more developer, they (AMD) won't bankrupt, right? And then they'll have many advantage with it. Think that's worth it. Dunno how the way they think

They could add 20 more developers and people would still complain. So why waste the money?
Unfortunately it's also the case of that sometimes, too many developers can be a bad thing - sometimes you need a small core group to bring cohesion to the project until it's in a more suitable state.
Then, of course, you need people who know what they're doing as well - but I'm not sure that's such a big problem for them.

Not saying any of that does or does not apply to AMD's open source drivers, just wanted to illustrate that it's not always as easy as throwing developers at the problem.

[eldar]

I'm a current nvidia user(an old yet quite a capable geforce 7600 card) and I never had problems with it. But it's time to upgrade now, and I'm considering AMD too, because I have AMD CPU and I had an ATI card long ago, prior to switching to linux.

I'm choosing between newly released Geforce GTX 570 and Radeon HD 6950. Both have their pros and cons. according to the reviews nvidia's gpu has more potential since it has a better geometry block, while AMD has a good performance in today's games and is cheaper and also will match my CPU. The thing is though that when it comes to linux, with NVIDIA I'm qute sure about drivers quality(I also use NVIDIA at work on my linux workstation, 3D is nice and slick), I get this newly released gpu accelerated flash videos, opengl performance is proven to be very good. When it comes to AMD, I hear about problems, in fact I already experienced some on my Radeon HD 4290 - which is integrated to my motherboard.
Then there is this games-on-wine issue. I don't agree with what people say here, that it's a too stretched goal, the programs that are designed to run on Windows shouldn't necesserily work smoothly on linux. From what I understand with Wine all DirectX is translated to OpenGL, and because of nature of such translation, it can be quite rigorous - which as a result exposes bugs in a driver. I don't blame anyone for bugs, as I am a programmer myself and I know what it is like, but let's not deny them at least.

So what would you advice me towards the choice on my next GPU? AMD appeals to me a lot with their politics(giving specs to the opensource developers, supporting open standards like OpenCL etc) while the situation on linux kinda puts me off. I am certainly ok with the fact that it isn't all working right now, but the overall situation is improving. But of course I have no desire to wait and fight with bugs for years until my GPU gets obsolete...

[Gps4l]

I'm a current nvidia user(an old yet quite a capable geforce 7600 card) and I never had problems with it. But it's time to upgrade now, and I'm considering AMD too, because I have AMD CPU and I had an ATI card long ago, prior to switching to linux.

I'm choosing between newly released Geforce GTX 570 and Radeon HD 6950. Both have their pros and cons. according to the reviews nvidia's gpu has more potential since it has a better geometry block, while AMD has a good performance in today's games and is cheaper and also will match my CPU. The thing is though that when it comes to linux, with NVIDIA I'm qute sure about drivers quality(I also use NVIDIA at work on my linux workstation, 3D is nice and slick), I get this newly released gpu accelerated flash videos, opengl performance is proven to be very good. When it comes to AMD, I hear about problems, in fact I already experienced some on my Radeon HD 4290 - which is integrated to my motherboard.
Then there is this games-on-wine issue. I don't agree with what people say here, that it's a too stretched goal, the programs that are designed to run on Windows shouldn't necesserily work smoothly on linux. From what I understand with Wine all DirectX is translated to OpenGL, and because of nature of such translation, it can be quite rigorous - which as a result exposes bugs in a driver. I don't blame anyone for bugs, as I am a programmer myself and I know what it is like, but let's not deny them at least.

So what would you advice me towards the choice on my next GPU? AMD appeals to me a lot with their politics(giving specs to the opensource developers, supporting open standards like OpenCL etc) while the situation on linux kinda puts me off. I am certainly ok with the fact that it isn't all working right now, but the overall situation is improving. But of course I have no desire to wait and fight with bugs for years until my GPU gets obsolete...

I think AMD ie working hard, but right now I would not buy an Radeon HD 6950, to use on linux.
Wait a few months.