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AMD Puts Out An OpenGL 4.2 Linux Driver

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  • #71
    I like AMD. I really want to see them compete because I like options (and, you can't just swap card manufacturers in your laptops).

    But... my hands on experiences with several AMD cards have been much like v8envy's. He's not trolling just for saying that the nVidia drivers usually just work better. Many of us who own both and have spent our fair share of time fighting with both share that opinion.

    Just one instance: Last year, I won a gaming rig with a Radeon HD 5870. It had problems with so many Linux apps that I fought with it for two weeks and ended up giving it to one of my kids for their Winbox... installing their lesser powered nVidia card in the new rig. Yes, a downgrade was preferable to fighting with screen corruption, crashes, and other problems. THAT's how painful the AMD Linux drivers can be.

    And I saw problems all around - not just with Wine (though that was particularly bad - over a half dozen of my Steam games not working at all whereas they worked fine with the lesser nVidia card), but also in KWin and Compiz (not being used concurrently, of course). At that time I became very familiar with the AMD user communities and unofficial bug-tracker - and my problems were not new or unique. Conversely, I honestly can't remember the last time I had a problem with the nVidia drivers that I'm using on four other machines.

    If AMD has somehow gotten their act together in the last year, great. I somehow doubt that though, considering I still see plenty of new bugs in the various reporting places, and launchpad shows there are 3x the number of outstanding bugs for the Ubuntu fglrx packages as there are for the nvidia-current drivers. That's even more damning when you take into consideration that more Linux users use nVidia cards (according to the Phoronix Global stats).

    Stability and bugs aside - the real problem with AMD is that it takes them months to release fixed versions when there's breakage due to new kernels or Xorg revs. That's probably not a huge concern for "normal" users (are there any "normal" Linux users? ), but it's a showstopper for those of us that ride the bleeding edge. For that reason alone, I wouldn't recommend their cards to anyone that really wants to hack on Linux.

    TLDNR: v8envy's not the troll, mirv is - because he trolled me into summing up why I and others have valid reasons for our belief that AMD's drivers are not currently anywhere equal to nVidia's.
    Last edited by 3vi1; 23 August 2011, 02:11 PM.

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    • #72
      Originally posted by 3vi1 View Post
      TLDNR: v8envy's not the troll, mirv is - because he trolled me into summing up why I and others have valid reasons for our belief that AMD's drivers are not currently anywhere equal to nVidia's.
      Actually, I had to laugh there. See, the problem is that I see many coming along with the nvidia blinders on, say that amd sucks (without giving reasons), nvidia is perfect (when it's not) and how when people have no issues with AMD cards and plenty with nvidia cards, well they can't possibly be right.
      So if I've "trolled" someone into actually giving some reasons, well, I can't say that I'm ashamed. But we're still not there yet. Crashes and problems - which I've had with nvidia drivers, oh no, that's how painful they can be (hmm....really, I can't classify that as any summary). AMD drivers working better for my applications doesn't make nvidia drivers totally crap, and nvidia need to pull their act together (well, ok, they really should work on helping out the open source effort). It's very interesting how if I mention that AMD driver's are more stable, I'm flamed....but notice now, after all that, I haven't actually given any reasons either.
      (people might remember me going over a similar topic every now and then - but you know what, it usually works and gets some discussion going with actual problems, actual reasons, and a bit more level-headed talk).

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