Sapphire Radeon HD 4670 512MB GDDR4

[MU_Engineer]

it's ultimately pointless to buy any ati card if you want to use it under linux compared to nvidia, lack of good drivers seem to make their cards worthless.

It would be good to see phoronix include some tests of popular games under Wine, when they review video cards if they want to give Linux users good information.

Eg. WoW, CS, CS:S, CoD4, Eve, Guild Wars.

Some revisions of fglrx don't play nicely with Direct3D under WINE, but ATi cards are far from useless under Linux. An R500 and older card has 2D and 3D support using open-source drivers and is more useful than NVIDIA cards that require the NVIDIA driver to get 3D. Newer cards have the same 2D support with open-source drivers that NVIDIA cards do. I have run fglrx with my old Radeon x1900GT and my new HD 3850 and have had very few issues with running native Linux OpenGL games or playing back video.

[psycho_driver]

Some revisions of fglrx don't play nicely with Direct3D under WINE, but ATi cards are far from useless under Linux. An R500 and older card has 2D and 3D support using open-source drivers and is more useful than NVIDIA cards that require the NVIDIA driver to get 3D. Newer cards have the same 2D support with open-source drivers that NVIDIA cards do. I have run fglrx with my old Radeon x1900GT and my new HD 3850 and have had very few issues with running native Linux OpenGL games or playing back video.

They aren't useless but they aren't as good as either Intel or nVidia for linux use. If you must be pedantic about open source, then go Intel. If you want reliable 3D, go with nVidia. If you want to wait, and wait, and wait for features y and z to get fixed by some distant driver release, only to have feature x break again, then go ATi.

[MU_Engineer]

They aren't useless but they aren't as good as either Intel or nVidia for linux use. If you must be pedantic about open source, then go Intel. If you want reliable 3D, go with nVidia. If you want to wait, and wait, and wait for features y and z to get fixed by some distant driver release, only to have feature x break again, then go ATi.

Intel at the moment has the worst 3D Linux support. Their drivers have poor 2D acceleration and horrific 3D acceleration due to their still-a-work-in-progress complete overhaul of the driver stack. Newer Intel IGPs like the GM45 in my laptop are just about useless for anything 3D. I'd say the Intel IGP drivers for anything G965 and up are about on par with the open-source Radeon R600-up drivers as far as functionality goes, which is NOT a good thing, considering that Intel used to have a fully-functioning Xorg driver and ATi is just now starting to make Xorg drivers for newer cards. Yes, I know that technically the Intel drivers have DRI, but it's almost useless. If you are pendantic about open source and want a functional graphics card, get a Radeon R200-R400-class unit. They are cheap, functional, and have working Xorg 2D and 3D and despite being old, will still blow the doors off of Intel's hardware.

The big difference between Intel and ATi/NVIDIA cards is that the broken open-source drivers are the ONLY drivers out there for Intel cards. At least you can get decent 3D with the fglrx and NVIDIA blobs even if the 3D-capable Xorg drivers are nonexistent or a work in progress.

[monraaf]

It would be good to see phoronix include some tests of popular games under Wine, when they review video cards if they want to give Linux users good information.

I agree. I would be interested in how the HD 4670 compares to the 9600 GT on Linux with wine. For example, something like this:

http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/video/display/powercolor-pcshd4670-512mb_10.html#sect0

[Panix]

So, are the newer ATI cards usable or not? There are so many perspectives on this that one can't figure out what is really what.

I guess you can ask a question like this:

The ATI HD Radeon 4870 is a pretty good card, for e.g. and can out perform cards like the Nvidia 9800 GT, GTX, even the GTX+ in various games. This is in Windows, though. How is the performance in Linux? If the card in Linux is never better than a 9600 GT, for e.g., then overall, the drivers/intangibles are POOR! I agree with the frustrated users since if you are always waiting and figure that potentially it *might* get better and that drivers *might* improve, you will be at the next generation of cards before long.

The ATI 4870 card is being discounted by ATI/AMD so I wanted to know what the current status in Linux was. It has to be frustrating for others (it is for me) to have to pay extra to get a potentially inferior card (i.e. choose Nvidia) because one GPU company cannot provide decent drivers and have subpar performance in one OS versus another (Windows).

With all that said, though, if the general consensus is that the 48xx series is still problematic in a big way in Linux, I'll hope and wait for Nvidia 9800 GTX+ cards to go on sale. One problem, too, is that I would have to invest in a new case (I own an Antec Solo!).