Should I get an ati or nvidia card?

[Antiphonal]

I have an AGP ATI X1650Pro that used to be DOG SLOW running Compiz. Scrolling, moving windows, it was all atrocious.

I recently tried out Ubuntu 8.04 which uses much newer ATI drivers (8-03 I believe) and it runs flawlessly. It's so fast and responsive, I'm booting into Vista less and less.

I also have a similar question. I'm going to be going PCI-E soon and getting either a Radeon HD3870 or a Geforce 8800GT. The price is basically the same and the performance is within a few % of each other.

Tough decision. The drivers I'm using now work great, but I hear the NVIDIA ones are even better. But ATI seems very serious about getting open-source support in there, and their proprietary driver keeps getting better, so - ehhhh - just not sure which to do.

[Extreme Coder]

I have an AGP ATI X1650Pro that used to be DOG SLOW running Compiz. Scrolling, moving windows, it was all atrocious.

I recently tried out Ubuntu 8.04 which uses much newer ATI drivers (8-03 I believe) and it runs flawlessly. It's so fast and responsive, I'm booting into Vista less and less.

I also have a similar question. I'm going to be going PCI-E soon and getting either a Radeon HD3870 or a Geforce 8800GT. The price is basically the same and the performance is within a few % of each other.

Tough decision. The drivers I'm using now work great, but I hear the NVIDIA ones are even better. But ATI seems very serious about getting open-source support in there, and their proprietary driver keeps getting better, so - ehhhh - just not sure which to do.

Man, you're lucky you have a decent AGP card :P I can't find any decent graphics card for my PC :/

[d2kx]

Tough decision. The drivers I'm using now work great, but I hear the NVIDIA ones are even better. But ATI seems very serious about getting open-source support in there, and their proprietary driver keeps getting better, so - ehhhh - just not sure which to do.

Go for AMD. Not only the open source drivers are improving, the fglrx also gets better and better with every month. If you're using the driver that comes with your distribution, you will notice great performance and stability improvements with Ubuntu 8.10 with Catalyst 8.9 coming at the end of October.

[Kano]

I did not see any improvements in fglrx for serveral month, only free drivers are getting better. But when you want to use those then a onboard gfx solution would be more or less be enough - as these are usually too slow for new games anyway or they miss features.

[d2kx]

3870 or 8800 GT too slow? Come on, my X1900 XT 512 is capable of running Nexuiz, ET: QW etc. with high settings, and there's no Crysis for Linux yet. Of course it depends on his resolution, but unless he does 1920x1200 or higher the cards should be fine for now and if he wants more performance there is the Radeon HD 48x0 series coming on the 23th of June. And when gl2benchmark isn't fixed yet that doesn't mean fglrx isn't improving, because it *is* improving

[Kano]

Did you ever play those games using the open source drivers? Thats what I mean - fglrx is faster for games, but when you really want to use open source drivers only then you will be really disappointed with any of those midrange or high end cards - as for compiz even the cheapest solutions are enough. And if you really want full featured binary drivers then you better go for nvidia.

[Antiphonal]

Did you ever play those games using the open source drivers? Thats what I mean - fglrx is faster for games, but when you really want to use open source drivers only then you will be really disappointed with any of those midrange or high end cards - as for compiz even the cheapest solutions are enough. And if you really want full featured binary drivers then you better go for nvidia.

I don't mind the binary drivers, really. If the two are equal, I want to "support" the company that is closer to my ideals.

BTW, the FGLRX driver has awful, awful video playback support. That's my one complaint.

[Kano]

They are never equal, maybe if you see fglrx through rose-colored glasses Btw. pointsprites are invisible with fglrx since 10 month with a test tool that I use (gl2benchmark), maybe too hard to fix... I reported it several times, nobody fixed it yet.

[cookiecaper]

I think it depends on how long you intend on keeping your card. fglrx is crappy but livable, and within a year or two, assuming AMD keeps cooperating, the open-source driver should be on par and able to replace the binary driver completely. Wise move by AMD to start going open-source. Hopefully they get back on their feet in the next couple generations and start to smoke Intel again.

NVIDIA undoubtedly has the best binary drivers, and they're fine for what they are, but they don't allow the amount of flexibility you may be used to as a Linux user (obviously). Blobs cause licensing and security issues and so are undesirable, but right now they're the only way to get decent performance from your card. NVIDIA will still stay on top as far as *nix is concerned for at least another year, until RadeonHD and other open-source efforts based on AMD's documentation reach sufficient stability and maturity, but thereafter, I expect that AMD's cards will provide a better experience.

If you mostly use 2D, have no anticipation for fancy video effects and a fast processor to help compensate with the bad implementations fglrx utilizes, et al, then I would go AMD right now. If you need good 3D support now, you're probably still confined to nVidia, but that will change soon. : )

[Redeeman]

NVIDIA undoubtedly has the best binary drivers, and they're fine for what they are, but they don't allow the amount of flexibility you may be used to as a Linux user (obviously). Blobs cause licensing and security issues and so are undesirable, but right now they're the only way to get decent performance from your card. NVIDIA will still stay on top as far as *nix is concerned for at least another year, until RadeonHD and other open-source efforts based on AMD's documentation reach sufficient stability and maturity, but thereafter, I expect that AMD's cards will provide a better experience.

nvidias driver is a piece of shit, unstable, and 2d is completely broken on 8xxx.

hell, my core2 can with 20% of 1 core do software 2d FASTER than an 8800gt can do.. NVIDIA BLOB GREATNESS, yeah.... piece of shit.