Is ATI really on par with NVIDIA now?

[Kano]

Mabye it is too hard to understand that after a few rc of a new kernel is it highly unlikely that the ABI will change. Therefore waiting up to the point where a kernel is finalized is extra stupid. Also when you look at 2.6.26 and x64 then ATI really fails badly - ever for released kernels. Not even that was fully tested, it is a real joke with fglrx. If ATI would really want to compete with NVIDIA then they would provide patches ON THEIR OWN - and not wait till the commuity finds em. Just like NVIDIA does whenever needed. The excuse that for driver xy the timelimit was hit is really bad. Provide official patches or make your drivers compatible directly. Thats the way driver development should work - not the other way around.

[bridgman]

Not a question of understanding, just of "opportunity cost", ie what would we have to "not do" in order to spend time working on upcoming kernels. Historically these have been very hard choices; going forward things should be easier.

2.6.26 is not a released kernel, is it ? I agree it is pretty close (new RC recently) but AFAIK it's not released yet.

[Kano]

Did you ever look at:

http://www.nvnews.net/vbulletin/forumdisplay.php?f=14

If you want to be at least so good as your competitor don't behave much worse!

[Melcar]

I don't get why you keep insisting on the same thing Kano. Bridgman already said countless times that fglrx targets "mainstream", released platforms, and not what hasn't been released (like kernels). They consider those things "bleeding edge" and don't consider them a target for their driver. Such things are left to the open source drivers, where it should be much easier to patch. Nvidia does not have a viable open source driver, so they *have* to make sure it works with everything.

[Kano]

That thread was about parity with NVIDIA. And therefore you have to compare everything. Nobody buys a gaming card to run it with 10-20% speed and lacking features (you may want to run the lowend cards with free drivers). Does ATI really think that midrange/highend cards are driven with opensource drivers? Nice try to use opensource drivers as excuse, but for me they are years behind. Of course driver developments costs money, but does a huge enterprise say that as excuse? Others have then the problem - really nice.

[deanjo]

Nvidia doesn't support officially support non final release kernels as well.

[Kano]

But they provide patches even for unreleased kernels, ATI does not.

[bridgman]

Is there a specific article I should be reading ? I see lots of users looking for help with problems, and a driver release from a couple of weeks ago with "preliminary support for 2.6.26" although I don't think that works with the newest GPUs.

The difference is that there are already full-featured open source drivers for most of our GPUs, backed up with documentation and support for the developers, which do work on the new kernels today. I think you will see the "few week gap" close up over time but honestly for anyone who wants to use unreleased distros or kernels we are encouraging the use of open source drivers not fglrx.

[Kano]

NVIDIA released offical patches for kernel 2.6.26 for those drivers: 96.43.05 (GF2MX to GF4) , 173.08, 173.14.05 (GF5 and newer). Direct support is in 173.14.09 (latest stable) and 177.13 (lastest beta for GTX 260/280 and older cards since GF 6).

[bridgman]

The point I am trying to make is that NVidia has no choice but to supply early patches for unreleased kernels since they do not provide the same kind of support for open source driver development as AMD and Intel, and therefore users need to run with the binary drivers even if they are following the "bleeding edge". We chose to invest relatively more resources into supporting open source drivers instead.

We all take different approaches and some people will probably prefer NVidia's strategy over ours, just as there are people who prefer our strategy over NVidia's.