Hi,
I have a rather old system with AGP graphics (ASUS P4P-800) & nvidia 7600GT. I only boot into Windows once in a while for games and i wanted to replace my nvidia card with something more powerful, more current. So i bought the AGP version of ATI's HD 3850 (RV670).
Now, not only did it not work with kernel 2.6.27 out of the box (Catalyst 8.10) but it also gives me bad performance and unstable FPS. The only improvement Catalyst 8.11 brought to the table was, that at least it compiled against 2.6.27.6 without having to patch anything besides the "tainted" license.
I won't even go into the details of what i went through to get OpenGL and direct rendering to work. The "installation process" of ATI's drivers is atrocious compared to nvidia. I spend hours on end to find documentation, HOWtos that weren't outdated etc. and still can't switch to a text console, switch from a full-screen OpenGL app to any other process without screen corruption AND get bad FPS.
Frankly, i'm p***** off beyond words. I'm hoping to buy a new rig early next year and I will sure has hell never ever touch anything ATI, not with a 10-foot pole. Meanwhile my old graphics card does a better job, gives me at least decent, constant FPS in OpenGL games and installation of new drivers is easy as pie.
I have a rather old system with AGP graphics (ASUS P4P-800) & nvidia 7600GT. I only boot into Windows once in a while for games and i wanted to replace my nvidia card with something more powerful, more current. So i bought the AGP version of ATI's HD 3850 (RV670).
Now, not only did it not work with kernel 2.6.27 out of the box (Catalyst 8.10) but it also gives me bad performance and unstable FPS. The only improvement Catalyst 8.11 brought to the table was, that at least it compiled against 2.6.27.6 without having to patch anything besides the "tainted" license.
I won't even go into the details of what i went through to get OpenGL and direct rendering to work. The "installation process" of ATI's drivers is atrocious compared to nvidia. I spend hours on end to find documentation, HOWtos that weren't outdated etc. and still can't switch to a text console, switch from a full-screen OpenGL app to any other process without screen corruption AND get bad FPS.
Frankly, i'm p***** off beyond words. I'm hoping to buy a new rig early next year and I will sure has hell never ever touch anything ATI, not with a 10-foot pole. Meanwhile my old graphics card does a better job, gives me at least decent, constant FPS in OpenGL games and installation of new drivers is easy as pie.
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