Open ATI Driver More Popular Than Catalyst

[Melcar]

Yada yada yada,

690 series are still being produced and sold in quantity. FACT. Everything but the oldest Nvidia cards are still current with the latest releases of linux. FACT. Legacy does not mean unsupported with Nvidia, it means no longer being made. FACT. Sorry you typed so much bullshit for having NO meaningful response. FACT.

Does AMD themselves still produce those old chips, or is that just the vendors repackaging old stuff? I don't know that's why I ask.
All ATI cards are supported right now with a combination of both closed and open source drivers.
AMD still supports legacy cards. Not with fglrx, but with the open drivers, which they are backing.
I really shouldn't even bother responding, but I'm bored right now.

[deanjo]

Does AMD themselves still produce those old chips, or is that just the vendors repackaging old stuff? I don't know that's why I ask.
All ATI cards are supported right now with a combination of both closed and open source drivers.
AMD still supports legacy cards. Not with fglrx, but with the open drivers, which they are backing.
I really shouldn't even bother responding, but I'm bored right now.

Yes, AMD still produces 690 based chipsets to accompany their 'netbook and low budget' solutions. Abandoning their current solutions to fend for themselves with a immature driver solution is my biggest beef. The 6x series of IGP for example on nvidia is obsolete and out of production but there still is a fully working driver solution to this day.

[mirv]

Yes, AMD still produces 690 based chipsets to accompany their 'netbook and low budget' solutions. Abandoning their current solutions to fend for themselves with a immature driver solution is my biggest beef. The 6x series of IGP for example on nvidia is obsolete and out of production but there still is a fully working driver solution to this day.

AMD did a pretty tough thing - it was not done lightly, and I'm sure you've read enough to know that. What they did is also working. If AMD had waiting for the open source drivers to catch up, the proprietary drivers would have suffered as a result. Of course it would be nice if the binaries could be kept up, but to make such a shift of support was going to cause problems no matter when it happened - and the sooner effort could be put into open source drivers, the sooner they could mature.
nvidia plays a dangerous game really with keeping everything closed. If some major change takes place (wayland maybe?) that causes them to have to rebuild large portions of their drivers, it's going to be buggy for a long time. AMD on the other hand will have the open source drivers in place (good for legacy products too).

[xeros]

Now there should be another survey to check:
- what hardware do phoronix readers have.
- if the open source driver is used by will (and why?) or by must (for example that AMD dropped support for it in Catalyst driver).
- what open source driver should have to switch to it

I've been switching beetween closed source and open source drivers few times but I've switched permanently to open source ati driver few months before amd droped support for my hardware and I'm not dissapointed - open source driver _almost_ perfectly fits my needs on my hardware. What I still miss is never OpenGL support via Mesa or Gallium3D which should be done in near future.

I've got two ATI graphic cards in my P4 computer (AGP RV350 and PCI-E RV370) and even that vendor of my motherboard says it doesn't support two graphic cards at the same time in both AGP and PCI-E slots it works great (at full speed) in Linux thanks to open source ati driver!
I can even play Nexuiz on dualseat (two monitors, two keyboards, two mouses and two independent sound outputs from one sound card) with both video cards at once without much FPS drop.

In my point of view open source ati driver is a lot better than closed source Catalyst - better 2D, better XV, better compositing, more hardware support... (only 3D in games is worse yet, and maybe power management for some people).

[deanjo]

AMD did a pretty tough thing - it was not done lightly, and I'm sure you've read enough to know that. What they did is also working. If AMD had waiting for the open source drivers to catch up, the proprietary drivers would have suffered as a result. Of course it would be nice if the binaries could be kept up, but to make such a shift of support was going to cause problems no matter when it happened - and the sooner effort could be put into open source drivers, the sooner they could mature.
nvidia plays a dangerous game really with keeping everything closed. If some major change takes place (wayland maybe?) that causes them to have to rebuild large portions of their drivers, it's going to be buggy for a long time. AMD on the other hand will have the open source drivers in place (good for legacy products too).

This is a worst case scenario 'what if' . If anything over the years nvidia has proven that no matter the changes they still can provide a working solution. When it comes down to purchasing decisions for the here and now, 'in the future, possibly' really doesn't come into real life practices at all.

[mirv]

This is a worst case scenario 'what if' . If anything over the years nvidia has proven that no matter the changes they still can provide a working solution. When it comes down to purchasing decisions for the here and now, 'in the future, possibly' really doesn't come into real life practices at all.

Hmm, nvidia provided a working solution to changes by looking ahead, not by reacting. Early work into providing their own bits & pieces of X paid off in that regard. And "in the future, possibly" does come into real life practices - not all of them perhaps, and not if you're buying for a system that's already in place and won't be changing much, but people who don't buy or upgrade often will definitely look for something that will last for some time.
Anyway, I'm taking this thread off track; it's definitely good to see an open source solution taking hold. Hopefully the increased development of drivers (and I'll refer mainly to the 3D stack here) will benefit game development under linux.

[Kano]

Well hopefully Linux gets a native rage/id tech 5 client. Would be interesting how many drivers are working correctly with it.

[deanjo]

Hmm, nvidia provided a working solution to changes by looking ahead, not by reacting. Early work into providing their own bits & pieces of X paid off in that regard. And "in the future, possibly" does come into real life practices - not all of them perhaps, and not if you're buying for a system that's already in place and won't be changing much, but people who don't buy or upgrade often will definitely look for something that will last for some time.
Anyway, I'm taking this thread off track; it's definitely good to see an open source solution taking hold. Hopefully the increased development of drivers (and I'll refer mainly to the 3D stack here) will benefit game development under linux.

In the real world, I'm buying a system that fits my current needs and wants. Buying for possible future advancements has never been a wise decision when it means sacrificing current functionality in technology as a whole. I can't help but think of examples like SVHS systems, HD TV's without HDCP capabilities, multiple generations of "DX gen capable, but not able to deliver real world working performance" video cards etc. Doing so is bad enough when it's for general consumer consumption let alone in a business environment where a purchase decision can mean the difference of bringing home a nice paycheck or going on public assistance.

[Kano]

Some have got pink ATI glasses on and see the bright future - others are more realistic and buy what CURRENTLY works. The biggest problem are just laptops, there you can not fix a wrong decision without losing lots of money... Also nvidia chips are really rare on the budget market or much more expensive like when you compare intel netbooks and ion. Next jan 11th will be the final day for other Intel onboard solutions as the new cpus will have got a built-in gfx core. Hopefully libva intel will support h264 soon (and best don't stop there and advance to vc1).

[mirv]

Well hopefully Linux gets a native rage/id tech 5 client. Would be interesting how many drivers are working correctly with it.

I doubt the open source ati drivers will - 3d stack isn't nearly ready enough for what I suspect that thing will need. As for nvidia and ati binaries, that probably depends how close to the opengl spec id tech 5 expects the drivers to sit (neither ati or nvidia have a problem if a program sticks to spec from what I gather).