Apparently there is no 3D support in linux from ATi for cards 9500 and above. Which also incldue the IGP 9000 and 9100.

way to go ATi hardOCP has the article here: http://www.hardocp.com/article.html?art=NjQ2

they say that major distros (gentoo in this case) repackage there drivers ..... but in gentoo you require a program to convert there driver on your disk .. thats not repackaging, that just annoying (i hate installing new decency programs unless i have to)

are they implying that OpenGL is by default much slower then direct3d?

Ahem... From your article:

This includes Radeons 9500 and up, as well...
Their drivers have gotten a lot better, and it seems noone is giving credit.

Examples:
My 9000 PRO runs flawlessly, TvOUT included.
My 9200SE runs flawlessly as well, and I use it primarily for the TV-out function. This was without any tweaking at all, simply running fglrxconfig and answering yes to turning on tv-out functionality.

I wish people would stop proliferating false information. ATI has a bad rap, and I'm beginning to think it's pretty undeserved. They've made lots of progress.

--Shade

I am not denying that there are drivers I know there is however this is what the drivers include:
now if I had plunked down a couple hundred for a 9800 pro and expected it to have 3D capablility like nVidia cards do in linux only to find out that all it supports is 2D I would ( and I am ) kinda pissed off. Its not udneserved they do deserve it.

yea right .... i got a ati card (9200SE like yours) , and the ati drivers are a complete and utter joke! .. there is ZERO 3d support from the ati drivers

i tried for days to get direct rendering (3d support) working, in the end i gave up, and found that the xfree/xorg ati radeon generic drivers not only work better for this card then ati's drivers, without any hassle it also gave me direct rendering (3d support), still tho ... glxgears gives me no more then 600 fps, from what i hear, that slow .. but it beats 300 fps (what i had before with ati drivers), and i can play games like tux racer without hassle either .....

I read somewhere (I don't remember where ... probably linux.org news) that ATI said :

Linux users make up 4% of their customers and so they put effort into linux development that is proportional to linux's market share or something like that ...

basically they put 4% of their efforts into producing drivers for linux... and 96% for windows (and mac too I guess, but still...)

I know that sounds logical, but 4% is still quite a lot. If they just hit the linux drivers really hard for about a month they could get some decent drivers out (because we've been waiting on them for quite a while now)

that's what I think

fenderman, anytime i see a company line like that i just think, ok one more reason to take my money to an other company. in this case Nvidia.

the reason ATI only has a 4% market that use *nix is because in the *nix world their hardware/driver combo SUCK big donkey balls. why, as stated above, would i want to spend any kind of money on an ATI card when i can only get 1/2 of the functionality of it, when i can spend roughly the same kind of cash on a Nvidia card and get FULL functionality.

that is just stupid on ATIs part.

then why do people buy products with ati inside? just stop buying them if you don´t like the company´s policy.

Good gaming cards for windows lousy linux support :-p

pevelius: easier said then done ... i didn't know the cards were this bad until after i got one .... i thought they just had a few config problems, not the company is lousy dirt gaging, brown nosing, swine!

if i could order that damned card all over again, id get anything but ati ....

I'd have to agree with SciYro. After reading the article, I find it baffling that ATI would choose to *not* support their high end cards (>= Radeon 9500) and yet still would claim to be committed to Linux. Basically, by not offering 3D support for their high end cards, it seems to me they are pretty much creating an incentive for people to avoid upgrading, and to instead use their older, less advanced cards. In other words, it seems ATI's message is, "If you want the best performance from an ATI card, avoid the new ones" As an ATI user myself, I certainly know what it's like to pretty much waste an entire weekend fighting with these drivers, and considering the amazing growth and momentum of Linux, I just don't understand why they don't create a dedicated engineering team to support Linux. Obviously they must have their reasons, but this just leaves me scratching my head.

Anyway and on a different topic, a video card upgrade may be on the horizon for one of my machines, and suffice it to say that an ATI card is not under consideration, especially after seeing this interview. I'd definitely be looking at nVidia, and I've been checking out the LQ HCL to try to narrow my search, but if anyone has any particular recommendations about which cards really rock or which ones to avoid, please comment as I'd trust what LQ'ers have to say more than most magazine articles. I'm not looking to drop the maximum cash, but I do want something pretty powerful. Thanks for any tips -- J.W.

Not like it matter this generation nVidia 's 6800GT and the 6600GT both seem to be peoples best bang for buck purchase. With the 6600GT outperforming even 9800XT's yet cost only $200 (MSRP so it will prbably be cheaper)budget gamers have a winner there, and for high end the 6800GT's offer remarkable performance out perform ATi's x800 Pro and has more features (16 Pixel Pipelines instead of 12 and Shader 3.0 support if you still game in windows) and while not as powerful as the x800 XT its also a couple hundred less.

I just bought an x800 xt and i can't even install certain linux distros because graphic mode doesn't work and there's bugs in the text mode installer.....

even mandrake was a bitch to install

Darned ATI!!!

'hi i'm bill gates, and this is all your video card are belong to me!'

<cue jackass music>

or much faster...

or most likely, "different"