Hi

I am thinking of buying a Dell Inspiron 6400 http://configure.us.dell.com/dellsto...6400hip6&s=bsd

I have a choise of getting Intel® Graphics Media Accelerator 950 or 128MB ATI MOBILITY™ RADEON® X1300 HyperMemory™. The problem with Intel card is that the screen has some strange aspect ratio and needs a workaround. But Radeon seems to have a propriotary driver. I am using Mandriva 2006 Powerpack and most probably the ATI card is supported or I can get the driver separately. My question is has anybody used any of those cards with the 1680x1050 resolution? Have you had any problems? Any info before I buy this would be a big help.

Thanks

Neranjana

get the ATI, its a much better card!!!

you'll get better graphics, and it should be supported out of the box, but ati also makes a proprietary driver availible at ati.com

Before you choose, check out my DRI thread (Link in my sig).

ATI, while a 'better' card, is NOT friendly. Many, many, many, many people report configuration issue with ATI, along with absolutely NO linux support.

Your choice, but the Intel chips just plain work.

cwwilsons thread helps a LOT. I have the 900 GMA in my laptop, and it is NO hassle to get working. Just leave the kernel as-is, and follow the guide above.

That said, the ATI would give better performance (under Windows at least). I have also heard horror stories about ATI drivers.

cwwilson721 is right.

I am suffering from ati gpu. ati provide the driver "as is". Even that it is not working. That is as good as do not have a driver. I had tried a few ways, reinstall 2 linux distro a few times with about 7-8 sets of instructions. I ended up with vesa driver on 1280x800, aspect ratio is abit off.

The documents are not easy to follow. There are a few changes in the driver, versions are not recorded properly and etc. But I manage to install the driver partially for fc5. ati seems to only fully support firegl cards for linux.

In contrast, nVidia provide not just driver also sdk for linux (do check the nvidia for specific). But my bet will be in intel graphics.

I had asked ATI on the hardware spec, with hope that I can program and jointly program a workable driver with a few people. unfortunately, ati points to my hardware vendor, because ati do not provide support on their gpu on notebooks (they did not mention the OS). My vendor however are not able to provide ati hardware spec over some agreement with ati and some IP issue, points me back to ATI. ATI customer care is not helpful for linux.

There are a few volunteer ATI driver developers. They are working hard on it, but limited to their ati cards/gpu. What works are not always translatable to other users. I am stuck.

The major issue is that I have not able to find the spec to develop my own driver. Neither the customer care of ATI provide any pointers to that. I think ATI got to realize that they sell hardware not software. If user did not get to program their ATI hardware, what is the use of it? As for me, unless ATI publish their specs to the point user can program it or ATI gave free hardware, I won't recommend any ATI products.

I am thinking of selling my notebook for windoze user. Trust me, ATI on windows is not as good as well. games hung in 30mins. i shd hv opt for intel graphics (or nvidia).

Nvidia or Intel would be fine. The newer Nvidia chips/drivers, and the built-in Intel support in the kernel and Xorg, just make both chipsets work.
ATI seems to have a huge blindspot (read 'no money') towards opensource.

Do what you need to. But I have heard you can get the ATI chip working. Read Old Fogies posts in my DRI thread.

i've used ati on linux, just use the driver in linux, not ATI's driver, which sux

totally agree, i have an ati x1600pro and it really sucks with slackware linux, only problems. use nvidia or intel i810 driver actually pretty good