Driver support for ATI / NVIDIA on a laptop

Ronayn · 12-14-2010, 07:05 AM

Hello,

I am looking at purchasing a laptop (HP EliteBook Mobile Workstation), but I am not sure whether to buy one with ATI or NVIDIA graphics. My only real concern for graphics is driver support. Which has better support?

BTW, I dont know if this is important, but I will be installing Fedora linux (12 or higher, haven't decided, and will take suggestions on that too!)

reed9 · 12-14-2010, 07:41 AM

Nvidia's proprietary driver is better than ATI's proprietary driver. If you want hardware acceleration and best performance, probably go Nvidia.

However, ATI is more supportive than Nvidia of the open source driver, which is improving rapidly. Some cards have decent hardware acceleration. If you prefer to run free software over proprietary and either don't need hardware acceleration or are getting a card that supports hardware acceleration with the open source driver, go ATI.

http://dri.freedesktop.org/wiki/ATIRadeon
http://dri.freedesktop.org/wiki/Radeon

adamk75 · 12-14-2010, 04:01 PM

Bear in mind that many new laptops include Optimus technology, which is currently unsupported by both the proprietary AMD and nVidia drivers.

Adam

Ronayn · 12-15-2010, 05:15 AM

Thank you adamk75 and reed9 -- that information is very helpful! I was worried about Optimus technology support. I've also noticed in the HP clusters I use at work, that the ATI graphics chip (ATI ES 1000)does not have an optimal driver. Thanks again to both of you!

adamk75 · 12-15-2010, 05:34 AM

Actually, the radeon driver fully supports the ES1000. Perhaps you're noticing that the ES1000 is a graphics chipset for servers, and has absolutely no 3D capabilities whatsoever, and barely any 2D acceleration either.

Adam

sycamorex · 12-15-2010, 05:45 AM

My personal experience so far was that NVIDIA is much easier to handle.

reed9 · 12-15-2010, 05:46 AM

Quote:

BTW, I dont know if this is important, but I will be installing Fedora linux (12 or higher, haven't decided, and will take suggestions on that too!)

Also I would recommend going with the latest version available. Fedora's life cycle is quite short - 2 releases + 1 month, or about 13 months. Support for Fedora 12 was dropped as of December 2.