Hello forum,

For whatever it is worth to you all, I decided to ditch my ATI video card and switch to Nvidia.

The reason?

The ATI Linux drivers never did work right and I've tried three different ATI video cards, the Rage 128 Pro, the Radeon 9700, and the Radeon 800XT over the years with Linux - plus I would have the same problems in four different Linux distrubtions, Mandriva, Fedora, Kubuntu, and RHEL4.

Whenever I could finally get 3D acceleration to work, my X server would either crash when I logged out, or my display would produce bizaare color distortions, like a wild wallpaper, when I would log back into it, in each one of the Linux distrbutions I mentioned. The only fix would be to disable 3D acceleration.

Even with ATI's latest driver (as of this writting) that boasts the crashing of the X server had been fixed, it still crashed at times and still created bizaare color distortions. I was using the Radeon 800XT card at that time.

But the Nvidia Linux drivers (GForce 7800 GT) have worked for those same four different Linux distrubitions without a hitch, even with 3D acceleration enabled. And Nvidia's control panel runs circles around ATI's control panel. And the TV out works great too, a rarity with ATI.

I've heard of success stories with ATI but these people were Linux guru's who knew their stuff better than I did. But for the moderately experienced person, Nvidia is the way to go.

I'm so glad I switched.

To all the best,
Roy

Agreed , with ATI it's just wayyyy too much work to get a half working display. Nvidia just plain works every time, to tell you the truth I have never even had a good experience with ATI on Windows either.
Good for you , glad to hear you got it rocking now.

While Ati card works perfectly on Windows (and yes, it seems they even unbloated their CCC), it was always some pain and hassle to make them work on Linux. I had roughly the same problems as rrrssssss and it worked perfectly fine the day I installed nvidia drivers for my nVidia card.

I've had both success and failures with both cards. Generally I think I can say that nVidia cards and drivers have, as a combination, worked better for me on Linux side (not saying anything about Windows), but like I said, neither one is perfect. It's just as easy to get either one crash. Hopefully both will write their drivers for Linux from scratch and make them better..

Originally I had a very old nVidia card, for which the drivers first caused only trouble, but later worked (as I gained experience, I learned to tweak the thing and avoid trouble). Then I got my first ATI card; never treid 3D with it. Along have gone other nVidia and ATI cards (and some others, at the moment SiS chipset which isn't really a gaming thing..), and lately ATI has proven it works when the environment is right, and doesn't work if it just doesn't want. nVidia drivers nowadays usually install fine, with only occasional troubles, but after starting a game running nVidia drivers it's highly probable to end it in a crash after some hours, or at least in the need to restart X to get the colours/resolution/other configuration correct after the program exits.

Lastly I've noticed this: there's no real use of 3D on Linux yet, unless playing games. And in that case..better play them on a gaming console, it's just so much smoother. In the future when 3d desktops may (just may) gain popularity over the "regular" ones, 3D hardware and drivers may start being really important - and that's when I hope they work. But nowadays..better stick to cheaper hardware (= no expensive 3D hardware) and working 2D drivers Beryl/Compiz is the only real reason to use 3D stuff, and they don't increase productivity, so no-go. And those who work on 3D modeling and so on...better switch operating system (and hardware, PC is crap) if you don't want to lose your nerves again and again.