ati or nvidia on laptop?
 

Lo all,

I've had it up to my fscking nose with ATI, specifically the ATI Mobility 9200 (M9) chipset on my laptop. I'm actually considering in buying a new laptop for that reason only. Its been 13 months now and i still can't get 3D acceleration working properly...

I want to ask, out of experience and research, would you all recommend i stick to ATI (but another model), or move to nvidia (hmm, 6800?) ? Or shall i switch to Intel chipsets? I'd like the recommendations to be based on experience and ease of setting up.. I honestly don't care at all if X's drivers are open source, and Y isn't... i only care that X or Y works and works well..

Yes, my only OS of choice on the laptop will be Slack, and i want to be able to play games.. Mind you, i'm not asking about which laptop to buy, just which chipset to use.. I already have my eye on two ;)

Thanks.

I myself have an ATI, granted its not the latest, just a 7500 64MB card, however, I would switch over to NVidia, because ATI's drivers were never that up to par, even on the MS-Windows side, and on Linux, there is no real gaurantee that you are getting 100% out of your card in Linux, since ATi does not disclose full information about their cards, and although they do suppport Linux on later models, their dev. team is significantly lower than their Windows team, and so there are some functions of the card in questions that will not be available in Linux, that there are in Windows. NVidia on the other hand, seems the choice for most people who use Linux. I myself remember reading about user experience with ATI and NVidia, and the preference is NVidia, however this was a while back now, and I don't have any links at the moment to backup my claim, though I am sure a simple google search would probably shed more light on this issue.


edit: Well, here is two links that might get you started. google.com/linux ATI and NVidia for further results

http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...04/10/3/243546
http://www.linux-gamers.net/modules/...d=1566&forum=5

Don't have any experience with ATI, or with laptops for that matter. I work mostly with Nvidia cards and have worked with Sis cards in the past. Nvidia is very easy to get going. Some thoughts:


I've seen posts where you note compiling newer kernels. That means you already have the kernel source installed, so you're all set on that point. Another nice thing about NVidia is that they seem to keep pretty up to date with kernel changes. If a new kernel breaks the nvidia driver, the nvnews site will usually have a kernel patch up fairly quickly.

Also, having had a Sis card before, I can tell you that getting the Nvidia driver going is really trivial. You might be wondering what I mena by that. Well, with the Sis card, I wanted to squeeze every last bit of juice out of it. I ended up tweaking xorg.conf quite a bit. Same for Nvidia. So that means that the only thing new with an Nvidia card is running the installer. Just reading the ATI directions makes my head hurt.

The README inluded with the Nvidia driver covers just about anything you could want to know. Handy if you're trying to use the laptop screen and a TV or second monitor.

i have a 16x pcie Go6600te 128 mb and it packs a punch. ut2k4 runs easyly with all option enabled

Heh, so far its Nvidia.. which is what i really wanted to hear.

I'll keep that in mind. Thanks. Now to figure out a way to order a laptop from USA to UK, without paying any extra tax on it... :D

I'm running on an old Rage 3D Pro Turbo, and I have had very few problems with it under Linux, but the problems I've had have been ugly.

Oddly enough, Windoze eXasPeration has issues with my video card too--for some reason the (updated) driver prevents eXasPeration from suspending! Go figure!:rolleyes:

Rik

A bit off-topic, but I've got a three-year-old laptop with an S3 Twister graphics card, and I had very little trouble getting 3D acceleration working using the drivers from dri.freedesktop.org.

If I were buying a laptop today, though, I'd lean towards NVIDIA - just because I know their drivers work well. Shame they're not open source.

ATI + Linux == SHIT.

I have tried some linux on ATi, SiS, nVidia and i810.

(*****) nVidia TNT2 work well from xfree4.4 to xorg6.8.2, 3d tends to halt with xfree 4.3

(***) intel i810, no 3d hardware accelation, 2d acccelation with xorg6.8.1 (fedora 3) should be disabled or else you would see rubbish in screen

(**) SiS 741, no 3d accelation, 2d accelation is buggy, xv is also buggy, you can see some video frame fly to another side of scrren or color messing. The default xv contrast is far too high. At least your machine doesn't halt up with the 3rd party driver.

(**) ATi 9100, 3d accelation would halt up the machine. Same result from redhat 9 to ubuntu hoary. Tune the config might help, I never tried it.

Let's see what would happen in the future, I try to avoid any ATi product unless they earn a better reputation.

Something to note, There is now an open source ATI Radeon driver project. Go to the following page:

http://r300.sourceforge.net

Still beta (alpha?), but looks promising.

Eric

When you figure that out please let me know. I want to buy a laptop but here in the UK, good spec laptops cost a fortune.

Could you just use a US re-mailer service? Use the US re-mailers address. When they get packages, they forward them to you. Don't really know the ins and outs of international shipping.

Nope, but i'll tell you one thing... It's cheaper to buy a ticket, go to the states, buy the laptop, and come back.. than to buy the same one here in london.

As for the laptops.. i'll wait a bit. The new Nvidia 6800 Ultra chipsets are out, but only on Dell laptops. I'll give it a few more months then check again.

EDIT:
Its good to see that i'm not the only one who'se having so much trouble with Linux<>ATI...

So far, the only thing i see which works well is if you know someone who'se going and coming back to the U.S.. Once they buy it, and switch on the laptop, its "theirs", and they don't have to declare it on their way back.

Same goes with any other devices, like mp3 players, etc...

Not gonna be able to smuggle it unless you've got a courier. Find a friend you trust who lives in the USA or Canada and plans on going over to England in the near future, and ship it to them. They can carry-on on a plane for the flight over, and for the return trip, they can drop it in the Thames. (as far as customs is concerned, that is. ;))