ATI Radeon 9600 SE
 

I'm planning on upgrading my video card soon (I'm currently working on with 2mb video ram). I was planning on getting the ATI Radeon 9600 SE. However, I know very little about video cards, so I was wondering if someone more knowledgeable than I could help me out with some questions I have. (1) Is the ATI Radeon 9600 SE supported by linux? (I assume it would be under the ati driver, but I would hate to buy it, get it installed, and have it not work.) (2) Is this card a good choice for generic gaming and whatnot? Its specs can be seen here: http://www.bestbuy.com/site/olspage....1&type=product

Thanks ahead of time for any input.

For about the last year I've been working with Linux on my main box running a Radeon 9600 Pro. Under Windows it is a great card for gaming, etc but it is unfortunately hard to get to work under Linux. The ATI drivers are provided ONLY in RPM and have EXPERIMENTAL kernel 2.6 support. I've gotten the card to work under Fedora Core,(you need to patch the driver if using Fedora Core 2) but have had no success on Debian. In other words, it really depends on the distro you plan on using. Any RPM based or Gentoo (I've heard it works perfectly on Gentoo, I've never actually tried it) should work fine, but Debian and (I'm assuming) Slackware would probably have some difficulty with it.

It also depends on your Mainboard, exactly said on your chipset. On Intel and VIA I had no probs, while you sit on a NForce sys for a loooong time try to figure out how this nasty stuff works... Here SuSE provided drivers work well, also on 2.6.x, but they run only on SuSE.

I have a laptop with the radeon 9700 and was able to get the drive working, even though 1) It's technically not for laptops and 2) I'm running slackware. My guess is you'll have it working fine.

works fine for me
 

I have a laptop with a Mobility 9700 in here. Works with the XFree86 drivers, although no 3d accell, and the ATI drivers works with a patch just fine, although resuming from suspend does not work with the ATI. I use debian.

Go NVIDIA for best Linux experience..

I have used nVidia on linux. It works as well and they seem to be a bit more friendly to the linux community. Also their drivers are eaiser to install. BTW, if any one needs a deb for installing the fglrx driver I have one that I made.

I am using a Radeon 9700 Pro and Mandrake 10, and have had no problems with it. The install went extremely smooth, using ATI's RPM pack. I have been playin Unreal Tournament 2004 with no problems at all, and it loads/plays faster than it did on my windows system!

I have just managed to get my 9600XT working under linux but it was an experience. If I had my time over again I would have gone nVidia. I have no particular loyalties.

If you want to get 3D accel working easily, choose an nVidia. If you want a forced education with linux kernel, modules, drivers, rpm and compiling, go ATI.

It really depends (for now) on which version of XFree86 your favorite distro uses. ATI has not come out with drivers for version 4.4 as yet, but anything earlier is supported. I'm running an AIW Radeon 9600 Pro on Mandrake 10.0 Official using ATI's drivers. But if absolute performance in Linux (or Windows) is not your primary concern, I'd reluctantly recommend you go with nVidia for best overall Linux compatability.

I, also, have no particular loyalties, seeing as I have no experience with tinkering with video cards or the like, and I think I will use an nVidia card; however, this poses a new question altogether: which nVidia card should I use?

I am building a new computer (will be primarily windows) , and am going to put a sapphire x800xt in it. Is this supported?

I have a desktop with NVidia on-board 64MB Shared and a Laptop with an ATI 9600 Pro 128MB both seem to work fine with the drivers obtained from nvidia and ATI sites, on Fedora Core 2. The configuration for ATI took some time but has not given me any problems since. Does give quite good FPS. Have'nt used any of the cards for Hardcore gaming so I would'nt be a good person to comment on which card to go for :D .

Debian has some fine working drivers for the radeon series....
Find it at:

http://xoomer.virgilio.it/flavio.sta...installer.html

ATI RADEON 9600 A-I-W
 

ATI was always the best Linux support, but now nVidia seems to be at least as good, overall, maybe a little better about multi-distro-made-easy. I went ATI because of the former, but it is certainly not something to get into a religious war over; they're both good & both reasonably friendly.

sausagejohnson: I have an ATI9600 AllInWonder, SuSE 9.0 pro, etc, and I wonder if you might be kind enough to forward, list or personal, as much details as you think reasonable about getting your ATI9600 working under RedHat9? (SuSE did something different & I'm having trouble making the ATI fglrx drivers work... Sigh. I love SuSE, but maybe it is time to go to Mandrake, if SuSE is going to get all MonoplySoft-like... they were NOT willing to help at all when I called.)

(and for slides-off-the-tongue syllable-count, that is : MonopSoft, accent on the first syllable.)

Robert G. Hays
rghays9693@netscape.net

I got my 9800 running 3d fairly quickly under mandrake 10. Your best bet for linux support is nvidia since it seems to work with just everything that a radeon doesn't. Personally I benifited from learning how to fix the problem because I'm a newbie. Though it took me a very long while to get it working, but I'm satisfied with the performance. Basically what it comes down to is that ati runs windows the best, its just a matter of weather you want to go through the hardship of getting it to work under linux.

This discussion leads me to a question: I have two computers. A 2 ghz Pentium 4 w/ geforce e ti500, and a 1.7ghz Pentium M (dothan) with a mobility radeon 9700. In glxgears, the geforce will cap out at a little under 2500fps. The radeon, however, only makes it to about 2200. The Pentium M and radeon should both be considerably faster than the Pentium 4 and geforce - so my only conclusion is it is a driver issue... however, I also feel that performance in the Ut2004 demo is better on the Pentium M. So I don't know if glxgears is a poor benchmark, or if the ATI drivers really are that bad.

Also, the last nvidia drivers include a neat software utility called nvidia-settings. It lets you tweak the colors and so on using a gtk app. For newer cards it apparently also has a temperature monitor. Pretty cool.

Well, glxgears is a great benchmarking tool to make sure that everything is working, the only other possible benchmarking tool would be in game (ie Ut2004). It does sound like you are having some drivers issues under linux, but your just going to have to figure that out through your own investigation. Ati has had poor driver support for a very long time and it doesn't look like its going to get any better. My 9800 + my nforce motherboard has caused me a host of hassle mainly due to poor driver compadibility and configuration.

Another inportant thing to note is that currently Ati does not support X.org, which means by default fedora core 2 or the next release of mandrake will not show video with the radeon cards on first boot. Personally having all of these problems was a great learning tool for me, but another person may not see it the same way.

Well if you can get past the first boot then it works fine. Actually, depending on whether or not i've had ATI's drivers working, it's gone back and forth between those and the free ones seamlessly. This is in slackware running x.org.

Adrohak

I have both the Pro version and the SE version of the 9600 card and I have found that on madrake the ATI drivers are better for the PRO version card where as the frame rate for the SE version is better with the Mesa drivers.....however both cards will run great with dual head....you need the ATI drivers for dual head.....also there is a bit of differce in the community versin of madrake and the official.....Im assuming this to be because of better kernel support in the official release.

one more thing...the 325 driver set from ATI seems to be beter for the SE version card and the 390 driver set seem to be better for the Pro version card.

these cards and driver configs btw were all tested in one machine...the 1Gig athlon..so the only things to change were the cards, the drivers and the distros...I have not tested anything in suse yet. oh also these test were carried out on the 2.4 kernel


have fun...both cards are good...if you dont want dual head and fast frame rate them go with the cheaper one but if you think you might like the dual head feature and fast frame rate then get the PRO

By fast frame rate I mean 2897 fps in glxgears dualhead display with the PRo version card and 567 fps in glxgears with dualhead display with the SE
both using the ATI drivers

go with Radeon 9700/9500 series with RV300 chips much better than 9600 series. Try to read the review from the net. You will find them useful. I have 9700 pro and find no problem for installing the driver with my debian sid. Also depends what are u going to use for the your video card. Gaming or ...?

As a longtime ex-ATI-fan, I recommend you to buy an nVidia-card!!

You can read of my experiences with the ATI-drivers and Linux from previous threads, as well as of other "happy" ATI-user's experiences. Finally managed to switch all 5 Radeon-cards away and I'm never going back to ATI!

But yes, in Windows ATI-cards are very good. In Linux the drivers just cause lockups with 2.6.x-kernels and the performance sucks compared to an nVidia-card of the same speed!

Hmmm oh well...All I know is that Im using a radeon 90600 now in mandrake 10 with kernel 2.6 (now) and am getting an even better frame rate (in far cry, deus ex 2 & NWN ) than ever in windows....just lucky I guess :) kewlies to me hehehehehehe

Sorry guys but its not very often I get the uppence on others in this sort of thing...I normally have to fight with things for a long time :)

I've only gotten it to run under windows as well, but I am still new to Linux... I sometimes have an issue with.. hmmm.. crashing my computer ... lol I guess that's why I have this board.. ^___^

Stay away from the SEs if you want to play stuff like Doom 3 and HL2 on highest resoulution, detail, etc.