Hello all. I'm wondering if anyone has had any trouble with ATI's Mobility Radeon HD graphics cards. The reason being that I am looking to purchase a relatively inexpensive laptop that uses an AMD Dual-core processor and an ATI Mobility Radeon HD 6310 graphics card (student on a budget). Are the ATI's pretty dodgy or would I be okay purchasing a laptop with said specs? The few posts I've found on these forums demonstrate that some have had no issues, while others have had issues that could be fixed. Opinions anyone?

Since you've asked about opinions: I'd stay away from ATI cards. I had one laptop with some Radeon card and had a good share of driver 'fun' with it. I'm not saying that it's not going to work but having an nvidia driver/card is so much painless. Just my 5p.

I hate to be blunt. Others may well disagree with me, but Ati - Radeon SUCKS in Linux. The company does not provide support for Linux other than in a very minimal way. If at all possible, go with Nvidia for all things Linux.

Just my opinion...

And yes, I have a Radeon mobility card in my Dell lappy. It SUCKS. No support. I'm planning on purchasing an Nvidia card as soon as $ allow.

Regards,

~Eric

Honestly, it depends on what you want to do with it. I have a Dell laptop with the ATI mobility and I am quite fine with it under Slackware. BUT, I do not care about 3D gaming at all with it. It runs the desktop effects just fine and everything I needed it did well. I don't bother installing ATI's driver, I just use the open source version and was happy. If you just need it for modest purposes as you indicate I think you'd be alright.

However, if you want more, I concur with the other posters and say, if you have the option go with nVidia.

It all comes down to what you need the computer to do and how much you can spend.

Unless, of course, you buy one of those nice new laptops with Optimus, in which case the nvidia GPU is completely and utterly useless.

Personally, I avoid proprietary drivers. Due to NVRM Xid lockups on a couple of different nvidia cards, the nvidia driver is at the top of my list of crappy pieces of software to avoid at all cost.

Adam

Thanks for your help so far everyone. I appreciate it.
@jkirchner: Well, I'm not really going to be doing anything that requires 3D graphical effects. I'm actually just going to use it as a test machine for development purposes. I would go for the better laptop, one with an Intel i3 and Intel HD Graphics (maybe not better than ATI, as some would argue), but again, I'm on a tight budget. So if the ATI is fine with the open-source version driver, I'd be set.

NVRM Xid errors are almost always attributed to hardware, and not software. The only time I've experienced NVRM Xid errors was caused from leaky caps on a failing/failed graphics card (which was replaced under RMA, and never reappeared). If you search the nvnews forums, you'll find that this issue has been fixed either by replacing the faulting system RAM, faulty GPU, or faulty motherboard, and occasionally the faulty user.

If the nvidia driver is at the top of your list for crappy pieces of software I'd hate to read what you have to say about fglrx. It'd surely be NSFW .

NOTE - We play games, and use hardware video decoding
So my view is skewed by our needs.

My x1600 works better than expected with the open source drivers (ATI no longer supports the card). My HD2400 and HD3470 have been hit or miss with the open source driver. The proprietary fglrx is a sad excuse for an upstream provided driver. But did it's job -- sort of. Many features are either buggy or not support with ATI hardware. In my personal experience the opensource driver and the x1600 works better than either HD card and the proprietary driver. The last time I used the HD cards, the open source driver had no to very little 3d capabilities. It's a complete no go for us.

If I were to buy a new laptop today and did not need 3d acceleration or hardware video decoding, I'd choose Intel. Intel has better power management features, generates less heat, and uses less battery power compared to either ATI or Nvidia, and should be considered in a laptop purchase.

On the subject of open source drivers - Intel - ATI - and last Nvidia. Currently Nvidia has the poorest open source driver, but the best supported, working, and fully featured upstream driver. ATI's open source driver is consistently getting better. I've seen more advancement with the open source driver over the years compared to the proprietary fglrx.

On the desktop, I don't see myself buying anything but Nvidia. Once hardware video decoding is implemented in a stable fasion, and widely supported, plus stable, fast and feature rich 3d acceleration - I'd think about using ATI. With the rate that the ATI drivers are currently progressing, it could be with in a year.

1 members found this post helpful.

You'll also find that it's not always fixed.

Adam

6130? Is this one of the newer APU's from AMD? Such as the E-350? Not sure what the state of support is from linux kernel point of view (if anything at all is needed)

Radeons are "workable" in linux, but I have to echo what others have said, can be painful depending on your card and what you're doing. I'm sorry to say that Nvidia seems to be "easier" than AMD/ATI in linux.

taichi135, you are correct. It is indeed the AMD E-Series E-350 Dual-Core Processor. What I'm most concerned about is out-of-the-box functionality with Slackware64 -Current. I won't be doing any gaming at all with the laptop, just development.

Try -current. Your HD cards should both work excellent almost out of the box. Just pay attention to VGA= Lilo boot parameters and load radeon module from rc.modules for example. And using mesa from /testing generally should perform better.

Thought that was implied, since the OP asked directly about Slackware64 -current

The HD series is still missing many 3d features. With a newer software stack, including kernel 2.6.38 things are improved, though r500's still have better performance over the r600, r700 and newer chips. The x1800/x1900 are currently the best performing 3d cards on opensource drivers. Here's a decent AMD/ATI biased article http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?pag...pflipper&num=1
http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?pag...ver_q111&num=1

Hiya,
Came across this post as I'm searching for a solution for *exactly* this setup, I had to register & say "NO NO NO! PLEASE! SAVE YOURSELF, RUN!" Maybe slightly melodramatic, but that's just me & what I'm like at 2am after spending the last 7 hours trying to get this sodding thing working. OK, so I'm using Ubuntu, but these drivers are stubborn like a mule, just because they haven't heard of the exact chipset, it presumes it's not ATI (I mean what, did I warez their gfx card?). It kinda accepts its existence, to the extent of giving me a good resolution, but it has this most obnoxious watermark in the bottom left corner, like an illegitimate Windows.

I consider this my break, I will get this working, even if it means rubbing it tenderly on its chippy tips. Looks like you've already concluded that Nvidia is the way to go, stupid me thought AMD had got their poo together. I mean, it won't even run Unity...

Lovely hardware tho!
nx

well, I can only speak as I find, and having been running the propriety ATI drivers on my laptop for the last 18mnths, I have to say I have nought but praise for them. They work well, give great 3d speed, and tend, for the most at least, to keep up with the rapid changes that have been happening in Slackware lately.
BTW, hardware is a Packard Bell dual core AMD, 4 Gb Ram, 2 x 500Mb drives and ATI radeon inbuilt graphics with dedicated 64Mb ram, so whether this makes a difference I don't know, but as I say, no complaints thus far.

I wouldn't be too put off by the FUD about radeon cards - the driver provided by AMD works and can generate a slack package, it also has better performance than the open source driver (although I'm hoping that will change so I can stop using the AMD driver). The place to get support and more information is in the phoronix forum, theres also some slightly dated info on the unofficial fglfx wiki. I've used both NVidia and ATI and theres not really that much between them on linux - I would lean toward NVidia as they have VDPau for video decoding. I'm using an ATI Radeon HD 4500 on 2.6.38 with no problems (although compiling against this kernel required a patch)