# 'New' ATI Support for Linux

## deathcon1

Yes, this article was on Slashdot this moring, but I wanted to start a topic to disuss this and how soon we'd be able to see these drivers in Gentoo, as I'm building a new system by the end of July, the Intel chipsets seem to be geared towards Crossfie, and as a Canadian I'd love to support the (semi) home-team.  

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=amd_evolution&num=1

If you have used one of these 'new' drivers or if you get one of the 48-series, please share your experience. 

I'd also like to share that I'm excited to see Tux finally starting to get REAL mainstream attention; as per the article ATI will now feature Tux fairly prominently on the front of the retail boxes.

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## Kasumi_Ninja

I just traded my Geforce 9600 GT (it broke down) for a ATI 3850 HD and run it the fglrx drivers. Thus far I am very happy with it (although the latest drivers won't function with wine). With open source support coming imo the future loks nright for ATI.

P.S.

The free drivers for ATI are already in portage:

# eix radeon

```
* app-laptop/radeontool

     Available versions:  1.5-r3

     Homepage:            http://fdd.com/software/radeon/

     Description:         Control the backlight and external video output of ATI Radeon Mobility graphics cards

* x11-drivers/xf86-video-radeonhd

     Available versions:  ~1.1.0 ~1.2.0 ~1.2.1 {debug}

     Homepage:            http://wiki.x.org/wiki/radeonhd

     Description:         Experimental Radeon HD video driver.
```

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## crazycat

I ordered the 4850 for 143 euro yesterday. I hope radeonhd will support it soon. Even if some nvidia cards offer better buck/performance (especially new 9800gtx to be sold for 199$ - ~150 euro) I'll put my money where my mouth is.  I hope this will drive other vendors to open the specs for their hardware.

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## asturm

As far as I have seen, 4850 is at least on par with the performance of 9800 GTX.

There's even initial 4850 support in xf86-radeon-ati through AtomBIOS, but no 2D/3D acceleration yet.

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## Evincar

Yes, the 4850 is a very serious contender in terms of price/performance againts the Nvidia offerings, something that has not happenned for quite a while. I am wondering how the 4650 will turn out. That card could give very solid performance for something 100€!!! 

I bet we will soon be seeing benchmarks in phoronix, and honestly I expect the 4850 to slaughter the opposition under Linux. AMD seems dead serious about their support. Now, if they could only fix the R500 mess...

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## crazycat

2.6.26-rc7 has some dri updates that enable r500 acceleration, so does radeonhd git. It's still very alpha, but you can see the effort and even contribute if it's moving too slow for you. After years of using proprietary drivers I'm deadly determined to buy only the hardware that has open specifications. A year ago I was very sceptical when ATI announced that they'll open the 3d specs. But looks like it wasn't just bullshit. Also I know how hard it is to write drivers, especially for multiprocessor machines. The usable r700 radeonhd is probably 1-2 years away, still I feel good paying amd for an effort.

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