# Nvidia or ATI -- ATI or Nvidia?

## peaceful

So, if I'm gonna go out and throw about $400 or so into a new video card, and I'm going to be running Gentoo, which will give me better performance with less trouble?

The top-of-the-line NVIDIA card?

OR 

The top-of-the-line ATI card?

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## ender wiggin

Nothin' like starting a little religeous war, eh? I've always found nvidia's driver support to be better under linux. The binary-only drivers work great, if you're not an "open-source only" zealot.

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## trapperjohn

At the moment, ATI has better performance but nVidia has better (Linux)-drivers.

Well, if you're not a hardcore gamer, you won't see the performance difference. I recommend nVidia  :Wink: 

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## The Ennead

Depends on your patience and whether you're looking to the future or the present. I just kicked out a 5800Ultra and replaced it with a 9800XT and the ati is certainly giving me better gaming performance although that's far from reflected in the usual glxgears figures that seem so popular.

If you dual boot then in windows the ATI is all over the Nvidia like a rash in terms of performance and image quality (at least in the games I play, but granted not all games). For Linux it's about even except for image quality where the ati takes all except enemy territory. Even that is debatable since I get graphical corruption in ET Linux but didn't with Nvidia, yet in Windows the 52.** cause graphical corruption and crashes as a known issue whereas the catalysts don't.

Purely Linux, then at the moment Nvidia have better drivers but ATI is showing great promise and I would expect them over the coming months to improve to such an extent that the difference in terms of driver quality will be negligible. Fair to say though, at the moment the drivers are a bit dodgy when it comes to setting up and supporting the XT. Both are a simple emerge away and yet with the ATI I also needed to add a ChipID to xf86config-4 to get the card recognised & accepted (only as a 9800) and then add a startup script to sort out the mtrr overlapping problem. Details Here under my other name Aiki_}{_Ghost None of these problems existed with Nvidia drivers but again, I would imagine this will be resolved with the next driver release.

Short term (6 months) Nvidia

Long term (6 months+) ATI

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## peaceful

Ok, so it sounds like I need to wait a few months and see if ATI improves their driver support.

I want the best in both performance and driver support.

Nvidia's drivers don't work with the ATI cards, do they?  (I'm kidding, I'm kidding, don't throw anything at me!   :Razz:  )

Anyone got any idea if ATI is really going to pull their Linux act together?

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## Ateo

Without doubt, nvidia chipset...

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## kormoc

DeletedLast edited by kormoc on Mon Dec 24, 2018 9:20 am; edited 1 time in total

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## neilhwatson

Why $400 dollars?  What features do you need that last year's model cannot provide at a fraction of the price?  I bought a Nvidia GF4 (440 MX) dual head for about $125 (cdn) last fall.  Runs UT2003 flawlessly.

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## markfl

nVidia, any day

they simply own the linux graphics card market at the moment IMHO

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## gurke

nvidia. ati drivers tend to mess up under linux.

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## Corw|n of Amber

If you go for the top-of-the-line (is it still the 5950 Ultra things from them?), I'd sign to nVidia in blood using both hands and closing my eyes.

As long as you don't go for real cheap no-name low-end things, nVidia rulez. (I hate ATI cards for no reason other than the horrible drivers they had some years ago, and I know for a fact that that's been bettered.)

Still waiting for a little more Linux support from ATI, though...

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## teknomage1

fo that much money you could get an Nvidia Quadro, which'll blow away any radeon...Of course to be fair i think the bottom of the batch firegl card is in the same price range. Nvidia all the way though.

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## jmz2

Both drivers are easy to install under Gentoo. I have one at work and the other at home, no problems whatsoever.

I'd pick the least expensive card with the best 2d image quality  :Smile: 

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## vdboor

I have an Sapphire ATI Radeon 9000, and I'm not really satisfied with the Linux drivers. I'm not sure how good the nvidia drivers are, but I read positive results above.

My problems with the ati drivers:

* 3D Acceleration (dri) is disabled when I try to login again (I'm using gdm as login screen) this is my major frustration.

* X often crashes when I leave full-screen, or change the resolution in a game.

* the latest 3.7.0 has memory leaks... which is the reason why it's masked in portage.

* often the modules don't unload correctly without a reboot.

* ATI's internal agp module doesn't work with my mobo chipset (via)

* switching to the standard agpgart module requires another reboot.

currently I'm running the xfree-drm radeon drivers... They are open source drivers, and the refreshrate is much lower (30 instead of 110), it has rendering problems, but at least.. dri is always working and x doesn't crash!   :Evil or Very Mad:  I suppose you can image why I'm not really happy.

</rant>

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## Isaiah

[quote="kormoc"] *peaceful wrote:*   

> Now, at the past Million Man Lan, I talked to the Ati guys about the linux drivers and, no offence to them, but it was more of a fun project that they work on when they want to, it's not anything they really are putting a lot of effort into.

 

And it's just a coincidence they've replaced NVIDIA in the next M$ gaming console - yes, I like conspriracy theories  :Wink: 

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## vdboor

 *kormoc wrote:*   

> Now, at the past Million Man Lan, I talked to the Ati guys about the linux drivers and, no offence to them, but it was more of a fun project that they work on when they want to, it's not anything they really are putting a lot of effort into.

 

well if it's really just for fun, whouldn't they open source their drivers?  :Razz:  no. sorry wrong comment.   :Twisted Evil:   (off course they won't and people shouldn't beg for it either)

but this "just for fun" makes my puke, and doesn't really give me much faith in ati's drivers. :'( but well, ut2003 for linux was created with the same intentions, and we could be thankfull we have at least some support.

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## jaska

Ati has the major pitfall with the drivers. They make shit drivers for windows and completely miserable linux drivers on the side as some fun project. 

Their hardware they use on the cards seems higher quality but what good is that for if they can't be bothered to even get decent driver writers at it.

Nvidia doesn't make the best drivers but they seem to work to the extent that you can do something with them. 

If you want to wait wait wait wait and still wait to get anything working, Ati is your hero. If you want something to work, give Nvidia a shot.

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## molander

I have three different ATI (9500Pro, 9600, mobility) cards in various computers all of them work perfectly.  I also have had two recent nvidia (4400,4800) cards that worked very well in linux. The only problem the nvidia cards had was they seemed to be more expensive with respect to "fps per dollar". a $200 ati card generally will knock the socks off a $200 nvidia any day of the week.  For me its about cost and performance, not hype. 

I know that ATI has had issues in the past but the current ati-drivers ebuild takes any pain out of it. Especially with 2.6 kernels. I already had agpart support ready so all I had to do was 'emerge at-drivers' and I was done. Worked the first time and still works. 

The major problem that most people have is with the agpart driver.  This often gets mis-diagnosed as a "video card problem".  Make sure your motherboard agp bus is supported otherwise you will get horrible performance. 

I would highly suggest the ATI card, they are very fast and stable. I personally wouldnt spend $400 on a video card, a $200 will usually run at 85% the speed of a $400 one anyway. Spend the money on system memory. For $200 you should be able to pick up 1G - 1.5G of the good stuff.

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## Darksilence

Well I know that this thread is probably long since dead and you have either decided to wait or bought your new video card but I thought I would state my opinion anyway. 

You have just entered a holy war from hell ATI vs. nVidia. The fact of the matter is that neither side is right or wrong, both cards have their advantages and dis advantages. Ati Has spped and lot of it in DX9, somethig that the nVidia cards seem to lack. But what the nVidia cards lack in spped in DX9 they make up for in stability. Ati VPU's are known to crash on random intervals and the catalyst drivers even have been programmed to deal with this contingency.

Now what you may have noticed that I made it a point to mention DX9 despite the fact that linux does not have DirectX or ever will. When it comes to all the new benchmarks and pro-ati argument it is simply becasue nVidia cards are lacking when it comes to running DX9 programmible shaders, but that it becasue there is a difference in view between the two companies. ATI went after the gamers that would be playing the highest number of games the DirectX gamers and that is what their cards are good at. NVidia on the other hand went after the types of people that would be playing next generation first person shooters, specificly DooM 3. Nvidia cards are so bent toward the OpenGL API that even some of the GPU functionality is completely unaccessable from DX. So when deciding to buy a card you have to consider what you will be using them for. Your card is a high-end graphics card most likely for gaming, but since your using Linux and not a windows machine you willl be using OpenGL for all of your gaming so you will want the nVidia card for it's better preformance under that API.

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