# nVidia vs ATI, image quality and driver support

## enrique

I'm going to buy a new PCI-e based graphics card. I care a lot about image quality and how well the drivers, for the card, work in Linux. 

After reading a lot of posts, in this forum and around the net, it looks like that ATI's Linux drivers are of a lower quality than those of nVidia. 

So this should narrow the field down to only nVidia cards, right? But I have tried two nVidia based cards in my system and the vga image quality was really poor. I know I have high standards, and I'm a bit spoiled by the image quality of my Matrox G400. 

I know that there exists PCI-e based Matrox cards, but they are not very good at 3D, they are expensive and Matrox's drivers for those cards are rumored to be really, really poor.

So these are my questions:

1. Are ATI's drivers any good?

2. Can you recommend a PCI-e, passive cooled graphics card with high image quality (remember I don't care to much about 3D performance, I don't play any 3D games, I just want a nice, crisp, clear, stable image on my vga monitor (Eizo F67))

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## alienjon

I have an Sapphire x800 PRO installed. I wouldn't say that the drivers are ALL that bad... once I got them to work. If you don't have any intention on playing any 3d games, and don't plan on using opengl intensive programs then I would personally say that the nVidia and ATI products are both equal in quality in linux, but nVidia is certainly more reliable, easier to use and supported much better.

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## eelke

I cannot advise you on a PCI-e card but I can tell you that the Radeon 9800 PRO has a very good picture quality. I use one on an Eizo F77 21" monitor 1600x1200@75Hz and I know the card also gives a perfect image on a LaCie ElectronBlue22 which is a much better monitor then the Eizo.

Don't buy a card where the VGA connector is internally connected to the PCB with a flatcable. The connector should be soldered directly to the PCB or you will loose image quality.

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## enrique

Thanks for the answers, I'm glad to get some serious feedback!

I'm not planning to play any 3D intense games, but mayby use blender (which does not work very well with a Matrox card)

I will consider a ATI based card now. 

@ alienjon:

What was the problem with getting the drives working?

@ eelke

It is nice to hear from one which uses monitors that are a bit over the average  :Smile:  and thanks for the tip about the VGA connecter

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## alienjon

I don't know too much about monitors, I'm afraid, but if it helps, I use an NEC MultiSync LCD1970GX-BK and pretty much everything looks good to me, but, again, I'm no expert so this is a rather novice view.

As for the ATI drivers, I pretty much followed the ATI HOWTO (http://odin.prohosting.com/wedge01/gentoo-radeon-faq.html) and it worked without too much of a problem.

My first problem I did have, you won't have. When I first tried setting up my xorg.conf, I used a program which comes with the ati-drivers-extra package that configures xorg.conf by asking you questions about your hardware and preferences (much like xorgconfig but it's the ATI version - fglrxconfig, it's called) and the program had a few glitches in it which I basically just had to go into xorg.conf and manually fix a few things. The reason you shouldn't have this problem is because this was with a much older driver and ATI has since fixed the issue. (In fact, I had to re-install my system over the summer and the second time I installed the video card stuff I did it without a problem  :Smile: )

Other than that, the only other problem that I have had with ATI that I can think of right now (and that wasn't me accidentally skipping something in a HOWTO here or there) is with playing video and video overlay. My video overlay took some trial and error testing to get it right, (which I'm still perfecting, by the way) but when I just play regular video (avi, mpeg, etc...) I notice that I have a little skip occasionally. I honestly don't have any idea what is causing it, (and it isn't much, mind you - could be completely unrelated to the video card - but I figured it was worth mentioning since you're obviously looking into quality)

I should also say that I have an AGP card, but I know they make the same model for PCI-e.

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## enrique

It looks like a Sapphire RADEON X1300 is a nice card; passive cooled, about same performace as a GeForce 6600, nice price. 

Only problem I can see is that it is not mentioned in ATI's release notes for their newest driver as a supported card: http://www2.ati.com/drivers/linux/linux_8.19.10.html but ATI also states that the driver supports all newer cards.

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## enrique

 *alienjon wrote:*   

> I don't know too much about monitors, I'm afraid, but if it helps, I use an NEC MultiSync LCD1970GX-BK and pretty much everything looks good to me, but, again, I'm no expert so this is a rather novice view.

 

Do you use DVI or VGA input on your monitor?

Thanks for the link btw, it looks rather extensive.

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## alienjon

DVI all the way, baby   :Very Happy: 

My video overlay, I should have mentioned, was concerning my TV, which is plugged into my card via a svideo connection.

I'm not sure about the "bleeding edge" cards right now (mainly any of the x1k models, but I would bet that fglrx (ati) driver would work for it, I'm afraid I can't be sure on that, though, since I don't have any experience with those new cards)

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## enrique

Hehe

Well I'm not going to use the svideo output, I have a dedicated HTPC with a nVidia card. It also has rather bad image quality, so if I get a good experience with the Sapphire card, I might (if the drivers are going to support XvMC) buy a ATI based card for my HTPC. 

I'm planning to buy the x1300 card soon, if I don't hear anything bad about it, and I will report back on my experiences.

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## alienjon

Just an fyi: On my browsing through the forums I have noticed that someone else started having the same fglrxconfig problem I had a while back but with recent drivers (https://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic-t-402425-highlight-.html) I'm going to try to give him a hand with it, but I figured I'd just pass the word along so you would stay informed.

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## enrique

I heard about aticonfig, is it not a "better" solution? i.e. it does not replace the entire xorg.conf

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## meyerm

When you don't care about 3D performance, you can always use the free drivers. And blender isn't thaaat state-of-the-art-opengl so that the free 3D drivers for ATI can't handle it. (r300.sf.net, they are included in the comming xorg 6.9/7.0).

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## enrique

That sounds great, I will probably give them a try when the new version of X.org is released. 

If the 3D performance is just a bit better than what I'm getting from my Matrox card, it will be a step in the right direction. But then again if ATI's drivers work, without any problems, and provide decent 3D performance, I might be encouraged to use applications where 3D performance matters. It's the same thing as getting a faster CPU, I didn't play music, compile software and at the same time surf the net on my Amiga 4000 with a 25Mhz CPU  :Smile: 

Btw I have just ordered the Sapphire radeon x1300 card... so fingers crossed  :Smile: 

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## alienjon

Ya know, I have to admit that I don't know much about the other ati drivers. I've always used fglrx because they are the ones that ATI makes and I try to support their work (not so much because I'm a proud ATI purchaser - which I don't boast at all - but so I can accurately critique their products) From what I hear, the opensource ATI drivers are possibly cleaner (and I would guess might run better) than the regular ATI drivers, but the regular ones provide more functionality. And as for aticonfig, I don't know anything about it, I'm afraid.

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## enrique

Hm, should this make me nervous?:

 *Quote:*   

> For new products it normally takes at least 12 weeks from retail product shipment for driver support to be become publicly available.

  (From https://support.ati.com/ics/support/KBAnswer.asp?questionID=23#features )

When was the x1300 card released?

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## alienjon

Not necessarily. Just because it isn't supported doesn't mean that the drivers won't work for the product, but with that said I think that the x1k series have come out only in the last 3 months or so. Either way, keep us posted   :Smile: 

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## enrique

I'm stilling waiting for my new motherboard, it should arrive at the store next friday....   :Evil or Very Mad: 

But I'm getting more and more nervous... take a look at:

http://lists.freedesktop.org/pipermail/xorg/2005-November/010946.html

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## eelke

 *Quote:*   

> But I'm getting more and more nervous... take a look at:
> 
> http://lists.freedesktop.org/pipermail/xorg/2005-November/010946.html

 

You are right to get nervous, you better get something else:

http://lists.freedesktop.org/pipermail/xorg/2005-November/010948.html

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## olger901

If you are a fulltime linux user, i'd go for Nvidia anyday, just if it's because of the ease of driver installation.

The nvidia driver always worked for me out of the box, while the ati driver has given me heaps of trouble.

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## eelke

 *Quote:*   

> If you are a fulltime linux user, i'd go for Nvidia anyday, just if it's because of the ease of driver installation.

 

Did you read the orginal post? If you did you would know that the original poster was not satisfied with the image quality of the nVidia cards. ATI's have a better image quality. With image quality in this case the signal quality of the VGA connector is meant.

A few days ago I talked to someone who claimed the nVidia Quadro's have better image quality then the standard nVidia cards but I don't think someone who buys an X1300 is willing to pay the price of a Quadro.

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## enrique

I will keep the x1300 card unless the image quality is poor, I can live with the vesa driver for a couple of months, if the image quality is ok. But of cause I would like someday to do some 3D work, but I have lived without any decent 3D in 5 years.

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## enrique

I've been up and running using my new Sapphire x1300 for a couple of days now, and until now I'm very happy with the image quality. My impressions are:

Uniform image, no dark spots, corners of screen also looks good

Stable image, even with vesa only letting me run 1280x1024@60hz

Good colors, they are nice and crisp, and no bleeding

Sharp text, text is not fuzzy nor does it looks unfocused or blurry. This is true for both black on white and white on black

The image has a bit of moiré, but that can probably be reduced by using the monitors built in filters and moiré reduction. And a higher refresh rate would probably also help.

The card gets pretty darn hot, to hot to touch, to I had to install an extra 120mm fan in the case (running at 8V so it's quiet), and now the card is only hand warm.

I would say that the image quality of this card is as good as the image quality of a Matrox g400 card, or better  :Smile: 

Now I only need to get vesa to give me a higher refresh rate...

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## alienjon

Keep me posted. I haven't tried yet, but I know that my monitor can handle more than 60 as well.

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## enrique

I have found a other x1k owner who is battling the same problems that I am, see this tread: X1800 XL and Xorg Resolution Issue

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## mortiis

I've just changed from this piece of shit from (9800pro) to a nVidia 7800GT.

X starts now with GLX WITHOUT crashing the whole system. It was impossible to get it working with ATI crapdrivers. Tried all ATI drivers, many kernel and X builds - everytime the same shit. ATI sucks so much. The nVidia card was working instantly!

And even the image quality is better than with the ATI card. I have an older but very good color calibrated 21" SGI monitor and the difference is clearly visible. Even the TV out looks better, sharper.

That matrox is sooo good is nowadays a rumor, Vidia cards got MUCH better since the 5600 (or was ist 5800 called, damn product names!). I can't tell you anything about ATI (except that their drivers are just shit), i had only one (the first and the last one).

Overall im very happy to changed back to nVidia and i'll stay with them forever now except theres a third company but i wont never ever buy ATI crap again!!!

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## alienjon

third company?

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## enrique

Well finally I'm up and running (got a job, moved to a new city, only got Internet access a couple of days ago) and these are my answers to my own questions:

 *Quote:*   

> 1. Are ATI's drivers any good?
> 
> 2. Can you recommend a PCI-e, passive cooled graphics card with high image quality (remember I don't care to much about 3D performance, I don't play any 3D games, I just want a nice, crisp, clear, stable image on my vga monitor (Eizo F67))

 

1. Running stable, Xorg 7 has not crashed with ATI's 8.25.18 drivers. I have tested 3D with Google Earth, Blender and I'm going to install a couple of games when I get the time. The only thing I have to complain about is the long time it took ATI to release drivers that support the x1k series of graphics cards.

2. My Sapphire x1300 256Mb passiv cooled  PCIe card, gives me a nice, crisp, clear, stable image on my Eizo F67. The image is uniform, no dark spots, no shadows. My final judgement is that the image quality is equal or better to that of my old Matrox G400Max

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