nVidia vs. ATI

[Lennart Sorensen]

On Wed, Jun 29, 2005 at 01:32:30PM -0400, Colin McGregor wrote:
> I am in the process of writing an new article that
> deals with video cards which I hope will be published
> on the Linux Journal website.
> 
> As part of the article I will need to offer
> suggestions as to what sort of video card to buy. Now
> I like the idea of promoting firms that are based in
> Canada, and even better firms that are based in the
> greater Toronto area (and video card builder ATI with
> it's headquarters in Markham counts).
> 
> However, all reports I have seen give ATI (very) poor
> marks for the Linux video card drivers (compared to
> nVidia), and reports of ATI Linux install issues are
> also discouraging (compared to nVidia). So the
> question is can I suggest people seriously look at ATI
> as reasonable Linux option?

In my experience, nvidia drivers just work and are simple to install
(debian even includes a nice package of the drivers in non-free to make
installing them simple.  I even wrote a howto on it
(http://www.tinyplanet.ca/~lsorense/debian/debian-nvidia-dri-howto.txt)
on June22 they released a driver update for Linux to support the 7800
cards.  Given I don't think you could even pick one up in a store yet at
that point, that seems like pretty good support to me.  That includes
drivers for x86, x86_64, freebsd x86 and solaris x86/x64.  Only poor
itanium users are left way behind in support (and as if there are really
any of those).

The ATI drivers I have not ever had much luck with.  They seem to never
support the latest chips (at least not any I encountered) and especially
lack support on mobile chips.

Matrox seems to have disappeared off the face of the earth.

I personally stopped buying ATI hardware for machines I built in the
late 90s after getting sufficiently ticked off at their driver quality
for windows and support for hardware that was 2 or 3 years old.  

Only recently have I heard nvidia is planning on dropping support in their
main driver base for TnT cards and early geforce chips.  So far my TNT2
always worked just fine, and I believe they intend to maintain a driver
base for older cards that just won't have new featured added to it, but
I don't know for sure since I only read it one place recently.

> P.S. Just out of curiosity how many people on the list
> have written for/been paid for computer related
> publications over the past year? If Marcel Gagne is
> still on the list he would take top prize. I know
> Chris Johnson, William Park and I have, who else?

Lennart Sorensen
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