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Tom's Hardware Reviews ATI and Nvidia on Linux

Posted by CowboyNeal on Sat Jul 15, 2006 11:58 AM
from the pretty-pictures dept.
Graphics Linux
Beuno writes "I stumbled upon a GeForce vs Radeon review on Tom's Hardware, which seems normal enough. The big surprise is that it was actually a comparison of those two video cards on Linux (Fedora Core 5). The review isn't as thorough as I would like, but it does review all aspects ranging from tools available, complexity of getting them to work and benchmarks on performance. To me, this is a clear signs of Linux finally making a long expected breakthrough into common desktops."
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  • Compatibility... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by ChowRiit (939581) on Saturday July 15 2006, @12:04PM (#15724766)
    Maybe this trend will have all game manufacturers making their games Linux compatible too? (As opposed to having to run them through emulators like Wine and Cedega)...

    I know I'd move properly from XP if this were the case, and I suspect a lot of gamers feel the same way - there are a large portion that only use XP because getting the games to run under Linux is such a hassle.

    We can but hope...

    • Re:Compatibility... (Score:4, Informative)

      by Billy the Impaler (886238) on Saturday July 15 2006, @12:08PM (#15724779) Homepage
      WINE and Cedega are not emulators, rather, they implement a compatibility layer. Cedega is a proprietary fork of WINE that has more advanced DirectX implementation.
      • This is an important distinction, by the way. While it does probably mean slower performance than running the same program natively under Linux, there have been instances where games run faster under Wine or Cedega than under Windows.

        Cedega does cause a price problem, though. I would encourage everyone to use Cedega and wipe out their XP partitions so that games start being ported, but I can't really recommend it for the price alone. New Windows every 7 years: $200. Cedega: $5/mo = $120/year. Thus, Ced

      • FWIW, this usually comes up, and it's worth pointing out a few things.

        1. Most people know that WINE is a reimplementation of an API, not a CPU emulator. I know a handful of people get confused here, but the majority, in my experience, do not.

        2. Historically, the word emulator has, actually, included programs that simulate operating systems, not just programs that simulate CPUs. For example, the Atari ST and Commodore Amiga had several systems marketed as "Macintosh emulators". The non-hardware versions

          • Re:Compatibility... (Score:4, Insightful)

            by julesh (229690) on Saturday July 15 2006, @07:36PM (#15726112)
            Emulation is when you would say, run a PPC program on i386 Processor. Itercepting system calls is not emulation.

            Yes it is, at least if you do it in order to imitate a different system. The word "emulate" means "behave in a fashion that imitates". Stop trying to redefine it to some restrictive use that would be better of being called "simulation".

  • No thanks... (Score:3, Funny)

    by pdbaby (609052) on Saturday July 15 2006, @12:05PM (#15724768)
    No thanks... I'll wait for the 300 page Toms Hardware revi-oh. I see.
      • DOH, i meant..
        I *next page* love *next page* reading *next page* Tom's Hardware *next page* articles, *next page* they *next page* are so *next page* informative.

  • Linux on the desktop (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday July 15 2006, @12:08PM (#15724781)
    This is all very well but Linux's big breakthrough on the desktop won't come until we can play Duke Nukem Forever on Linux.

    • Re:Linux on the desktop (Score:5, Funny)

      by cbiltcliffe (186293) on Saturday July 15 2006, @12:10PM (#15724785) Homepage Journal
      What are you talking about? It plays exactly the same on Linux as it does on Windows. Just as easy to install, and even the exact same framerate.

      • Re:Linux on the desktop (Score:5, Interesting)

        by Baloo Ursidae (29355) <baloo@ursine.ca> on Saturday July 15 2006, @12:32PM (#15724849) Homepage Journal
        Just as easy to install, and even the exact same framerate.

        I've found, on the same hardware, that GTA: Vice City runs *smoother* with higher graphics settings in Cedega on Linux than natively in Windows. That really surprised me.

        • Re:Linux on the desktop (Score:4, Insightful)

          by MrHanky (141717) on Saturday July 15 2006, @12:59PM (#15724934) Homepage Journal
          Maybe because Linux uses less RAM than Windows XP, or uses virtual memory better? Nvidia's driver code should be more or less the same, and there's no chance that cedega speeds up directx by converting it to OpenGL. I've had very good experiences with running Championship Manager under wine, and that's just a huge database.

        • Re:Linux on the desktop (Score:4, Insightful)

          by Tim C (15259) on Saturday July 15 2006, @01:09PM (#15724970)
          Check your RAM usage - for a lot of modern games under Windows, goig from 512meg to 1gig makes a considerable difference. Going from (say) 250 meg free to 350meg free is likely to have a noticeable effect too. I'd imagine that your Linux install uses less RAM than your Windows one, assuming you have third party firewall and anti-virus software under Windows.

  • 2007 it is! (Score:5, Funny)

    by QCompson (675963) on Saturday July 15 2006, @12:09PM (#15724782)
    To me, this is a clear signs of Linux finally making a long expected breakthrough into common desktops.

    Yes, how can anyone doubt that 2007 will be the year of linux on the desktop?

  • Performance issues (Score:5, Interesting)

    by also-rr (980579) on Saturday July 15 2006, @12:11PM (#15724788) Homepage
    Generally performance running games on Linux has been a mixed bag (on the same hardware).

    NWN, WoW and UT have all been slightly faster than the Windows version, and crashes have been less of a problem (ctrl-alt-f1, kill task, no need to reboot - which _is_ required for some reason under Windows as games seem to offer best performance off a fresh reboot... resource recovery problems in the DirectX subsystem maybe?)

    On the other hand EVE runs slower, with more graphical artifacts. Yes I'm aware that this is because it doesn't play that nicely with WINE and the fact that it runs in a playable fashion is a small miracle. It is still the case that if you want the best performance then you have to play it on Windows, for now.

  • let them do a Notebook comparison and see ATI fall (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Locutus (9039) on Saturday July 15 2006, @12:15PM (#15724803)
    ...on their face. Most laptops with ATI Mobility Express chipsets can't use the onboard video memory. ATI broke this a year ago and has not fixed it.

    So don't trust ATI for Linux capabilities on notebooks.

    Maybe Toms Hardware can do a notebook comparison since they've already done the desktop. I'm pretty sure that would expose this failure to far more than the few who already are aware of this. And just maybe, it'll get ATI to fix this.

    LoB
  • You can play Quake 3 using only free software and a 9600XT, you can't with a 7800GT.

  • quite good article (Score:4, Funny)

    by Jacek Poplawski (223457) on Saturday July 15 2006, @12:25PM (#15724834) Homepage
    They even mentioned DRI.

  • prit version, coralized version (Score:2, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward
    The print version [tomshardware.com] and because that didn't work for me, the same via coral cache [nyud.net]

  • ATI, Linux, and Apple (Score:4, Informative)

    by miyako (632510) <(miyako) (at) (gmail.com)> on Saturday July 15 2006, @12:42PM (#15724881) Homepage Journal
    I've always used nVidia cards, which have always worked well for me under Linux. I've never tried getting an ATI card to work because I've never heard anything other than it was sheer agony to use an ATI card under Linux.
    In general, this is fine. If a hardware vendor doesn't support my OS, then I will buy from a vendor who does. In this case, nVidia hovers between "almost as good as" and "slightly better than" ATI, depending on who has most recently released a new video card, so it's not a big compromise.
    I do find ATIs lack of Linux support to be disappointing now however, because those of us interested on running Linux on an intel mac are stuck with a choice between ATI and an embedded crappy video card.
    Incidentally, has anyone had any luck getting Linux to dual boot with OS X on one of the newer iMacs? I'm interested in getting one, but until Autodesk offers an Intel Mac version of Maya I'm stuck on Linux (and actually, even if there were an Intel Mac version, I'm not sure I want to pay the fee to transfer my license from Linux to Mac) so I can't justify getting a new machine unless it can run Linux well with good 3D support.
    • because those of us interested on running Linux on an intel mac are stuck with a choice between ATI and an embedded crappy video card.

      Realistically, this will only make a difference if you are playing games or doing GPGPU work. The recent Intel chips compare well with one or two generation old hardware from nVidia; they even have pixel shader hardware, which is used for a number of effects in a modern graphical environment.

      By the way, anyone looking for a GPU to use with free drivers on FreeBSD should

    • Re:ATI, Linux, and Apple (Score:4, Informative)

      by matrixhax0r (988785) on Saturday July 15 2006, @02:18PM (#15725179)
      There's a new opensource driver for ATI cards. As you may already know, ATI released code and documentation for their old r200 and r100 based cards. Then the opensource community used that information to write opensource drivers which are now found in X11-DRM and Mesa.

      However, for r300 and up, ATI wanted to force users to use their proprietary drivers which have really sucked so far. Never fear! There's the r300 project currently in development that aims to add support for these more modern cards. What started as an invididual project (http://r300.sourceforge.net/R300.php), is now fully integrate into the the offical DRM and Mesa development trees.

      Although the r300 driver is not in the offical DRM nor Mesa releases yet, the are in the CVS tree.
      DRM - cvs.freedesktop.org:/cvs/dri checkout drm
      Mesa - cvs.freedesktop.org:/cvs/mesa checkout Mesa
      There are quite a few guides on compiling and using these sources. I recomend checking the Gentoo Forums. They support EXA and Xorg 7.1 (unlike current ATI / nVidia drivers IIRC). In fact I'm using them as I'm typing this.

      Performance is not nearly the speed of the binary drivers. However, I can still play UT2K4/Doom 3, so it's good enough. It looks very promising and is likely to get must faster in the future. It seems very stable and I haven't had a video driver crash since I started using them (around Xorg 7.01 release).

  • Ah yes (Score:4, Insightful)

    by gowen (141411) <gwowen@gmail.com> on Saturday July 15 2006, @12:45PM (#15724893) Homepage Journal
    Because hundreds of Desktop apps require 3D accelerated drivers.

    Like erm ... err ... erm ... you know.
    Oh, 3D rendering. I mean, everyone in my office spends all day doing 3D rendering.

    Clue : if the speed at which windows are blitted to the screen is the rate determining step in you workflow, you're probably not getting paid enough.
    • Maybe not 3D, but the Linux distributions I have tried, does not perform well on standard onboard graphics chips. If you have a 20" monitor and run 1600x1200, it becomes very annoying when you come a Windows desktop. But just a 50$ can solve that problem.
      I have been switching between Windows and Linux until I got that card. Booting Windows when I got tired of the poor graphics performance, and booting Linux again when I got tired of missing all the advantages of having a Linux desktop when all the server I
    • Exposé on OS X makes me a lot more productive; I multitask a lot, and I can switch between tasks with this a lot faster than I can with other mechanisms. Maybe it only save a minute or two a day, but it also means I can stay in flow while switching between components of the same problem. This is only possible with hardware OpenGL.

      Pixel shaders on a modern GPU can be used to do good sub-pixel AA. The clearer the text on my screen is, the longer I can read it without getting eye-strain. The longer I

  • hm (Score:4, Informative)

    by joe 155 (937621) on Saturday July 15 2006, @01:03PM (#15724950) Journal
    From TFA: "Acquiring Nvidia drivers seldom entails more than consulting a package repository for your Linux distribution of choice, and instructing local package management facilities to fetch, build, and install all required files and dependencies."

    Well, support for Nvidia isn't supported on FC5 because it is non-free, so you won't find it in the standard repositories using yum... if you add livna you can do "yum install kmod-nvidia -y" which will handle it all... but it is important not to use the Nvidia ones because they overwrite sections of your X and can cause problems, especially if you change you card later. More info can be found here; http://stanton-finley.net/fedora_core_5_installati on_notes.html#nVidia [stanton-finley.net]... just wanted to get the message out there to protect the penguins

  • But other sites have been doing this for a while (Score:5, Informative)

    by loftwyr (36717) on Saturday July 15 2006, @01:18PM (#15724991)
    You can always get good info on hardware under linux on Phoronix [phoronix.com]. They've got lots of experience with linux builds and games and wine to give good information.

  • This seems like a good on-topic thread in which to mention the freedesktop.org (X.org folks) effort to write a 100% open source 3D driver for the NVidia cards -- nouveau

    http://nouveau.freedesktop.org/wiki/ [freedesktop.org]

    If you're an owner of an nVidia card, please do all you can to help contribute! They appear to be suprisingly far along.

    --
    Slashcode bug # 497457 - unfixed since December 2001 - Go look it up [sourceforge.net]!
  • I got a Nvidia card with passive cooling for my Linux desktop instead on the onboard graphics. All the desktop computers I have had at work, have always been slow compared to Windows with any Linux distribution when it comes to graphics speed. It does not make it better that you need to run a higher resolution to get the same screen "real estate". (of course, tuning font sizes help a bit).

    Anyway I installed the 50$ Nvidia card which solved that problem. And with SUSE 10, I hope I don't have to worry about c

  • 3D? Talk to me about 2D. (Score:3, Interesting)

    by pdh11 (227974) on Saturday July 15 2006, @02:54PM (#15725306) Homepage
    I'm still looking for any graphics card with amd64 Linux drivers that supports either dual-dvi with accelerated portrait mode (1200x1600 x2), or dual-link DVI (2560x1600). Matrox have some that will do it, but only with proprietary drivers and only on ia32.

    Peter

  • Boycott ATI (Score:3, Informative)

    by vandan (151516) on Saturday July 15 2006, @07:53PM (#15726157) Homepage
    ATI's track record of Linux support is appauling, the most recent example being their pulling support for all pre-R300 cards. They also flatly refuse to assist DRI developers working on the R300, claiming that their own driver 'supports' the R300 and above line. But in all honesty, that 'support' is patchy at best, and the writing is on the wall for R300 support as well - pretty soon only the new X1xx cards will be supported.

    Locking when switching between X and a console are NOT FIXED despite what the article says - ATI simply marked the bug page in bugzilla as 'fixed'. There are lockups with XGL. The XPRESS chipset is very badly supported and very slow - my friend's Turion-based laptop with an XPRESS chipset plays UT2004 slower than my Athlon XP 1600 with an original Radeon 7200 with DRI drivers! 2D performance is pathetic. There is no XRENDER acceleration. Suspending / hibernating doesn't work. XCOMPOSITE support is non-existant. The list goes on and on.

    If people want a gaming card, buy an nVidia, or you will be sorry. If gaming isn't so important, buy a something with an Intel chipset - they have excellent open-source drivers, and are only getting better. I installed XGL on a laptop with an Intel i945G card last weekend, and I was shocked by it's impressive performance - XGL in particular was as smooth as I've ever seen it ...

    • Re:Linux on desktops? (Score:4, Insightful)

      by MrCopilot (871878) on Saturday July 15 2006, @01:05PM (#15724956) Homepage Journal
      In 2006 a Linux machine with a vidocard is a geek's hobby, a curiosity, nothing more.

      Excellent troll my friend. Explain http://www.desktoplinux.com/index.html [desktoplinux.com]

      Out of the 4 Desktops and 1 laptop in my home, 2 dual-boot, 3 are full time Linux.(All Debian) All of them gamers.

      With an NVidia Graphics card Linux is a viable desktop. For work, web and Leisure.

      Free Software is not a hobby, it is a way of life.

      I look forward to the money I will save and you will spend on Vista. I look forward to the knowledge I will gain and you will be ignorant of. I look forward to modifying my system and my code to my liking, while you look forward to being locked out, broken apps and slashed features, and unsolvable crashes. (lest I forget the required reboots and reinstalls)

      To each his own.

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