mandatory monthly anti-ATI goodness

[oldsk00l]

http://www.majeonline.com


After checking the general concensus here:

http://www.linuxgames.com/news/feedback.php?identiferID=7225&action=flatview

with

Quote:

Well now I can run Doom3, good. But 640x680 is still corrupted in every game that I play. In fact, any mode 800x600 or greater works fine. Any mode 640x480 or lower is corrupted and has been ever since I've used the ATI binary drivers including the one they just released. Does anyone have a solution of has encountered this before?


and here
http://www.rage3d.com/board/showthread.php?t=33800070

and here
http://www.rage3d.com/board/showpost.php?p=1333460004&postcount=136

and here
http://www.rage3d.com/board/showthread.php?t=33800183

It seems that ATI finally delivered on performance improvements to ut2004, but Doom3 still sucks on ATI hw in Linux.

Sooo...it took ATI over a year and a half to deliver decent ut2004 performance. This release is a step, a very small one, and it took ATI years to get this far.

Add this to no expected support for composite, and an inefficient 2d driver that is not likely going to be useful at _ALL_ for upcoming vector based desktop environments....ATI....YOU SUCK.

[gram_vaz]

ati is known for not caring for computer enthusiast nerds like us. just like them ignoring us agp users in favor of pci-e. that doesn't mean they suck. they're just doing business.

[oldsk00l]

ati is known for not caring for computer enthusiast nerds like us. just like them ignoring us agp users in favor of pci-e. that doesn't mean they suck. they're just doing business.

It means they suck because they're doing bad business. nVidia states that Linux accounts for 1/4th of their workstation market, and that ain't peanuts.

nVidia accomplishes their linux support through smart development as well.

Yes, ATI SUCKS.

[gram_vaz]

*whispers* no they don't.

[oldsk00l]

"If you choose the blue pill, you will forget what happened. Life will go on, and you may believe....whatever you want to believe"

So......500 million dollars of income for supporting Linux just makes you.....mediocre????

Whatever dude, I think you are grossly misinformed if you are under the impression ATI's linux support doesn't suck (or that ATI doesn't suck for that matter).

To each his own. Ignorance is bliss.

[gram_vaz]

lol, fanboy.

[saturnotaku]

lol, fanboy.

Better to be labeled a fanboy than a complete imbecile as I'm going to label you. The horrors of attempting to run an ATI card in Linux know no bounds. I've not tried it myself but know plenty of people who have, and it's not pretty. But this is a subject you clearly know nothing about since you don't even have an ATI card in your machine to begin with.

[gram_vaz]

actually i came from a 9600xt and i ran my ati card well in linux. i never gamed but then linux isn't exactly known to be a gaming os. i stay with windows for my gaming.

lol, why does everyone get so defensive about this? both ati and nvidia make solid cards. advantages and disadvantages with both.

ati = better in dx games, bad linux support
nvidia= better in opengl games, good linux support

now let's all take a breather and stop bashing.

[oldsk00l]

actually i came from a 9600xt and i ran my ati card well in linux. i never gamed but then linux isn't exactly known to be a gaming os. i stay with windows for my gaming.

lol, why does everyone get so defensive about this? both ati and nvidia make solid cards. advantages and disadvantages with both.

ati = better in dx games, bad linux support
nvidia= better in opengl games, good linux support

now let's all take a breather and stop bashing.

It's not bashing, rather, sneering.

However, I'm going with Sat's opinion that you are an imbecile. If you need anymore convincing, you don't need it from an nVidia forum...go to Rage3d's linux forum and you'll see probably more ati-bashing than we could ever do if we all rounded up and tried. I guess all those ATI users must be fanboys too.

[saturnotaku]

Looks like ATIHeaven wants to have a Linux forum of their own. Link (http://www.driverheaven.net/showthread.php?t=67117). Perhaps Terry Makedon should worry about getting his driver team to actually produce a Linux driver that doesn't suck instead of worrying about reaching out to the community. Stop the problem before folks have time to complain.

[oldsk00l]

Looks like ATIHeaven wants to have a Linux forum of their own. Link (http://www.driverheaven.net/showthread.php?t=67117). Perhaps Terry Makedon should worry about getting his driver team to actually produce a Linux driver that doesn't suck instead of worrying about reaching out to the community. Stop the problem before folks have time to complain.

I've dogged nVidia allot for lack of direct community participation.

After watching Collateral I can only think of "You're one of those guys who likes to *do* instead of talk, which is cool!"

[Acid Rain]

*whispers* no they don't.

(Chuckles out loud)

You sure are being sneaky with that, almost like you don't want everyone to hear...:rolleyes:

[Vagrant Zero]

I don't understand why ATI fanboys would have Nvidia cards in their systems [*cough cough* Lookin' at you Fallguy]. That's like a Preist saying sex is bad while he's doing the male population of Mrs. Merriweather's kindergarten class.

[life of budha]

ATI doesent suck and nvidia doesent suck.. for power the older ATI gpu like 9600 pro up to 9800 pro were better then the nvidia fx cards dont lie! I go with nvidia because everything is easier to configure like drivers overclocking etc... so in the long run I will go with nvidia inless ati gets cheaper?

[gram_vaz]

I don't understand why ATI fanboys would have Nvidia cards in their systems [*cough cough* Lookin' at you Fallguy]. That's like a Preist saying sex is bad while he's doing the male population of Mrs. Merriweather's kindergarten class.
why is it fanboisim to not bash either side? i was just saying both sides make good cards. both have advantages and disadvantages. i didn't mean to offend anyone. i didn't expect anyone to take my comments personally.

[oldsk00l]

ATI doesent suck and nvidia doesent suck.. for power the older ATI gpu like 9600 pro up to 9800 pro were better then the nvidia fx cards dont lie! I go with nvidia because everything is easier to configure like drivers overclocking etc... so in the long run I will go with nvidia inless ati gets cheaper?

I'll give you that. ATI makes decent hw.

Doesn't hold a candle to the nv4x but that's a whole different discussion.

When you're on any linux forum (even the linux forum of an ATI fan-site)...ATI sucks.

It sucks so much that it's on a whole new level of being pathetic when you look at it from the nVidia users perspective, and are in the nV-fansite forum.

[gram_vaz]

i've been to my fair share of linux forums and it isn't so much that ppl think ati sucks as they say that ati's linux drivers suck.

[Vagrant Zero]

why is it fanboisim to not bash either side? i was just saying both sides make good cards. both have advantages and disadvantages. i didn't mean to offend anyone. i didn't expect anyone to take my comments personally.

My comments we're primarily aimed at Fallguy. He pisses me the hell off everytime I lurk over at Hard. Guy needs to be shot, principles and all that. You give head to ATI at least have the decency to actually have an ATI card in your rig.

[gram_vaz]

My comments we're primarily aimed at Fallguy. He pisses me the hell off everytime I lurk over at Hard. Guy needs to be shot, principles and all that. You give head to ATI at least have the decency to actually have an ATI card in your rig.
oh, i didn't know 'fallguy' was someone's screenname. i thought u meant me as the thread's fallguy since everyone's ganging up on me.

as for talking good about ati, i do have a ati card. but i also talk good about nvidia. i don't think either side 'sucks'.

[Razor1]

well looking at ATi's overall performance with Ogl and Linux, the end results could be because of hardware issues,


GL commands are formed from a name followed, depending on the particular
command, by up to 4 characters. The first character indicates the number of values
of the indicated type that must be presented to the command. The second character
or character pair indicates the specific type of the arguments: 8-bit integer, 16-bit
integer, 32-bit integer, single-precision floating-point, or double-precision floatingpoint.

From Opengl specs pdf

Floating point operations are done in either single precision which is 32 bit or double precision counter part which is 64 bit.

Now take bits are always in powers of 2s so 2, 4, 16, 32, 64

So ATi's cards under opengl might be coverting to 24 bit which would be very slow if they are.

[gram_vaz]

hmm, that could explain it. but even though nvidia hardware is capable of fp32bit it takes a huge performance hit when doing so. vast majority of the time it runs in fp16. even nvidia tells developers to only use fp16 precision for ps2.0 and ps3.0 even though ps3.0 calls for full fp32 precision all the time. i still think it's most likely do to drivers.

[Razor1]

well those 8 extra bits is alot more work 8bits out of 32 bits is 33% :).

The gf 6 lines don't take that much of a hit, only like 5 % because its registries can handle the extra load, the fx on the other hand couldn't and this is what really hurt them, and thats why they forced 16 bit to be done in the fx drivers (they did remove this after the gf 6 came out)

[gram_vaz]

here's a thread at these very forums about ps3.0. it does seem to be faster but it's only partial ps3.0 from what the author of that program wrote since using ps3.0 in full fp32 precision does cost a performance hit. http://www.nvnews.net/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=36007

[Razor1]

not sure which demo they are talking about ( I have the 8,5 sdk installed here) and I just checked there aren't any samples here that you can switch from 16 to 32 bit.

[Razor1]

ok the normalization heuristics for the fx one can be switched form 16 to 32 there is no difference in speed though still going well over 500 fps it goes from like 550 to 525 but its very variable can't really tell

Oh he is talking about his own "this Blinn shader where light is attenuated according to a radial distance from the source" but I can tell this right now I've seen much more complex lighting simulations done in real time onthe gf 6 and even fx I think it might have been due to early driver bugs that slowed it down.

Check out gpu gems "uber-light" shader, its very similiar to what Pixar uses but its done in real time.