Uniform driver releases

[fluoro]

Why are driver releases not better organized so they are released around the same time? The new x86 drivers add support for things like 5700/5900 while the 4499 AMD64 drivers still don't support that. I can't imagine that NVIDIA is maintaining multiple entire codebases for each platform. Can't they basically do a source rebulid for each platform (x86, amd64, ia64, etc) within a shorter period of time and get the drivers released with more uniformity?

I'm just annoyed because my FX5200 got messed up and I need a new video card. I want to get an FX5700 or a 5900, but they don't seem to be supported on AMD64 yet so it looks like I'm being locked into getting a 5600 or something thereabouts. Sadly, the ATI's support for AMD64 seems to be far more bleak than NVIDIA's.

[LaNcom]

This would be great - but I don't think that's gonna happen anytime soon...
Anyway, the NV35 (FX5900) should work with 4499, the NV35GL (Quadro FX 3000) works fine for me...

[kmare]

Driver releases are not better organized (yet) because it is not that easy. The extentions and the optimazations that they have to include into the driver are different from the 32bit to the 64bit platform... just be patient a little more... I'm sure they will an update soon... btw: are you sure the drivers don't recognize newest chipsets? they might...

anyway: don't make the mistake buying an ati card if you want good support for linux. I found so many problems with it (I tested 4 different graphics cards and they alla had problems)... ATI is not yet ready for linux... I hope they will but for now nvidia is far superior... ati drivers aren't even 2D accellerated...

PS: I'd like to know how is life with the 64bit cpu? does it worth such an upgrade? applications run as well as they did with the 32bit cpu? thanx...

[LaNcom]

@kmare

Most apps run at least as fast as pn 32bit (under Linux, that is). Some apps use 64bit integers, like ogg/vorbis and some others, those apps will see a nice speedup...
Linux x86_64 is about 30% faster than 32bit on the same CPU, some applications see no increase, for others it's up to 350% faster (e.g. oggenc)...

[fluoro]

btw: are you sure the drivers don't recognize newest chipsets? they might...

No, I'm not sure. I've heard some conflicting stories from people. So I just decided to go ahead and buy a 5900, because I need a new video card (my 5200 got fried) and I want an upgrade (another 5200 would still suck as much as the old one). If it freezes sometimes, I guess I'll just have to deal with that until a new driver is released.

anyway: don't make the mistake buying an ati card if you want good support for linux. I found so many problems with it (I
tested 4 different graphics cards and they alla had problems)... ATI is not yet ready for linux... I hope they will but
for now nvidia is far superior... ati drivers aren't even 2D accellerated...

I would love to see ATI get their junk together on Linux. I'm a pretty devoted customer to NVIDIA, so it's not likely that I would buy an ATI if the option were available.. but I feel that if ATI would start putting out some quality drivers for Linux, I think NVIDIA would probably put more effort into theirs. Right now NVIDIA's drivers for Linux sort of suck, but they're the best thing there is so it's hard to complain too loudly.

PS: I'd like to know how is life with the 64bit cpu? does it worth such an upgrade? applications run as well as they did
with the 32bit cpu? thanx...

I'm really happy with this 64-bit AMD chip so far. I got the 3000+, which is the lowest-end that they make, but it is a fantastic chip. The downside is that you can't run Windows in 64-bit mode yet. On the Linux front, your options are still somewhat limited: there is a beta or alpha release of Fedora for AMD64, there is Gentoo beta, and I have heard a rumor that SuSE is working on getting good support for it. I am using Gentoo because I have heard from many people that theirs is the best distro for 64-bit AMD at the moment.

You can run 32-bit applications inside your 64-bit Linux system with no problem, although it's slightly painful to compile stuff that way sometimes (adding the extra compile flags and stuff). You can also start Linux in pure 32-bit mode, just like you're doing now, and you are guaranteed of having 100% compatibility. Running in 64-bit mode on the same hardware seems to give about a 15-20% increase in speed versus running in 32-bit mode, which looks very good even for the future when Windows 64-bit Edition comes out. The AMD64 chips are competing very well against the high-end Pentium 4 chips right now while running in 32-bit mode, so it stands to reason that when they start running things in 64-bit mode they'll likely achieve the same 15-20% boost on Windows that they achieve on Linux.

I would definitely say it is worth the upgrade. I like this new system a lot.