Do you have any problems with AMD/ATI drivers ?

[ALF13]

Hi guys, sorry if such a topic exist. I want to buy a new video card and maybe it will be SAPPHIRE HD6850 1GB. If you have ATI/AMD please let me know if there are good drivers for linux mint and if there are any problems with linux mint and AMD/ATI video cards.

[wyrdoak]

I been running Lisa-Cinnamon and Maya-Mate on my old Compaq motherboard with a NVIDIA GeForce 9500 Gt 1gb Pcie, no problem after installing the recommended driver in Additional Drivers .

[exploder]

I have 2 computers with NVidea Graphics, one has a GT-220 and the other has 9300 on board graphics, both work perfectly. I have a 6 month old HP DV6 laptop with ATI graphics. I had a lot of trouble with the laptop but I finally did get it working right. Sorry I do not remember the specifics on the laptop's hardware. I would avoid ATI graphics right now because there seem to be a lot of people having problems with the drivers.

This is just my opinion but most people have better luck with NVidea. Your best bet is to see what cards are working the best right now for most people and then decide what would best meet your needs.

[monkeyboy]

Nvidia drivers work well for me once I get them configured correctly. Most of my problems are classic cases of my ignorance overcoming my desires. Enjoy

[ALF13]

Yeah, I had Nvidia GT240 card and it had no problems, but what about people with ATI/AMD video cards?

To @exploder 9300? Isn't this very old card, because I had one 9600 with 128M and I bought it in 2004 or 2005.
By the way when I bought this computer with the ATI radeon 9600 there was a driver disk for the video card. After 4-5 years, I downloaded official drivers for windows xp and I made a test. When I played GTA San Andreas with the stock drivers from 2004 year the game ran far more better than with the 5 year newer drivers.

What about the AMD/ATI HD series? I think to buy HD6850 but I'm not sure if there are any problems with the drivers

[exploder]

To @exploder 9300? Isn't this very old card, because I had one 9600 with 128M and I bought it in 2004 or 2005.

It's an HP computer and it's less than 2 years old.

[ALF13]

To @exploder 9300? Isn't this very old card, because I had one 9600 with 128M and I bought it in 2004 or 2005.

It's an HP computer and it's less than 2 years old.

How much memory does it have?

[AlbertP]

About AMD/ATI, they sometimes work very well but also often just not. I've once installed Mint 11 on a Radeon HD 3200 laptop, installed the driver from Additional Drivers, and it just worked. I know somebody with a 9600 card, which is working fine with open-source drivers on Mint 11.
I am not saying that ATI/AMD users should switch to Mint 11. In other Mints it can also work well. Those two computers are not mine either. I don't own AMD graphics hardware myself.
AMD has a better open-source driver for the old hardware that has no support anymore. But nvidia has longer support for old hardware in the proprietary driver.

[ALF13]

So, in conclusion which is better - AMD or Nvidia? What do you thing and why ?

[AlbertP]

Overall NVIDIA is considered better by most people.

Please realize that you are responding to a very old topic, so I'm not going into detail (a moderator might move or close this).

[viking777]

Well Albert stricly speaking the rules are you shouldn't respond to support questions older than 6 months (because the distro version will have changed or moved on in that time) but a poll is not really a support topic and ALF13 did start it, so I think it is reasonable that he can wait for responses and then conclude the topic as he has done.

BTW You should have said that everyone except Linus Torvalds considers Nvidia to be the better

[AlbertP]

Being descended from the Vikings, I should of course respect the opinion of Mr. viking, and apart from that he's a moderator. I'll take back my criticism about the response to an old topic and of course he is right about Linus Torvalds.

Feel free to ignore the lines above this if you don't have a sense of humour.

My personal opinion is that if you want a laptop, NVIDIA Optimus hardware is to be avoided (that was also one of Torvalds' points) - for desktop hardware, I think it's fine to use NVIDIA. I would like to emphasize that neither of them is perfect when it comes to Linux support.

About Linus Torvalds and NVIDIA: http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=n ... px=MTEyMTc

[ALF13]

Ha-ha, sorry for the old topic
So, you guys think that Nvidia has better drivers not only in windows but in linux?
I'm asking because I want to buy a new video card. I'll be using it's potencial mainly for games under windows, but I want to use it in linux too. I do not want crappy card with bad drivers and tons of problems.

[viking777]

This is a Linux forum so we are not giving advice about what is best for Windows. AlbertP is right about Optimus though - avoid that unless you enjoy problem solving.

[ALF13]

I'm asking which is better for linux? I know what's the answer for windows, that's what i said.

[AlbertP]

In computers without Optimus, NVIDIA is generally considered better. I have quite good experience with NVIDIA hardware myself, too.

[ALF13]

The problem of AMD/ATI is the drivers or at least it was in the past years. I don't know how the thing are going recently.