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Alan McKinnon wrote: |
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> On Thursday 28 August 2008 23:30:54 James wrote: |
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> |
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>> Alan McKinnon <alan.mckinnon <at> gmail.com> writes: |
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>> |
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>>> It's far from fixed here. Admittedly better than 173.*, but the vast |
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>>> majority of work remains to be done: |
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>>> |
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>> What ever happened to all of those folks that said Nvidia is the |
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>> superior video vendor? |
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>> |
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> |
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> That used to be true, and nVidia historically did have the better performance |
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> and support. But two things have changed: |
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> |
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> The newer GPUs (starting with 8xxx and 9xxx series) do not have 2D |
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> acceleration in hardware anymore, it's all done in the driver. Some Linux apps |
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> and especially KDE4 use X technologies in ways that nVidia's driver is not |
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> especially good at. Remember that the Linux driver is essentially a port of |
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> the logic in the Windows driver together with the guts of OpenGL ripped out of |
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> X and replaced with nVidia's stuff, this leads to a bit of an oops. nVidia is |
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> actively working on the problem with reasonably frequent beta driver releases, |
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> but it certainly appears to be way more deep rooted and trickier to handle |
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> than it might appear. |
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> |
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> If they could just open source the drivers, then an entire army of coders |
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> would step in and help devise good code that runs well. But they don't, so |
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> nVidia is stuck with the 2 maybe 3 people they have on the Linux port. |
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> |
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> And there's also the fiasco with the construction of apparently their entire |
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> line of recent GPUs. They don't react well to thermal stress and are failing |
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> in alarmingly large numbers |
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> |
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> |
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>> I took quite a beating (on this list) for backing/promoting ATI, |
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>> because I believe that AMD would do the right thing for the Linux |
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>> community. |
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>> |
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> |
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> It appears you were more right than those others were wrong :-) |
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> |
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> Thumbs up to AMD for taking the first steps and releasing some decent docs |
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> |
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> |
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> |
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|
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I have not been keeping up with this news about the new Nvidia cards so |
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let me see if I get this right. I have a old FX-5200 card right now but |
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if I wanted to get a nice new video card, say a new puter build, then I |
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should get a ATI card instead? |
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|
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Also, what is the latest card that has 2D in hardware? Sounds like |
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things went south not long after I got my 5200. |
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|
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Dale |
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|
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:-) :-) |