Gentoo Archives: gentoo-user

From: Dale <dalek1967@×××××××××.net>
To: gentoo-user@l.g.o
Subject: Re: [gentoo-user] Re: KDE 4.1...
Date: Fri, 29 Aug 2008 09:47:30
Message-Id: 48B7C58F.7000402@bellsouth.net
In Reply to: Re: [gentoo-user] Re: KDE 4.1... by Alan McKinnon
1 Alan McKinnon wrote:
2 > On Thursday 28 August 2008 23:30:54 James wrote:
3 >
4 >> Alan McKinnon <alan.mckinnon <at> gmail.com> writes:
5 >>
6 >>> It's far from fixed here. Admittedly better than 173.*, but the vast
7 >>> majority of work remains to be done:
8 >>>
9 >> What ever happened to all of those folks that said Nvidia is the
10 >> superior video vendor?
11 >>
12 >
13 > That used to be true, and nVidia historically did have the better performance
14 > and support. But two things have changed:
15 >
16 > The newer GPUs (starting with 8xxx and 9xxx series) do not have 2D
17 > acceleration in hardware anymore, it's all done in the driver. Some Linux apps
18 > and especially KDE4 use X technologies in ways that nVidia's driver is not
19 > especially good at. Remember that the Linux driver is essentially a port of
20 > the logic in the Windows driver together with the guts of OpenGL ripped out of
21 > X and replaced with nVidia's stuff, this leads to a bit of an oops. nVidia is
22 > actively working on the problem with reasonably frequent beta driver releases,
23 > but it certainly appears to be way more deep rooted and trickier to handle
24 > than it might appear.
25 >
26 > If they could just open source the drivers, then an entire army of coders
27 > would step in and help devise good code that runs well. But they don't, so
28 > nVidia is stuck with the 2 maybe 3 people they have on the Linux port.
29 >
30 > And there's also the fiasco with the construction of apparently their entire
31 > line of recent GPUs. They don't react well to thermal stress and are failing
32 > in alarmingly large numbers
33 >
34 >
35 >> I took quite a beating (on this list) for backing/promoting ATI,
36 >> because I believe that AMD would do the right thing for the Linux
37 >> community.
38 >>
39 >
40 > It appears you were more right than those others were wrong :-)
41 >
42 > Thumbs up to AMD for taking the first steps and releasing some decent docs
43 >
44 >
45 >
46
47 I have not been keeping up with this news about the new Nvidia cards so
48 let me see if I get this right. I have a old FX-5200 card right now but
49 if I wanted to get a nice new video card, say a new puter build, then I
50 should get a ATI card instead?
51
52 Also, what is the latest card that has 2D in hardware? Sounds like
53 things went south not long after I got my 5200.
54
55 Dale
56
57 :-) :-)

Replies

Subject Author
Re: [gentoo-user] Re: KDE 4.1... Alan McKinnon <alan.mckinnon@×××××.com>