[GLLUG] New Video Card Advice

[Mike Rambo]

On Thu, 2003-10-30 at 15:40, C. Ulrich wrote:
> On Thu, 2003-10-30 at 09:32, Brian Hoort wrote:
> > So I've got everything else ordered, but I must admit, I'm just totally out 
> > of the loop on video cards these days.  I'm needing a primer.  I've done a 
> > 
> ATI has historically offered little to no help to Linux developers
> wishing to write drivers for their cards, despite what their press
> releases may say. I have always avoided ATI cards like the plague. ATI
> has usually designed good cards at an affordable price, but their tech
> support is nearly non-existant, the drivers bundled with the cards
> rarely ever worked properly, and updated drivers were known to perform
> worse than the originals or completely trash the whole system without
> warning. As an example, one of my good friends bought a Rage 128 once
> (against my advice) for the sole purpose of playing Quake, by far the
> most popular game of the time. Over the 3 years that he had the card,
> ATI never produced a single driver for that card that allowed it to play
> Quake properly. ATI started to improve their image a bit when the Radeon
> cards first emerged, but it seems like they're gradually settling back
> into the old ATI that I remember.
> 

I would echo the ATI sentiments - and the Radeon series seem to me to
cause even more problems than the old stuff IMO. At least the 7000 and
7500 cards anyway. I've given up getting newer ATI's. I have two 7000's
at home on machines that dual boot windows and linux. Neither perform
terribly well in either platform. My brother has a 7500 in a windows
only box that has given nothing but fits since he bought it. He has it
in a special use situation where both video outs are used for display of
differing content at different resolutions. Windows either looses the
resolution settings or just plain has to reload the drivers about 3 out
of every 4 times he boots up. ATI has had him try several different
drivers and currently has him running the ME driver on '98. He's tried
2000 with various drivers too. Support at ATI doesn't seem particularly
sharp nor is the driver development team. Marketing OTOH, seems quite
good.


-- 
Mike Rambo
mrambo at lsd.k12.mi.us

NOTE: In order to control energy costs the light at the end 
of the tunnel has been shut off until further notice...