bvc Posted February 7, 2004 Report Share Posted February 7, 2004 (edited) Aside from a heavy duty surge protector, I need yet another video card Yes, I use win for games but also play a few in linux so I do need/or rather want glx. Since I use cutting edge kernels (2.6.2 at the moment) what does this mean for ati's? NVidia's are either hacked pretty quick or released rather quick. ATI's? I also ask because I'm building a gaming box for friend and my only experience is nvidia. He's win only though and wants the best for gaming. For this purpose, my limited research has shown ATI to be the way to go. Rt? Edited February 7, 2004 by bvc Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mtweidmann Posted February 7, 2004 Report Share Posted February 7, 2004 Personnally I have always prefered ATI cards over Nvidias. I think that ATI gives you a well rounded card with more features, while Nvidia seems only interested in game performance. However from my experience (limited as it is) Nvidia's are the easiest to set up. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bvc Posted February 7, 2004 Author Report Share Posted February 7, 2004 (edited) Overall....which would you buy, nVidia or ATI? [EDIT]This was suppose to be the poll Edited February 7, 2004 by bvc Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mtweidmann Posted February 7, 2004 Report Share Posted February 7, 2004 Well I am about to buy (hopefully) an ATI 9200 128MB, so I guess that kind of answers that question :) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kkrekula Posted February 7, 2004 Report Share Posted February 7, 2004 ATI seem to make the best graphics cards, good performance and makes less noise. BUT I'm not sure about the Linux compatibilty.... That's why I bought an NVidia card one month ago. /Kenneth Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
VeeDubb Posted February 7, 2004 Report Share Posted February 7, 2004 For me, there's no discussion. nVidia all the way. Why you ask? Simple. They work. They always work under windows and linux. nVidia released about 5 or 6 driver's a year. At firs you might think that's an indication of endless bugs in the drivers, but it's not. What it means is that they are ALWAYS releasing new driver, they are always trying to sqeaze out a litle more stability or proformance. I have nothing against ATI. They make good stuff. But for me, nvidia just offers more. I totaly dissagree about the "better rounded comment" nvidia cards are very well designed and have a nice rounded feature set. If anything ATI is the one with the history of stupid cards like the All-in-Wonder, and they've released several 'ultra0stripped down cards too. Of course, nobody should buy an nvidia or an ATI. Check this card out http://www.lamerkatz.com/stories/images/bitchin.jpg That's the best card i've ever seen! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mtweidmann Posted February 7, 2004 Report Share Posted February 7, 2004 (edited) I didn't mean well rounded in terms of whats bolted onto them, I agree with you that the All-In-One cards are daft. What I meant was performance, the nVidia cards I have used have always been great for games (ie 3D), but not as good (when compared to ATI) for everything else such 2D, DVD, VIVO, etc.... Edit: Nor did I ever say that nVidia cards were not well engineered. It is simply my experience that they seem to be designed with gamers in mind. There is nothing wrong with that, but most of what I do is 2D. Edited February 7, 2004 by mtweidmann Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ixthusdan Posted February 7, 2004 Report Share Posted February 7, 2004 I first started using Nvidia before I came to linux, and before they were highly rated. I found the drivers to be better written than ATI, and they were less expensive than the now defunct 3dfx. In Linux, I have always had an excellent time with Nvidia. On cheap systems that I build, I even get better results with tnt2 than the old S3 cards that I used to use. So I find that Nvidia is better at all levels. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bojo Posted February 8, 2004 Report Share Posted February 8, 2004 I am using ATI Guys - Rage 128 - Pro All In Wander. Had no troubles at all under win. No troubles under Lin either (unless you want to squeeze all of it). Eventually I managed to watch TV under Lin but still this and that bothers me. Of course I am just a newbe so in most cases I blame myself for that. However I should admit that it seems Nvidia is kind of better supported under Lin. Maybe it would be not a bad idea if you check on the supported hardware and try to find out if the company releases it's own Lin drivers. One or two months ago I bumped into a message that was saying about the ATI cards that they are very good but there are too many proprietary parts and it makes it more difficult to develope an open source driver. I guess eventually everything will work but you need the card working now and working good right? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bvc Posted February 8, 2004 Author Report Share Posted February 8, 2004 (edited) Actually no. It's kinda a long story but the short version is that after a transformer failed, I replaced my 3 month old psu and 2 year old nvidia gf2 mx200. Now, after more power surges, the font's in win2k are blury just like when the gs2 was fried, but the fonts are fine in linux which was not the case b4. I don't use win2k that much but the wife and kids do and I can't have them damaging their eyes over blury fonts. Graphics are fine, and sometimes fonts are, depending on the app really. Weird that it's win and app related, but it is the card. Monitor is still good and I got a new psu (again) today which fixed a weird shoutdown problem. As you can imagine, I bought a good surge protector today and I will be shuting all down and unpluging it while sleeping and/or not using for any period of time (yeah, like that ever happens)...I do sleep though....sometimes. Thanks for the thoughts everyone and keep'em coming. Interesting/informative. Edited February 8, 2004 by bvc Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DragonMage Posted February 8, 2004 Report Share Posted February 8, 2004 If you use linux.. nvidia is better than ati.. heck.. Matrox is better than ati. Ati still refuse to support radeon 7500 and their mobile graphics section for example. I just pray that whenever I buy a laptop with ati graphics, it is supported by ati driver. That means limiting myself to radeon 9000, 9200, and 9600 solutions (I am not even too sure about the 9600). Anything lower or higher are not supported as of yet. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
VeeDubb Posted February 8, 2004 Report Share Posted February 8, 2004 Yeah, nVidia is REALY great about supporting linux. I know a lot of people beg for the source code, but Im okay with a tainted kernel. I also still totaly dissagree about the "better rounded" comments. My Nvidia card has absolutely fantastic 2d acceleration. I can play a 3d game and watch a dvd at the same time with GREAT frame rates. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Pepse Posted February 10, 2004 Report Share Posted February 10, 2004 I started out using an ATI card (Rage 128), but IIRC it was buggy when running MDK 8.1 and it just didn't look/feel right. So I bought an nVidia GF2 MX400 PCI card and haven't had any probs with it; not counting the times "I" screwed up something when updating the drivers. But, I will say that from what I seen on nVidia's Lin BB the latest driver, 5328, is a pain-in-the-xxx, especially for people with AGP cards. I like trying to keep up with the latest drivers but passed on this one because of the hassles people are/were having. Altho I understand that there are 2 sites that have a patch for the problems I think that if I gotta go elsewhere to download a patch then why should I. I mean nVidia should have looked into this better before releasing it as "good". Either they are slipping or they are just trying too hard to keep the Linux gamers happy. As it is I will stick with nVidia. I would like to get an Asylum 256 meg AGP vid card but to be safe I will wait awhile in hopes that MDK and nVidia get their acts together and get the AGP stuff to work better. As I recall there are issues with MDK and AGP as well. I do my da**dest to make sure the hardware I install on my comp is Linux friendly. As it is right now I have an older Tyan mobo and am upgrading a little bit to a slightly newer Tyan board. A board that will take an AMD Athlon XP 1700+. Also, I am a 1 OS on the HDD type. If I gotta look at windows I'll go visit the kids or use my wife's comp. I don't hate it, but since moving to Linux 3 years ago I am still quite content with it. IT AIN'T BORING LIKE MS. Later, Dudes and Dudettes. Pepse. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
phunni Posted February 10, 2004 Report Share Posted February 10, 2004 (edited) ATI - and I've always found it pretty easy to set up. Just a case of downloading and installing drivers. Amazing performance with my ATI 9800 pro Also, I've always felt that you get more value for money with ATI... Edited February 10, 2004 by phunni Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
aRTee Posted February 10, 2004 Report Share Posted February 10, 2004 Tough call. I use nvidia only, but this is the only stability problem that my machine has: graphics. Last week I was watching a divx, and halfway, boom, full lock. No way to ctrl-alt-backspace out of there. I could have tried ssh-ing into the machine, but that would have required to start another machine, so I did a hardware reset. Not cool though. Nvidia drivers are there, and for 2 good reasons: 1- they realised those needing fast 3d and wanting to use linux would take their products 2- they do most of their chip design on Linux machines. Yes, they eat their own cookings. ATI on the other hand, has recently started to bring out proprietary linux drivers. Their drivers are said to be less good both on win and lin. On the other hand, they do give out all necessary info that is needed to build fully functional FLOSS drivers -- contrary to the nv driver that doesn't do 3d. Last remark: it seems on ati you can more or less forget about the tv-out features in most cases, on my nvidia the tvout works great. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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