I want to get an ATI... also general hardware q's

[Tyir]

So from what I can understand, there are nvidia drivers for 64 bit, but there is nothing for ATI, so if I got a ATI card, I would have to use whats built-into Xorg, right?

Would those drivers be ok for all uses (applications, mplayer) other than gaming? (i guess i can game in windows :\)

What are your experiances?

Secondly, this is what I'm planning on getting right now, what do you guys think? (in terms of both general goodness and linux compatability)

[elysium_joel]

Ive owned an ati radeon, i had it for around 3 weeks where i tried quite a few options to get it working (and nice). I gave up shortly after the 3 weeks, and saved up for a GForce.

The ati drivers are... ok i guess, but their hardware rendering under linux leaves a LOT to the imagination, under windows they are (i would consider) the best - but I've head the exact opposite under linux, especially 32bit emulation.

The rest seems really nice, you may want to chuck in a pci networking card - my room-mate experiences lockups under linux with his gigabit on board, mine didn't freeze but i found it unreliable at best. Both of us have it turned off in the bios, and Realtek PCIs instead.

If you don't want to run 3d accel (dri) on your vid card, and want to rely on MESA and the open source radeon drivers, no doubt doom2 would run nice - but most likely not doom3. Dont get me wrong, they aren't too bad - supports dual head, unlike the open source Nvidia ones- it wont look as nice as hardware accel, and might lag out the computer but it shouldn't be *too* horrible if you dumb down the settings.

Anyone else had any sucess with the ATI's (specifically Radeons) under 64bit?
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..:: Metatron - Gentoo64 ::..
AMD Athlon XP 64bit 3000+
Gigabyte GA-K8N Pro Mobo
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Nvidia TNT2 -> 15" CRT
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48xCDRW,52xCDRW,8xDVD,8xDVDR
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[J.M.I.T.]

I would recommend buying a motherboard & cpu with socket939 instead of socket754... In case you want to upgrade your cpu, 754 is a dead-end...
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Get a life...

[headache]

Unless gaming is your main focus, ATi cards works fine with xorg-x11 and AMD64.

I have an AMD64 3200+ and an ATi 9200 and it works like a charm with DRI. I do all my gaming under Windows or on PS/2 so it is not a huge problem for me that there is no 64-bit accelerated driver for ATi. It will however be released RSN (tm) ((Real Soon Now))
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"I'd rather have a President who does it to a woman than one who does it to his country" -- Shirley Maclaine
Liberal (adj.): Free from bigotry; open to progress; tolerant of others.

[Tyir]

Hey, thanks for the comments...
JMIT: socket939 would be nice, but its a little out of my budget, the cheapest is 400 more, not overly worth it, and i figure this box will last a long time.

Yea, I doubt I will game in linux, I mean I would love to, but obviously with a ATI you can't. I can always do the reboot dance.

headache, sorry, DRI is the built in open-source drivers in Xorg, right? And they are good for everything excluding gaming? (liek movies and stuff)

What about Dual-head, the card has two outputs, so i just need the adapter from digital to analog and I get get the two CRT's in, right? Will that work fine with the open-source ati driver? I would use XInerama, right?

Also, I'm a little worried abotu video-card upgradability and PCI-Express. Will I be able to upgrade my video card in a year or two even thought the board won't support PCI-Express?

Thanks again
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There are two things I have learnt in life:
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[tntgentoo]

I am looking at getting the new Sager 4750 series notebook.

This is a nice 64 bit machine:

http://www.sagernotebook.com/pages/notebooks/product.cfm?ProductType=4750

The only downside is that they use the ATI MOBILITY RADEON 9700 128MB DDR. So, I guess in order for the ATI drivers to work the best, I would have to wait for the 64 versions from ATI.

I have run ATI and NVidia in my Gentoo boxes and I have found that the ATI seems to work better from the start as they seem to be easier to install software wise.

Just my 2 cents.

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[headache]