Why all the hate on ATI?

Baix · Tux's lil' helper Joined: 19 Feb 2005 Posts: 77

Hey guys,
Just got a new comp with an ATI Radeon X300 128MB PCI Express graphics card and after a few minutes of poking around got the drivers working and direct rendering up, I've happily been playing tuxracer, america's army and gltron with no problems or choppyness what so ever, I started mindlessly roaming forums (a usual occurance lol) and noticed a lot of "ATI sucks" "damn ATI" "Go with nvidia and don't look back" and general anti-ati comments with people complaing about instabilty, choppyness etc...why is this? I don't to have a problem so far.

Thanks all!

KsE · Posted: Sun Mar 20, 2005 5:09 am Post subject:

Well, you're lucky then. Most people have problems getting ATI cards to work on linux. They don't have good drivers for it. Nvidia's linux support is a lot better. Nvidia cards usually outperform ATI's in benchmarks also. Nvidia's drivers are better on windows too for that matter.

If you got it working easily, then that's good. You can help all the other people that are having problems. I have a rage128 on one of my computers, and didn't have problems with that. It's an older card that's very common though, so I would expect there to be no problems with it.

Arainach · l33t Joined: 08 Jul 2004 Posts: 609

Their drivers have barely half the performance of their Windows drivers. Their drivers are unstable (My computer was hardlocking every 24 hours for a while until I changed versions). And until VERY recently, their drivers absolutely sucked. They've started a lot of work on Linux drivers and they're improving, so I've temporarily held off on my Linux bashing, but the only reason I'm satisfied with the crap they put out now is because it's a lot better than the crap they put out for 5 years.
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black hole sun · Apprentice Joined: 14 Aug 2004 Posts: 245

Because ATI's linux driver sucks. It's really gotten better because they've gotten off their rumps and are FINALLY taking linux seriously, but they have a long way to go.

I would not say nVidia's Windows drivers > ATi's, though. On M$ they are even, but on Linux it's a different story.
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jamesshuang · Tux's lil' helper Joined: 08 Aug 2002 Posts: 120

Let's see... just TRY and get composite running with hardware acceleration. After you fail at that, try and get any windows games running on Cedega. Yep, now try the same with nvidia drivers. Then you will know perfectly well why everyone hates ATI. Let's just say, my friend's GeForce Go 420 still beats my ATI Radeon 9600 when it comes to gaming in linux... grrr

ARC2300 · Apprentice Joined: 30 Mar 2003 Posts: 267

I didn't have great experience, nor bad experience with ATi.

I couldn't get XOrg working with my 9700 Pro (or 9800 Pro), but at the same time, I had hardly any issue with Cedega. I was using the old 3.2.8 drivers, though. I accidentally upgraded once, and I could see where everyone was getting flustered.

I can say, though, that I won't be straying from nVidia. As okay as my ATi worked, my nVidia works so much easier, better, and faster. Hell, even my Ti4200 was almost on par with my 9800 Pro.
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