On Sat, 02 Jul 2005 19:31:42 +0100 Tim Igoe <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> > > Maybe if Linux becomes more mainstream or used in offices more then > perhaps they might improve the efforts towards the Linux drivers. > Here is why ATI won't become much better over time - most of their developers don't use Linux. If you've followed any of the interviews from ATI and Nvidia, you'll note significant differences. ATI has a dedicated team - started at around 5 developers, after they consolidated their driver teams. This grew to around 15, perhaps more today. ATI's management controls how much resources get dropped into Linux via dedicated funding. Nvidia has had a lot of internal pressure from their developers as many run Linux to do development, even for other platforms. Thus they have more than a dedicated core of driver developers for Linux, they have hard core Linux using developers. While Nvidia's management would like to control how much money goes into Linux driver development, they can't just tell their developers to switch platforms for their core work. But that doesn't mean that Nvidia's drivers are golden. They've got a broken driver with the 6x00 series of cards right now if you are running 16x10. It works fine with 5200/5900, previous gen cards. And, 1280x768 is not supported under WinXX or Linux with any version of Nvidia drivers. And this is with any current version of their drivers - nv (in Xorg), 6629, and 7664. ATI, on the other hand has never considered 16x10, it's not a valid resolution. They do support 1280x768, but their cards - 9250, seem to die pretty quickly with heavy 3D use - well, half an hour of UT. > I'm happy with them at the moment, yes there are things that could be > improved - but aren't there always? :) > I really tried to not pre-judge them and tried various options using their cards - Xorg, flgrx, and even went third party - Xig. Simply put - I'll not be buying any more ATI cards. Bob - -- gentoo-user@gentoo.org mailing list
