ATI AIW RADEON users

[Gerry Doris]

On Tue, 2002-12-31 at 10:33, Matthew Carpenter wrote:
> Hi all!
> 
> I am preparing to purchase an ATI AIW RADEON card to solve both my gaming need (OpenGL) and Video Capture need.
> 
> I would like someone's opinion about the following:
> ATI Supports the RADEON 8500, 9000, and 9700 with drivers available from them.
> The RADEON and RAGE128 apparently have built-in 3D drivers in XF86's DRI package
> 
> For All-In-Wonder support, they point to the GATOS project at sourceforge., but mention that their TV Wonder and TV Wonder VE products should be supported out of the box.
> 
> First off, they don't mention the AIW RADEON 7500.  Does that mean I should avoid that card?
> Should I get the AIW RADEON like I want to or should I get some TV Wonder card and go for a standard RADEON graphis card (or some other at that point)?
> Has anyone used the GATOS drivers/programs and how well do they work?  I noticed there was even a remote control app (which I assume is for a TV-Remote type use?)
> 
> Thanks a lot!
> Matt

Personally, I have never had good luck with ATI cards.  I know some
folks swear by them but I have tried them a couple of times and always
returned them for Nvidia cards.  I'd really like to use them as I live
just a few miles from their facilities just outside of Toronto (I'd
prefer to support the local company).

I found the ATI cards to work great in Windows but had difficulties with
their drivers in linux.  I returned a 9500 card just over a month ago
when I found out there were no linux drivers at all for it.  I
discovered there were only drivers available up to the 8500 series.  The
9x00 series had none. However, I believe ATI recently released some
linux drivers for the card but have no idea how good they are.

On the other hand my Nvidia cards have worked great in both Windows and
linux.  The downside is that their drivers are proprietary and need to
be compiled into the kernel.  It's easy to do but you won't get any
support from people like Redhat.  They blame any and all problems on the
Nvidia driver and require you to remove the driver before they will even
think about helping.  

I guess I'm skeptical that ATI's new linux drivers are as good as
Nvidia's.  Afterall, Nvidia's code has been around for many iterations
and new versions are released in sync with their Windows versions.  They
seem to know what they're doing in linux.

-- 
Gerry Doris <gerry at dorfam.ca>