Ati and linux and Blender -

  1. I was reading some info on upcoming AMD 2600 and 2400 cards and their very low power consumption, and their new 45W brisbane dualcore cpu’s

  2. then I read this article http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=735&num=1

  3. which makes me want to hear user experience of current ATI cards owners that run Linux. How do different current cards perform with current latest drivers on linux with Blender. Are there any problems, etc …

  4. is there somebody that succesfully runs Blender/linux on amd690 chipset with integrated graphics? 64bit perhaps?


5) Anybody here with Avid Liquid and ati card? (not much important, but nevertheless) Currently I have Cinegy extreme (former aist moviepack), but they are said to be dead.

Currently I have a couple of mid-powered nvidia-amd boxes. I’d like to put up a slim, silent, low-power-draw computer (along the lines of htpc), but dedicated for multimedia authoring (dualboot). Certain things I read on the web are steering me towards amd’s solutions, that’s why I ask.

pay the extra and get Nvidia.
If you buy ATI you will close the doors to you ever having a decent linux install.
ATI drivers are total trash in linux.
ATI also just got absorbed by AMD. the name ATI is about to be snuffed, It would not supprise me to see them totaly abandon the drivers and tech support for older ATI products.

I have not found this to be the case. ACER Aspire 5100, AMD Turion 64 X2 TL50, ATI Radeon Xpress 1100. This card performs much better for me under Ubuntu Feisty 64 bit than it does on windozeXP 32 bit, probably about 30% faster. Blender doesn’t crash very often on this set-up either but it’s hard to keep it from crashing on windoze. That’s why I made the switch. I’m not very happy with 64 bit Ubuntu but at least Blender is STABLE on this side. Everything about this computer is AMD and it simply ROCKS!!!

I had severe problems with ATI using Windows. ATI and Linux is not a good combination too. As of yet. I read somewhere that ATI/AMD wants to open-source their drivers for linux? Still the question if this will be for the full drivers, especially the 3D part of recent cards. I mean, that is their core business, they certainly will not be to hasty to show that to everyone.
As of my experiences I wouldn’t buy ATI if you plan to work with Linux and/or Blender. Other cards have their issues too, but there it is to frequent.
But no problem with AMD processors here.

reed ubuntu forms. theres at lest 5 posts pur day about ati problems. do not get ati cards! blender+ati= verry bad proformance

Yea! AMD processors rock!

in linux they rock even faster !

That’s why I ask: I read some succes (like wow_fast ) and some horror stories about ati cards and current linux distros.

I have one radeon7000 - and nvidia mx400, mx440, fx5200, fx5500, fx5600, 6200 and two 7600gs (don’t ask !!! ) … except 5500 and 5600 all silent models.

Why ati: besides what I read about 2600/2400, I was informed that lesser ATI cards impose lower_latency on the system, which is a huge bonus for audio production, in fact, I was told to get a silent ati x550 for the audio system … which would be fine for a dedicated, windows-only DAW box, but I need to rationalize my stuff a bit … so I need to know the first hand experience, ideally with your card type.

I figured out that older (pre-amd) ati cards would go into driver oblivion, too …

btw. I know amd’s rock in linux even faster … I have xp2200, xp2400, xp2600m (!), xp3000, sempr0n2800, x2-4200 and x2-3800 … too old to rock, too young to die, heh.

so when I’ll make kids, I’ll tell them : these are those who rocked in linux … hard. okay?

I’m running blender + ati 9700 pro at 1920x1200 without any problem on Ubuntu Breezy 64 bits.

The only bad news that I have about ATI on Linux is that the drivers are a real BITCH to get installed properly. Once installed properly though, I can’t say ANYTHING bad about them, but I’m not a gamer either. That may make a difference.

I have a notebook with integrated ATI X200M chip…
On windows, their opengl library is not very good. So you end up using or an old firegl library, or a nvidia library! Anyway, you can have it working normally.
On linux, it’s a bit worse. The driver is not very good, it is not easy to install and even more difficult to configure settings after. It has a lot of problems related to opengl. On my old ubuntu dapper, i had to compile blender with mesagl!! Now, in last driver version (8.36 i think) they made huge improvements, and it looks like opengl behaviour is far better. Blender runs now smoothly here using ati gl library dynamically (the normal way)…

Right now, i think that next time i’ll buy a notebook with a nvidia card. But (maybe since amd bought it) it seems that things are evolving fast at ati. so who knows, maybe it gets good quickly.

Older ati cards currently work better (open source radeon drivers for radeon, radeon 200 or radeon 300, or ati fglrx drivers for post radeon 200) than new ones
ati has made promises to improve things, but the current state of affairs is abysmal for linux users. I doubt they will open source their driver, but they will more likely go to a unified model for their vista and linux drivers- however, it is quite unclear what they will provide.
The phoronix article tells me nothing other than their crappy drivers are made by developers working in a company and not magic. I knew that already .
Personally I wouldn’t buy hardware based on what a company might do in the future, but make your own choice. The fact is today, if you buy a modern gfx card, nvidia is the better choice for linux (Still closed source driver, but much more functional)
for 3D I wouldn’t consider the shared memory (intel ) option, even though they reputedly have nice open source driver, the hardware performance is sub-par.