Well, their performance has improved a bit but not noticeably. Though with all of the recent changes happening with fglrx, there is the possibility that the performance will soon improve.

Although I don't care much about not being able to run Beryl, I will end up caring if (e.g.) I have to wait for xorg 7.3 and randr 1.2 support, or the ability to run KDE4 at it's full potential.

Simply put, the previous delays in implementing GLX_EXT_FROM_PIXMAP (or whatever) and X1xxx support don't bode well for keeping up with the more necessary or desirable features in the future.

The other complaint I would have is not performance (I'm not a gamer) but the fact that there seems to always be some little niggling bug with the driver if you happen to use the wrong kernel version, with the wrong agpgart module with the wrong chipset etc. etc. I seem to be cursed by always being affected by those bugs.

That said, the driver did come a long way during '06, so hopefully the trend continues and it just gets better.

From a practical point of view, as the Mandriva Club forum moderator, I can say I see WAY more people having trouble with the ATI driver than with the NVIDIA one.

However, I agree with the basic point that lack of support for running compiz / beryl directly on the driver is not such a huge deal. Especially when you can just use Xgl anyway.

Yes the ati driver is evil. Their quality is low. I have an x1300 video card and XV stops working time to time, or suddenly graphics get really slow. My unaccelerated trident driver for other laptop works better than the official ati driver on this one.
If they made specs available at least i would have an open source driver of predictable quality(like others) instead of this mess of random misbehavior

lots of annoying bugs...
for instance:
http://ati.cchtml.com/show_bug.cgi?id=309
tv on secondary head has no XV
and this started happening just after 8.12.x or something...

They are not evil.They just suck to the max.ATI is always late (64 bit drivers,beryl support).
What is the point in a closed source driver that is written by the best in the business (or so they think) if it doesn't support new technologies,all the features of the hardware and all chipsets?

This article seemed totally biased to me. What are these great improvements ati has made? The driver's performance is still as pathetic as it has always been, and I'm not convinced it's any less buggy, either. Michael blamed nvidia for their unpredictable release cycle, but are ati's monthly releases any better when the changes are mostly about keeping up with new kernels and a little polish here and there in the config tool or installer. Bashing nvidia about their sli support is quite funny too, considering fglrx has zero support for crossfire. And what are these show-stopper bugs in the nvidia driver? Isn't it the other way round? I recently made the switch and bought a 7900 series card and no more hard locks when logging out of X and switching to and back from virtual terminals or running Google Earth. Running games in wine/cedega was also much more problematic with the ati card.

Sure nvidia isn't perfect either, but between two binary blobs I'll choose the one that gives the performance, features and stability I paid for. Sure some might say that ati is "good enough", but if you don't need the latest and greatest, why not just get a mobo with integrated intel graphics that's supported by free drivers, wouldn't cost that much either.

ATI/AMD: "Wait, I made a typo, lets correct it and send it out as another update"

Come'on.. there are no big difference with the lastest update and the one 6 months ago. Anyone can send out an update to fix something broke on a 480 resolution screen.

I went with ATI because I thought they "LISTENED" to the customers. Most people that know anything about computers will only update things that provide major differences in performance and productivity. That's why I haven't updated since last August, loosing faith that AMD will ever release anything in favor for Beryl/Compiz.

"Their goals may not align with users wanting to run Beryl or Compiz"

And my goal, as a paying customer, is to get something I want that I paid for. If it wasn't for my faith in ATI (before AMD), I would be running nVidia.

Well i'd say they are evil but not as much as nvidia. At least they align with dri driver ways, not like nvidia pushing there way in X with their custom ways.

We can not expect those corporate to opensource their spagetti driver ( We can expect something like that if they do ). So our best choice would also be to send some love to the dri project.

Lack of support for nice features, doesn't make the driver evil. The fact the the driver is proprietary does. And BOTH ATI and Nvia ought to clean up their act.

fglrx totally freezes my system (9600) on any 3d apps except glxgears and fgl_glxgears. It used to freeze with these a couple of releases back. On windows everything goes smoothly. Unfortunately I have to use it because the open source drivers lack tv-out support. In combination with the "tv on secondary head has no XV" bug posted before, you can appreciate the respect that ATI gives to its linux customers

Time for people to vote with their wallets. I currently have an ati based laptop, next time round its going to be an nvidia.

I have to ask, what do you use your graphics card for? I can't play games with mine or run beryl.

Sorry if my tone is a bit caustic, but you seem
to be telling me why I shouldn't be frustrated
by the interminable wait for 3D
acceleration. ATI has improved, but that is recent. I have a strong feeling that the impetus has come from nVidia setting the standard.

"Is it really that big of a deal?"

Clearly not to you, so it's easy for you to
make that statement. Of course I've spent the
last 4 years wishing I had an nVidia card so
that I would have functional 3D acceleration.

As someone observed earlier, the point about
SLI is moot since ATI's crossfire support is
still a dream.

If a Linux user were trying to decide which brand video card to get, what argument would you offer to convince them to get an ATI card over an nVidia card? Knowing what I know now, I would pick up an nVidia card in a heartbeat. ATI's driver support may not be "poor," but nVidia's is better.

What is the value of having the latest 3D hardware if the cutting edge features I paid
for are crippled by the drivers?

I know that people have gotten various games
working under Linux using wine/Cedega, but I
don't know how many times I've read that those games will not work for ATI cards because
feature X is not provided by the drivers.

I can't run games that would work on an
nVidia card, and I can't run beryl. So what am
I doing with a $300 GPU sitting in my computer?

"but it doesn't equate to increased productivity or any real-world benefits."

You seem to make the blanket statement with the
greatest of ease.

I multi-task heavily, and there are several recent (within the last few weeks) beryl plugins that greatly aid management of myriad windows.

When not in beryl, I use the no frills, keyboard centric, tiling window manager called Ion3. Given the choice I will use beryl, because it is rapidly transitioning from providing mainly eye-candy to providing both eye-candy and unique productivity features.

To top it off I'm currently running the open
source drivers which somehow provide better support for my chipset than ATI's own drivers.
Seems absurd to me.

I feel a lot better now that I've vented
years of irritation. I haven't read the digg
thread, but I'm sure they are just sick of
seeing disclaimers about games and other
software not working due to missing features
in the ATI driver, essentially rendering their
investment in expensive graphics hardware worthless.

Here's my take on the problem: ATi/AMD is evil. But not because the drivers doesn't support beryl/rotation blablabla. Theyre evil because the driver IS BAD and they WON'T let anyone else fix it. THIS is what differs them from nV. When the open source world decided aiglx is the way to, intel+oss implemented them in their drivers, nV decided to follow and implemented it too, in their own way, but their way works too(and i would dare it works best, but that's because their cards are the fastest in the linux). AMD just blatantly ignored. As they did always. AMD drivers always have problems with new kernels - never a problem under nV. WHat's more, i see nvidia devs on the mailing list ALL the time, discussing new stuff that will hit X. They come to conferences. They generally CARE and are in the loop. AMD ignores. I was using ati graphics way back from the day when they were made as firegl in germany, up to the days when the new team "took over" and promised carrots on sticks. What did they fix? VT swtiching and more-than-one-X-server. Wow. They also did a useless installer (everyone gets their drivers from the distro repos). Switched to nV a while ago, and never looked back. Nowadays when someone tells me they have a problem with their not-oss ati driver i tell them from the start "youre boned - get an intel/nvidia". And that's what I urge all the ati squeaking kids to do. Oh, and also, Xgl is NOT the way. Try running ut2k3 on Xgl. Or tvtime. Watch your cpu-cycles go bye-bye.

We wouldn't mind the lack of eye candy really, as long as the machine worked without freezing and video output on the tv was not cropped.

> Do you want compiz or beryl with fglrx? So blame XGL developers.
> My answer to the question in Subject is:
> No, it's XGL that makes it look like "Evil".

XGL is a piece of software designed to compensate some missing features of 3D cards drivers (such as X11 compositing extension).
Even if XGL worked flawlessly, it would not change the issue: you will still be using slow software to perform functions that your card can do in hardware
=> so you did invest money in a graphic card whose features you'll not be able to use...
=> so you're wrong, ATI driver is to blame

I never believed ATI, that they can't do any better with their closed-source driver an if you read their statements carefully, they are telling you that they don't do better by choice: "...allocating (dev) resources proportional to Market relevance..."

Nonetheless afaik they do NOT advertise with their linux-support an therefore it's up to the consumer to NOT buy their product if linux-support is a requirement.

To come back to the (always cheesy) car comparison: A Porsche oder BMW comes with a combustion engine, so if you refuse to use this engine and choose to use an experimental fusion-engine which works at 50% of the CE's efficiency and sometimes fails without warning... that's completely your fault.

If you want to use fusion-engines, go find "someone" with official fusion-engine support and if you can't find such support, go to someone who's experimental fusion-engine at least works better than the ones from Porsche and BMW.

I have read carefully through all of these comments and can feel the general dismay and despondency about nix ATI device drivers, it's now two years on from these comments, I have installed Fedora 10 KDE on a number of machines and the situation with the ATI driver is exactly the same as it was then! I have persevered with lame Linux ATI drivers now for many years, whilst the Windows equivalent is always mysteriously way superior & I have had it; I am throwing in the towel and looking for a good quality nV Card from this point because waiting and hoping ATI's promises will amount to something is just a foolish dream, and yes I want the eye candy and 3D acceleration which my X850 XT is capable of, but only in Windows it seems.