AMD/ATI or Nvidia

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phildaman46
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AMD/ATI or Nvidia

Post by phildaman46 »

How well do AMD Radeon cards run on Wine now? From past experience, I wasn't able to get as many games to run with an ATI Radeon compared to Nvidia.
landeel
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Post by landeel »

Most games will just work with AMD GPU on wine. BUT...

1) Sadly many games (specially Direct3D games) will suffer from terrible performance. They will crawl at about 10-50% the frame rate they would run on Windows in the same machine.

2) Catalyst / fglrx is still a terrible piece of software. And I think it will always be.

3) There are the open source drivers, but they will always be following a moving target, and will never support the whole thing.

4) Catalyst drivers share part of the code between Windows and Linux, but they seem to be optimized for Windows / Direct3D only. OpenGL performance is terrible, even on Windows.

On windows, games that have both Direct3D and OpenGL renderers will run much much faster with the Direct3D renderer than with the OpenGL renderer (World of Warcraft for example).

Trust me, get the Nvidia.
phildaman46
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Post by phildaman46 »

Thanks for the response. I'm already using an Nvidia GTX 560 and have most of my games running in Wine with no problems. I was just curious to know if AMD GPUs have improved since I last used them. Looks like they haven't as I suspected. Thanks for clearing that up.
Frédéric Delanoy

AMD/ATI or Nvidia

Post by Frédéric Delanoy »

On Wed, Feb 15, 2012 at 04:15, phildaman46 <[email protected]> wrote:
Thanks for the response. I'm already using an Nvidia GTX 560 and have most of my games running in Wine with no problems. I was just curious to know if AMD GPUs have improved since I last used them. Looks like they haven't as I suspected. Thanks for clearing that up.
I'd say use NVIDIA, unless your machine is using Optimus...
jjmckenzie
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AMD/ATI or Nvidia

Post by jjmckenzie »

On Tue, Feb 14, 2012 at 8:15 PM, phildaman46 <[email protected]> wrote:
Thanks for the response. I'm already using an Nvidia GTX 560 and have most of my games running in Wine with no
problems. I was just curious to know if AMD GPUs have improved since I last used them. Looks like they haven't as I
suspected. Thanks for clearing that up.
It is not that the AMD/ATI video cards are poor, just the drivers.
Intel video is junk, all around. For now, nVidia is leading the way
for high quality Linux video drivers. That may never change unless
AMD/ATI sees a large move to Linux. I've been there with ATI and
another OS back in the 1990s.

James
phildaman46
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Re: AMD/ATI or Nvidia

Post by phildaman46 »

jjmckenzie wrote:On Tue, Feb 14, 2012 at 8:15 PM, phildaman46 <[email protected]> wrote:
Thanks for the response. I'm already using an Nvidia GTX 560 and have most of my games running in Wine with no
problems. I was just curious to know if AMD GPUs have improved since I last used them. Looks like they haven't as I
suspected. Thanks for clearing that up.
It is not that the AMD/ATI video cards are poor, just the drivers.
Intel video is junk, all around. For now, nVidia is leading the way
for high quality Linux video drivers. That may never change unless
AMD/ATI sees a large move to Linux. I've been there with ATI and
another OS back in the 1990s.

James
I totally agree with you on that. I think AMD/ATI drivers work fine with native games in Linux. It just doesn't convert DirectX calls to OpenGL in Wine very well. If you only use Windows, either card should work fine. It's just a matter of whether you want 3D or Eyefinity.
jorl17
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Re: AMD/ATI or Nvidia

Post by jorl17 »

Frédéric Delanoy wrote:On Wed, Feb 15, 2012 at 04:15, phildaman46 <[email protected]> wrote:
Thanks for the response. I'm already using an Nvidia GTX 560 and have most of my games running in Wine with no problems. I was just curious to know if AMD GPUs have improved since I last used them. Looks like they haven't as I suspected. Thanks for clearing that up.
I'd say use NVIDIA, unless your machine is using Optimus...
Though it is still possible with Optimus! I'm running Optimus fine here.
jjmckenzie
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AMD/ATI or Nvidia

Post by jjmckenzie »

On Wed, Feb 15, 2012 at 9:39 AM, phildaman46 <[email protected]> wrote:
jjmckenzie wrote:
On Tue, Feb 14, 2012 at 8:15 PM, phildaman46 <[email protected]> wrote:
Thanks for the response. I'm already using an Nvidia GTX 560 and have most of my games running in Wine with
no problems. I was just curious to know if AMD GPUs have improved since I last used them. Looks like they
haven't as I suspected. Thanks for clearing that up.
It is not that the AMD/ATI video cards are poor, just the drivers.
Intel video is junk, all around.  For now, nVidia is leading the way
for high quality Linux video drivers.  That may never change unless
AMD/ATI sees a large move to Linux.  I've been there with ATI and
another OS back in the 1990s.

James
I totally agree with you on that. I think AMD/ATI drivers work fine with native games in Linux. It just doesn't convert
DirectX calls to OpenGL in Wine very well. If you only use Windows, either card should work fine. It's just a matter
of whether you want 3D or Eyefinity.
No Linux video driver does DirectX to OpenGL conversions, Wine does
that. The problem is the speed of conversions and whether OpenGL is
running in software or hardware. nVidia appears to use their GPU to
do OpenGL calls and AMD/ATI uses software. Thus the slowdown when
Wine does the call conversion and then again when the OpenGL call is
converted again to proprietary calls for the video card.
Again, this is how it appears. This may not be how the conversions
are actually completed.

James
phildaman46
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Re: AMD/ATI or Nvidia

Post by phildaman46 »

jjmckenzie wrote:No Linux video driver does DirectX to OpenGL conversions, Wine does
that. The problem is the speed of conversions and whether OpenGL is
running in software or hardware. nVidia appears to use their GPU to
do OpenGL calls and AMD/ATI uses software. Thus the slowdown when
Wine does the call conversion and then again when the OpenGL call is
converted again to proprietary calls for the video card.
Again, this is how it appears. This may not be how the conversions
are actually completed.

James
Right, Wine does the conversions through the CPU and GPU. I guess what I meant was AMD/ATI doesn't manage Wine conversions very well.
landeel
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Post by landeel »

It is not that the AMD/ATI video cards are poor, just the drivers.
Totally agree. I have a Sony Vaio netbook with AMD E-350 APU, and it's a great machine. So much better than the Nvidia ION "solution".

I bought AMD this time because I had a terrible experience with Nvidia graphic cards on 2 notebooks, they had a very shot life.

But for a desktop GPU, I still prefer Nvidia.
DaVince
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Re: AMD/ATI or Nvidia

Post by DaVince »

jorl17 wrote:
Frédéric Delanoy wrote:On Wed, Feb 15, 2012 at 04:15, phildaman46 <[email protected]> wrote:
Thanks for the response. I'm already using an Nvidia GTX 560 and have most of my games running in Wine with no problems. I was just curious to know if AMD GPUs have improved since I last used them. Looks like they haven't as I suspected. Thanks for clearing that up.
I'd say use NVIDIA, unless your machine is using Optimus...
Though it is still possible with Optimus! I'm running Optimus fine here.
I know it's off-topic, but could you direct me to a place that can help you get Optimus stuff working? My laptop has to use the Intel GPU for everything right now and Wine doesn't want to work with it, so I'd love to have Optimus working.
Frédéric Delanoy

AMD/ATI or Nvidia

Post by Frédéric Delanoy »

On Fri, Feb 17, 2012 at 14:03, DaVince <[email protected]> wrote:
I know it's off-topic, but could you direct me to a place that can help you get Optimus stuff working? My laptop has to use the Intel GPU for everything right now and Wine doesn't want to work with it, so I'd love to have Optimus working.
Look for bumblebee/ironhide
DaVince
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Re: AMD/ATI or Nvidia

Post by DaVince »

Frédéric Delanoy wrote:On Fri, Feb 17, 2012 at 14:03, DaVince <[email protected]> wrote:
I know it's off-topic, but could you direct me to a place that can help you get Optimus stuff working? My laptop has to use the Intel GPU for everything right now and Wine doesn't want to work with it, so I'd love to have Optimus working.
Look for bumblebee/ironhide
Alright, thanks.
s3a
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Post by s3a »

I read that the HD8000 series' open source drivers will get same-day support as the proprietary drivers.

"[The HD8000 series] is the first where we are able to design & plan the open source support at the same time as the proprietary driver support."

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=n ... &px=OTI1OQ
jjmckenzie
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AMD/ATI or Nvidia

Post by jjmckenzie »

On Thu, Mar 1, 2012 at 5:15 AM, s3a <[email protected]> wrote:
I read that the HD8000 series' open source drivers will get same-day support as the proprietary drivers.

"[The HD8000 series] is the first where we are able to design & plan the open source support at the same time as the
proprietary driver support."

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=n ... &px=OTI1OQ
It will be a long time until the open-source drivers are at or better
than the company supplied ones. It will be a good day when that
happens. It is great to see that these efforts have not been
abandoned.

It would also be good to see drivers for the older, and abandoned,
video cards produced that are at or better than their Windows
counterparts.

James
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Re: AMD/ATI or Nvidia

Post by Alex_G »

jjmckenzie wrote: wrote:

No Linux video driver does DirectX to OpenGL conversions, Wine does
that. The problem is the speed of conversions and whether OpenGL is
running in software or hardware. nVidia appears to use their GPU to
do OpenGL calls and AMD/ATI uses software. Thus the slowdown when
Wine does the call conversion and then again when the OpenGL call is
converted again to proprietary calls for the video card.
Again, this is how it appears. This may not be how the conversions
are actually completed.
Hi! Excuse me, can't find answer with googling.
So, asking here, therefore:
1. Are those conversions or translations using CPU to process the DX>OpenGL calls on the fly?
2. Why it needs to be converted? Does it affects on performance?

Sorry for off-topic. Don't want to create another for these, as seems, related questions. =)
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