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Linux and GPUs

post #1 of 8
11/4/07 at 1:48am
Thread Starter 
One thing that turned me away from Linux..As you can see my laptop has a ATi graphics card. I did a clean install of Ubuntu at the time on it and well I never got the good drivers I guess for it so everything as far as graphics went on the gui front was so slow that I gave up.

My friend was telling me how the driver support for ATi cards was crap and I should have expected something like that.

He at the time was running a E1705 with a 7900GS and everything was running smooth and perfect for him on his machine running everything from DSL, BSD, etc etc.

So I'm wondering is there good driver support for Intel's integrated video cards? The Intel GMA 900 is what I'm talking about.
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post #2 of 8
11/4/07 at 2:17am
Intel has great Linux drivers for their graphics processors.
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post #3 of 8
11/4/07 at 2:19am
Thread Starter 
I'm a total newbbie when it comes to Linux and I want everything to be smooth as possible before I even try to get deep into it.

So Intel puts out pretty good drivers for there integrated video cards? (Linux based that is and not Windows).
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post #4 of 8
11/4/07 at 2:35am
Quote:
Originally Posted by Rei86 View Post
I'm a total newbbie when it comes to Linux and I want everything to be smooth as possible before I even try to get deep into it.

So Intel puts out pretty good drivers for there integrated video cards? (Linux based that is and not Windows).
yup. Linux graphic driver for chipset in question is here: http://downloadcenter.intel.com/filt...9&submit=Go%21
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post #5 of 8
11/4/07 at 8:23am
actually ati support these days is better than in the past. AMD is finally doing something about fglrx so it is improving in that respect. also since xorg 7.0 the open source radeon driver (note...it is called "radeon" not "ati") has been pretty good. At least w/ it i was able to run AIGLX+Beryl as well as play some games (ET, AA and Nexuiz) just fine.

but....yeah nvidia has been better about linux support. currently nvidia is still a better choice but amd is narrowing the gap.
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post #6 of 8
11/4/07 at 10:31am
Unlike both ATi and NVidia, Intel actually releases open source drivers, so not only do they have great drivers, but most distributions will install them by default. Many will not install NVidia or ATi by default for a variety of reasons, but usually for NVidia it is not difficult to follow up and install them yourself. ATi has always been a pain in that regards, however as ABF mentioned, AMD has slowly been imporving things and there is supposed to be better support for them now, and eventually they may actually release documentation to allow for an open source driver to be written for them, bringing them in line with Intel's and surpassing NVidia's(Or that is the hope anyways).

Now of course since we are talking about Intel Integrated vs ATi or NVidia discreet graphics chipsets, they won't be nearly as fast as the NVidia or ATi, just due to the physical technology, but the support should be exellent.

Seablade
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post #7 of 8
11/4/07 at 7:42pm
doesn't aiglx not work with most intel cards?
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post #8 of 8
11/4/07 at 11:05pm
Thread Starter 
Quote:
Originally Posted by seablade View Post

Now of course since we are talking about Intel Integrated vs ATi or NVidia discreet graphics chipsets, they won't be nearly as fast as the NVidia or ATi, just due to the physical technology, but the support should be exellent.

Seablade
yeah I just need something where it would be running...you know well.

Thanks for all your help you guys.
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