OpenSource ATI Driver Performance (Was: Re: Warning: rpmfusion nvidia driver needs a special xorg.conf setup.)

[Frank Cox]

On Sun, 30 Nov 2008 16:37:43 -0500
Tom Horsley <tom.horsley at att.net> wrote:

> I keep hearing rumors that Intel might make a PCI-E video card
> someday. I wish they would, I'd switch to one just to support their
> open source driver.

For the past several years I've always made sure that any computer that I
purchase has an Intel video chipset, simply because it's the best-supported
chipset for Linux.  However, with the last computer that I bought (this one)
the built-in video has a very slight crawl on my widescreen monitor.  Slight
enough that you don't notice it when you first sit down in front of the
computer, but significant enough that it drives me nuts after ten minutes.

So I was more-or-less forced to buy a separate video card for this computer.
The guys at the computer store I make most of my purchases from asked if I
wanted a Nvidia or ATI.  I said that I want an ATI due to their new open source
policy so that's what I got.  Either the separate card on its own or the DVI
output that I'm now using cured the crawl.  I suspect it's some kind of
electrical interference that was causing it.

I never really wanted to use the proprietary ATI driver, but was again kind of
forced into it when the open source driver didn't work with my widescreen
monitor.  I was hoping that would change some day and now it has.

Now that I can use the "comes-with-Fedora 10" Raedon driver, I'm happy as a
clam.

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