'ati' video driver and older cards (no RadeonHD), a little question...

[Faizan Kazi]

I'm sorry, pardon my ignorance... or confusion :s
so youre saying you're not using the driver provided by ati?

all these terms confuse me sometimes... "ati binary driver" = "ati
proprietary driver" = fglrx ??
is that correct?
also, i thought ati has now started using aiglx instead of fglrx/glx?

~fez

On Sun, Apr 26, 2009 at 9:38 PM, Steve Grace <sgrace at pobox.com> wrote:

> Faizan Kazi wrote:
> > On Sun, Apr 26, 2009 at 7:34 AM, Steve Grace <sgrace at pobox.com
> > <mailto:sgrace at pobox.com>> wrote:
> >
> >     Vincent Trouilliez wrote:
> >
> >      > I am using an nbidia card, for a few years now, running the
> >     proprietary
> >      > driver, by necessity (to get 3D). The problem I have been having
> >     since
> >      > day one, is that this driver makes DDC calls fail, meaning my
> monitor
> >      > can not be recognized, I have to work xorg.conf by hand. If I go
> to
> >      > System->Preferences->Screen Resolution, it doesn't list all the
> >      > resolutions the monitor can handle, and it offers silly refresh
> >     rates:
> >      > 51, 53, 55, 56, 61.. something like that, instead of 60/75/85 like
> it
> >      > should. This weeks I upgraded to Ubuntu 9.04, and the problem got
> >      > worse : the Gnome Display tool now just plain refused to start !
> It
> >      > redirects me to the nvidia utility tool, which doesn't work (it
> fails
> >      > to read/parse xorg.conf). So this is all starting to get on mly
> >      > nerves ! ;-/
> >      > Seeing as there is no reason to believe that the situation will
> ever
> >      > improve, I am thinking of going back to an ATI card, since they
> have
> >      > the free 'ati' driver, which, if I remember my old Radeon 9250 I
> >     used to
> >      > own, worked perfectly, and let my monitor be detected, so the
> Gnome
> >      > tool offered the appropriate resolutions and refresh rates,
> >      > automatically. Sadly, although this driver was bug free and "just
> >      > works", 3D was so slow that I had to give up on it and move to
> >     Nvidia.
> >      > But I hear that recently the ati driver saw lots of work, and that
> 3D
> >      > performance has been much improved. So the ati driver and the
> >     cards it
> >      > supports, now appeal to me again.
> >      >
> >      > I looked at the ati driver projects page:
> >      >
> >      > http://www.x.org/wiki/radeon
> >      >
> >      > it says that for all the older card (prior to the modern 'HD'
> >     range of
> >      > cards), everything just works.
> >      > So I am thinking of buying one of these cards. My motherboard
> doesn't
> >      > have an AGP slot though, only PCI Express (1.0), so I guess I am
> >      > looking only at the more recent of the old cards, the Radeon 'X'
> >      > something.
> >      >
> >      > Questions:
> >      >
> >      > 1) out of the PCI Express X**** cards, do they all really work
> >      > perfectly, or are there any specific models that have little
> glitches
> >      > that don't look tidy ? Like flickering, artefact, anything the eye
> >      > could notice and that I don't want to see, or any other kind of
> >      > problems one would like to avoid, given the choice.
> >      > I also remember that the VGA output (what I am using) of the ATI
> >     cards,
> >      > was better than Nvidia. So if some ATI card is known to be better
> or
> >      > worse than others, in this regards, I am interested in knowing.
> >      > I am also looking for a fanless card, if that helps suggestions.
> >      >
> >      > 2) Could people confirm (or infirm, hopefully not), that using the
> >      > free 'ati' driver (not fglrx), the Gnome Display tool was able to
> >     offer
> >      > all the expected/appropriate resolutions and refresh rates that
> the
> >      > monitor supports, without having to fiddle manually with xorg.conf
> ?
> >
> >     I'm using an X1650 card with the "ati" driver; it seems to work fine.
>
>  > hey steve... did you install the ati proprietary driver already? and
>  > youre saying it works fine?
>  > (im a little surprised, i thought it wasnt ready yet, because they made
>  > a lot of changes to jaunty)
>
> The "ati" driver I'm using is not proprietary. As noted above, the
> proprietary driver is "fglrx".
>
>
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