Re: Anybody using a Dell Inspiron 8500/8600 with the ATI card?
Joe Emenaker wrote:
uname -a
Linux joeslap 2.6.18-4-686 #1 SMP Fri Feb 2 15:10:49 UTC 2007 i686
GNU/Linux
Joe, did you ever think maybe it's the naming convention you used that
causing your laptop to give you fits? You asked your laptop to slap you
when you named it. ;)
Sorry, it's just my offbeat sense of humor....
As to using an ATI card, well, any of them that you buy be very sure you
research it very carefully. The nVidia Linux drivers seem to be far
better than ATI's. I have the Radeon Express 200M in my laptop and I
actually get better performance from the open source drivers than I do
from ATI's proprietary drivers.
For instance, with ATI's drivers if I play a movie with Totem cpu usage
is around 25%. With the open source "ati" driver cpu usage is at 2-3%.
Plus, the picture is actually better with the open source driver. The
proprietary driver actually degrades output a little.
Also, it wasn't until the 8.30.x release of the ATI drivers that they
would even work. Before that they would simply send the cpu into race
mode and the screen would stay black. I couldn't get to a console and
if I didn't push the power button and manually shut down my laptop it
would shut down on it's thermal limits in about a minute of run time as
the air coming off the fan, which had switched almost immediately to
high speed as soon as X started, was very hot and just constantly
getting hotter.
ATI drivers seem to work OK with some cards but not with others. If you
buy one make sure you research it for complaints. They seem to be a
real crap shoot on laptops from what I've read, and experienced. Oh,
and if you have a desire to use beryl or compiz it's much harder to get
working with an ati card. I've read where some people can get this to
run on their laptops but I've never been able to get either to run on
mine.
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