3 ms·

The reason I bought an ATI card _is_ that it had open-source drivers. Is there any reason you "have" to use the proprietary driver? (besides better performance

• gtaylor 13y ago
  I spend 99% of my time in Linux, so there is some gaming there as well, especially now that there are a lot of great titles with support on Steam. I rarely ever boot into Windows anymore, mostly for games that I can't play on Linux (or can't play well on Linux). If I wanted something for work only and wanted to use open source drivers, I'd buy Intel or nvidia now. The ATI 5870 exists to drive up to six monitors over displayport under EyeFinity, so this was as much of a work investment as it was a play investment (it's great for both). I want to be able to work AND play with this card that I paid good money for. The binary drivers are officially supported, and with that label comes some expectation of quality. Perhaps my expectations are unreasonable, but I've been very disappointed with the quality.
  • dmm 13y ago
    > The ATI 5870 exists to drive up to six monitors over displayport under EyeFinity Are you saying the open source driver cannot drive size monitors?
    • gtaylor 13y ago
      It does a pretty poor job with multiple monitors + OpenGL. Lots of pixels to push. I didn't try to get EyeFinity working, but that's probably out of the question as well.
• nshepperd 13y ago
  Maybe they're doing CAD, or other 3D modelling of some kind?