Re: Opinions about Laptop and Debian - Nvidia vs Radeon
Hi Ivan,
I have a ATI Mobility Radeon HD 4500 Series VGA controller. It's binary
drivers are miserably useless. (Even scrolling in Firefox lags.) Hence,
I couldn't find motivation to test its 3D capabilities. Its open source
drivers bundled with some recent kernel version are way much better. (At
least no lags while scrolling, switching desktops, and streaming output
to terminal, etc.) And, as you know, both ATI drivers lack DGA support.
This results in xawtv not working and poor mplayer quality/performance.
Moreover, when you plug in an external display while X is open, notebook
screen gets fuzzy (impossible to see anything) and you just see the
screen from the external display. And when you unplug the external
display, you need to restart the linux (not X!) to get your settings
back to normal. (I experienced same for both F/OSS and binary drivers.)
OTOH, my previous Lenovo 3000 N200 notebook with nvidia VGA was superior
to my current ATI setup. I have never needed to use 3D in GNU/Linux, but
I quite often use an external display. And, nvidia-settings tool
provided by the binary nvidia drivers was an awesome swiss army knife
for me. It just works, you know, it just works. You get the feeling that
you have complete control over your VGA controller.
Regards.
On Sat, 27 Nov 2010, Ivan Marin <ispmarin@gmail.com> writes:
> I'm planning to get a laptop soon and gonna run Debian on it. I'm
> gonna need a few things:
>
> - HDMI/DVI output support, as I usually use a 22' Dell external monitor;
> - A good processor, at least i5/i7 Lynnfield/Arrandale;
> - A good video card, with good 3D support on Debian - I develop a
> VTK/OpenGL application, so 3D is paramount, even if I don't like to
> run binary blobs;
> - 4GB RAM at least.
> - The bigger the screen the better, but the external monitor use will dominate;
> - Need a laptop, not a desktop, for mobility purposes.
>
> I've searcher fo a few options, and so far in the price range that
> I've set ($1300-1500 US dollars, gonna buy the computer in the US) the
> Alienware M11x with an 1GB Nvidia GT 335M or a Alienware M15x with a
> 1GB DDR3 ATI Radeon Mobility HD 5730. The Nvidia cards with the binary
> installer so far has satisfied my needs of 3D and performance (both
> with a GTS 9300M and a GTX 260 on a desktop), but there are some
> threads complaining about the binary driver and this card, mainly
> about the battery performance.
>
> It seems that the Radeon, both the binary and the open driver are
> working/getting better, but I still remember the times with the FGLRX
> hell. The support for the rest of the hardware seems to be not
> optimal, and even if I'm usually compile my own kernels, the closest
> to the Debian way the better - or the easiest the better, as with the
> Nvidia binary installer.
>
> What are your opinions/thoughts about the requirements and the
> problems? Any experiences with the especific hardware or suggestions
> of other brands/configurations? The only brands that I avoid are HP
> (REALLY bad screens) and Acer (too fragile).
Reply to: