Since having trouble with all my Nvidia cards on latest Icaros, I am looking into the possibility of using an ATI card instead.

Anyone have a suggestion of a good model that can fit what I am looking for:

1. Stability (On par with VESA)
2. 2D performance (3D support is irrelevant to me)
3. Passive cooling

Other card suggestions that are quick in VESA are also welcome

Hi hean8209,

Sorry for the late reaction, but i am a bit puzzled.

You say you have issues with your NVidia cards. This is/was a known problem. Have you tried again with the latest icaros ?

Furthermore, if the driver gives you issues with your card _and_ you do not care much about 3D (ofcourse with means more cool games :D) why don't you try vesa mode with your current video-card(s) ?

Or does that still gives problems for you ?

Please don't forget that AROS is being worked on and isn't a finished product. Milage may vary per nightly build. It is also why fe Icaros has a special legacy version.

@hean8209

I assume this is for an Agp system, so I have an Sapphire 9000 (Ati 9000 clone) running on an old 1.2 ghz machine. Since you are not interested in 3d I ran the 2d game Blobwars as a benchmark. In Ati mode the game ran at 21 to 25 fps. In Vesa mode it was slightly slower at 20 to 23 fps. If you prefer another benchmark, let us know.

I normally run this setup in Vesa mode. In Native Ati mode, the graphics will start with black icons. But after you set the Screen mode in prefs, the screen will look normal. The problem with using Ati mode is that when many programs start, they will scramble the graphics, so you end up rebooting. That is why I always use Vesa on that machine, even though native mode can sometimes be nicer with some programs.

[quote][url=http://arosworld.org/forum/viewthread.php?thread_id=62&pid=353#post_353][b]cavemann wrote:[/b][/url]

@hean8209

I assume this is for an Agp system, so I have an Sapphire 9000 (Ati 9000 clone) running on an old 1.2 ghz machine. Since you are not interested in 3d I ran the 2d game Blobwars as a benchmark. In Ati mode the game ran at 21 to 25 fps. In Vesa mode it was slightly slower at 20 to 23 fps. If you prefer another benchmark, let us know.

I normally run this setup in Vesa mode. In Native Ati mode, the graphics will start with black icons. But after you set the Screen mode in prefs, the screen will look normal. The problem with using Ati mode is that when many programs start, they will scramble the graphics, so you end up rebooting. That is why I always use Vesa on that machine, even though native mode can sometimes be nicer with some programs.[/quote]

Do you use this driver?

http://www.syntaxsociety.se/~bearsoft/

@bearsoft
Will try it out - thanks :)

[quote][url=http://arosworld.org/forum/viewthread.php?thread_id=62&pid=354#post_354][b]bearsoft wrote:[/b][/url]

Do you use this driver?

http://www.syntaxsociety.se/~bearsoft/[/quote]


I've tried your radeon drivers and they are a big improvement over the Aros default radeon.hidd. The annoying graphic glitches of the default driver are fixed with your drivers. Good deal, I'll never go back.

All of the radeon drivers report that they are version 1.0 (which is a little confusing). The beta driver is supposed to support more resolutions. I'll take your word for it, as both drivers seemed to work the same for me. One driver included an obsolete grub setting. That setting should probably should be removed from the zip in case someone is tempted to use it.

Both drivers worked with my Agp Radeon 9000 card (using a distro with the old kernel) and they also worked on my pci-e x300 (with Icaros 1.5.2). This thread is about stability and I am happy to say that the cards were as stable in Ati native mode as they were in Vesa mode.

As far as speed goes I did not notice any hardware 2d acceleration (nor any degradation). The cards speed in general seemed slightly better or about the same as the cards Vesa speed. So I got the same stability and performance as Vesa mode with the added benefit of getting to change resolutions and better fullscreen modes.

Thanks for the link. I can recommend the bearsoft radeon.hidd to anyone that uses Ati on Aros. My only wish, would be for the chance of getting 3d support someday ;)

I never even bothered testing the default drivers, but I did try the new ones, and while they are not quite ready for prime time, I will have my eye on them.
Also looking forward to 3D support my self! :)

After spending a bit more time with the Bearsoft Ati drivers, they don't seem quite as stable as I first thought. In other words, some Sdl games have random crashes with these drivers. But still the Ati drivers are much much more stable than the Nvidia drivers with Sdl games. (This is probably a problem with Sdl and not the drivers).

On my wish list. It would be better if the driver defaulted to 16 or 24 bit mode instead of 15 bit mode (which makes the Aros Workbench look weird).

Also it would be nice if we could choose monitor frequency (like the Nvidia driver). That would help make things more rock steady :)