AMD Releases Open-Source R600/700 3D Code

This is why I bought an ATI card earlier this year. This, and working XrandR 1.2 support in their binary drivers. I have one of those very R700 (HD4830) chipsets and I can't wait for the FOSS drivers to catch up thanks to this release.

My next video card will definitely be an ATI.

I bought a motherboard with ATI chip, but it was some time before it really started to be a good choice. A little patience, some time bearing with fglrx and it's much happier time now :)

@bigg: Do take a bit of care though. Today I spend quite a few hours getting my ATI card to work in Debian. As it turns out, the R700 chipset is so new that neither the FOSS ati/radeon driver nor radeonhd support it (at least, in the versions shipped with Debian Lenny). I also found out that although the closed source ATi drivers claim to support RandR1.2, it crashes my machine.

If you're going to buy ATI in the short term, look for an R500 or R600 chipset (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radeon_R500 and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radeon_R600 for which cards carry those chipsets). If you're willing to wait or willing to waste a couple of hours messing with the closed source drivers, pick an R700.

Two buts:

- If you need XRandR, don't pick R700 yet. MergedFB does work for multi-head though. - If you use multiple monitors and use multiple graphical virtual terminals (i.e. multiple users logged in at the same time), don't use R700 either. I use two 1280x1024 monitors and I get graphical artifacts on my second virtual terminal (F8). This doesn't happen with just one monitor and multiple VT's.