Do you use an ATI Radeon graphics card?

Hi

I'm about to get a new computer from Dell, and the specs they've given me say the graphics card is a 256MB ATI Radeon HD 2600 XT one. I've always had Nvidia to date and am a bit apprehensive about using ATI.

Does anyone use this card and find it works fine with SL, or have any opinions on ATI cards compared to NVidia?

Any advice would be greatly appreciated

My desktop is about 18 months old and has a Radeon X1300. It isn't bad, but ATI typically doesn't get as good performance as Nvidia does - for SL. If you want top of the line performance for SL, get an Nvidia card in the 8000s.

Look here ..

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really not a good idea to go with ati and SL ... and I know that because I have an ati card that actually crash often with the official viewer.

I have an ATI RadeonX1600 (Mac) and so far so good.

Same here. I have had some occaisonal issues with it that seem to come and go with viewer updates, but satisfactory performance over all.

I too have a new Dell...which I love BTW! I chose the ATI card and it's okay...I am able to run the new viewer with a few tweaks...Not perfect, but it works...


CPU: Intel Core 2 Series Processor (2327 MHz)
Memory: 3327 MB
OS Version: Microsoft Windows XP Service Pack 2 (Build 2600)
Graphics Card Vendor: ATI Technologies Inc.
Graphics Card: ATI Radeon HD 2400 PRO
OpenGL Version: 2.1.7278 Release
LLMozLib Version: [LLMediaImplLLMozLib] - 2.01.14448 (Mozilla GRE version 1.8.1.13_0000000000)

Interestingly, I just switched from a ATI Radeon HD card to a Nvidia GeForce 8600 yesterday. I'm not quite used to it, but I have noticed some things. The color is better with the Nvidia card---deeper and richer--- and the new viewer is working very well, which it wasn't with the Radeon.

And I don't have to change the Advanced Sky settings on the Nvidia card to get my avi to look alive---default works great--- where I was struggling with the Radeon card all the time to make my avi look alive. Tt would jump back to Default every time I TPed, and some times when I didn't. It was getting to be a big PITA.

I haven't got as much experience as I'd like with the Nvidia card, but at this point I'd pick it over the Radeon.

You can get a Nvidia card from Dell with your computer. That's what I just did... I built the computer for SL.

Pray for me, I'm a lost cause.

I am also an nVidia convert - I now have a nice ATI x1650 AGP 512M card sitting on the desk gathering dust and I replaced it with an nVidia 7600 GS AGP 512M card. I don't have PCIe so the AGP series were all I could get. I primarily switched because of all the Windlight problems and especially because of http://jira.secondlife.com/browse/VWR-3258, which has been a problem since the middle of November!

With the nVidia card, I don't have driver problems working with one SL client and not the other. For a time, the older ATI drivers worked well, but then the newer drivers were needed for the newer WL client, but wouldn't work on the older client, and so on - that was my experience, anyway. With nVidia, I don't have to turn off OpenGL Vertex Buffers, I get a slightly faster FPS, colors look nicer and Antialias settings seem a little better as well.

I think it's a judgment call that if you primarily want to use the laptop for SL, then it might be better to get one with an nVidia card.

Oh, and let me just add, my avi doesn't need a face light any more with the Nvidia card....For whatever that's worth.

I have a Dell computer with an ATI Radeon X300 series with 128Mb - and it was working fine with SL until the new viewer was released a few days back.

Then I had a problem with triangles converging on my avatar, which I could fix by turning off the VBO (Edit | Preferences | Graphics | Hardware Options).

However, on checking the blog, LL advised updating video drivers to the latest versions. I foolishly followed their advice, getting the latest ATI drivers, and SL crashed on startup. I got the login screen briefly, but before I even had a chance to enter my name it crashed (every single time). I tried reverting to the previous viewer - after uninstalling the new one - still crashed.

The only way to recover was to do a system restore to undo the update driver changes, uninstall SL, reinstall it and clear cache.

So I'd be wary - it appears that 2 year old ATI Radeon drivers work fine with SL, but the current ones don't.

Computer Model:
Dell XPS-210
Windows Vista

Processor:
Intel(R) Core(TM)2 Duo CPU E4400 @ 2.00GHz
Clock Speed 2GHz, L2 Cache Size 2048

Display Adapters:
Radeon X1300/X1550 Series 128Mb
Radeon X1300/X1550 Series Secondary

Ram:
4GB (4 DIMM @ 1024MB)

Mine works great. This is the first version of SL that has really worked for me. My old machine had bad video lag. But this vid card, ram and processor run smooth with no lag for a change.

I too was crashing after about 20 seconds after opening the 1.18 client and updating to the latest fixed my crash problem and its worked ever since. I haven't crashed in a long time.

I am scared they are going to bork the next version trying to fix all the crash issues for everybody else.

I've got a Dell with an nVidia geForce7600 and it has always worked beautifully with SL..... never any problems with windlight or anything really. I don't know that I would use anything else now since this has worked so well.

This also leads me to suspect that all the complaints i've read over the last few months about the new WL being crappy is really due to graphics cards that wont support it properly which is a shame. It's a great feature when rendered as intended. *shrug*

Thanks for posting this. My best friend has an ATI Radeon 9800, and it's crap with SL. She's been out of SL for going on 3 weeks now, and now we know why.

The new RC seems to be crashing after 1 sec on NVIDIA cards (at least 25 people confirmed it, and nobody confirmed immediate crashes on Radeon-based configs - OS is Windows XP/Vista)). I have a 7600GST, and I'm crashing immediately after login too. I never had a problem before, it's just really weird.

I think that is exactly right. The new viewer, with all it's Windlight drama, is working wonderfully well for me and the new Nvidia card. I'm standing right now in my SL rental home just looking at the detail I had never seen before. And the colors!

I just wish LL could maybe make this wonderfulness available to non-Nvidia card users. Somehow, setting things up so that it only works with one brand seems unproductive.

Probably not a concern, but if you should ever want to run Linux on the machine, an ATI card will be a challenge. Although I've done it with several ATI cards successfully, I finally had to give up on that specific model (HD 2600 XT), which now sits gathering dust on the shelf. A shame, really, because it has quite good performance specs for its price range. Now I'm using a piece of crap nVidia 8500 GT--but it works pretty well for SL on Linux.

It seems the collective voice of experience right now is that for Windows systems, Nvidia rules. ATI is not as good in the Windows environment for SL support.

But on Macs it is just the opposite, and ATI gets better results! I have an ATI X1900 card in my Mac Pro tower, with the latest drivers, and it works great with SL.

Yes, switched from my Radeon X850 Platinum to an Nvidia 8800, a world of difference better. I wonder if LL is getting kickbacks from Nvidia

Lessee...I have an ATI X600, old but still good enough for me and Windlight with decent FPS, running in my Dell. I did have trouble with that infamous triangle glitch (see http://jira.secondlife.com/browse/VWR-3258 ) but it's been working flawlessly for quite a while now (mind you, I don't use the current drivers as they don't work on my computer, and I'm fine). I also have an ATI Mobility 9700, officially not supported for Windlight, but I tweaked the settings and it runs Windlight just fine. If you can bear an FPS of 6.

And my newest comp runs an NVidia 8600M GS. That puppy gives me an FPS of between 20 and 30 on my laptop. I used to be an NVidia user before those two ATI cards though, I had a GeForce 4MX-you would have to ask Raynor about that, he's got my old computer...

Bottom line is, you don't necessarily run into trouble with ATI cards, but you should be prepared. Bad news is the above mentioned bug now also happens on some people's NVidia cards....