On 06/09/07, UNIX admin <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > So it would seem: > > http://lwn.net/Articles/248227/ > > > > If they actually follow through on this, I'd buy a > > new ATi card in a heartbeat. > > Why? Nvidia has great support for Solaris. They've done everything *just > right*, including packaging. I checked their stuff and they really *paid > attention to detail*. You just stick and Nvidia card into a system, load > Solaris and off you go. >
For many reasons: * If I have a choice between two pieces of hardware that both have really good performance, and roughly the same price, but one has open specifications, and one does not, I'm going to go with the one that has open specifications. That's why. * Companies (no matter how long it has taken them) that decide to open up their hardware specifications (to the full extent of legal allowance) should be commended. Sun did this for for their newest SPARC processors. * When you have a system that you want to know absolutely every part of it, a black box is an artificial barrier. I miss the days of my old Apple when the schematics came with the system or were freely and publicly available. The days when a soldering iron and some rosin core was a geek's best friend are greatly missed by me. > ATI on the other hand has had crap. Superblitz graphics accelerators which > had crap for drivers, so much so even Windows users complained how crappy it > was. > Sorry, but people that have a strong background in 3D hardware disagree with you. Read some of the articles on www.beyond3d.com. You'll discover that ATi's hardware is often superior in design to nVidia's from a technical standpoint. However, their drivers have often disappointed. nVidia doesn't have bad things and I will freely admit that, but ATi has has good hardware now for a long time. (See XBOX 360 Xenos chips, etc.) > And, what gets me the most: ATI wouldn't be opening up the specs to their > accelerators (as if they were something ultra special!), if they haven't been > bought out by AMD and given an order to do so. > Does it really matter how it happened? The same blame lies with Sun for letting Linux, etc. eat away at Solaris' existence for years by refusing to embrace open source. But, as we know now, they have chosen to change. I'm certain all of us agree Sun should have done it sooner, and so should ATi have, but they didn't. So just be happy that they are. > If you think my attitude towards ATI is totally unjustified, how about this > little piece of trivia: quite a bit of Sun SPARC workstation hardware has ATI > ChipSet(s) in them, including at least several Sun graphics accelerators. > Thos buggers have had the expertise and resources to support Solaris for > years now, yet they haven't lifted a finger. > Yes, and nVidia never lifted a finger for the PowerPC Linux community, etc. and has always refused to provide the specifications necessary for 3D to be available at all on their hardware for platforms that they don't care about. There's plenty of blame to flung around at various companies. Suffice to say though that if ATi/AMD follows through on their promises, they deserve to be commended. If they do not, they deserve an equal amount of shame. -- Shawn Walker, Software and Systems Analyst [EMAIL PROTECTED] - http://binarycrusader.blogspot.com/ "Beware of bugs in the above code; I have only proved it correct, not tried it. " --Donald Knuth _______________________________________________ opensolaris-discuss mailing list opensolaris-discuss@opensolaris.org
