Installing ATI drivers

[Les]

On Thu, 2007-05-10 at 18:20 -0400, Sam Varshavchik wrote:
> Les writes:
> 
> >     We are all doomed to spend many hours every so often updating H/S Ware 
> > just to keep working, and 
> > lead the world into a (hopefully) better graphical place.  For now Nvidia 
> > seems the choice for Linux.
> 
> I maintain that the choice is Intel.  Intel's video hardware perhaps will 
> not get you 1000 FPS in your favorite shoot-em-up, but if you want to play 
> accelerated 3D games, the last thing you'll want to run is Linux, anyway. If 
> you need top-notch 3D performance, go boot Windows.  Plenty of 3D games for 
> Windows, plenty of 3D hardware you can choose from.
> 
> Intel video is more than enough to get you reasonable 3D eye candy, and 
> their hardware will get better over time.  Going with Nvidia today may give 
> you short term benefits, but that will come at the expense of long term 
> goals.
> 
> 
Hi, Sam,
    Intel certainly does create lots of great devices.  I have used more
than a few, and overall thought they were good.  
    However Intel has always been weak at vector and matrix processors.
This is the area of AMD, Zilog, and a few speciality houses.

    This is not putting Intel down in any way.  Their programmable parts
are 1st class, and their FPGA's great, memory is OK (Micron seems to
have the real edge there,
and anyway, that is a jelly bean business, where specialized equipment
wins the price to market contest) and their quality is generally
exceptional..

    But vector processing, demand processing and similar architectures
have traditionally been their weakness.  The dual core processors were
late to market partly because of the learning curve of multiple bus
access.  And while there is a large and growing market for such
processors, I am not sure that market is directly linked to Intel's
bread and butter business.  

    Thus Broadcom, Motorola, and others have made these areas their
expertise.  

    Companies tend to channel marketing, hiring and retention efforts on
their core business, thus opening up to the relatively niche business
such as vector processing and video graphics tends to be further down on
the corporate teat, impacting growth potential, and inventiveness, and
even inhibiting hiring  of the "new kids" with radical ideas on these
areas.  Time will tell, and I am sure that powers within Intel are doing
their best to choose the correct industry areas to cover.

Regards,
Les H