[Wine] Re: Intel vs ATI – which one is better for wine?

[Wintershade]

DL wrote:
> On the plus side for ATI, the open source drivers are coming along nicely and should be an improvement over the intel drivers, when they are finished.Although I don't really recommend buying hardware with the "hope" of future improvements.

Never. You buy what you know is good, not what somebody tells you that "might get better". It will be a cold day in Hell before I buy an ATI graphics card again.

However, I have to agree that the open-source ATI drivers are catching up quite well. I've just installed Ubuntu 9.04 for my girlfriend on her notebook computer (Acer Aspire 5100, she has an ATI Xpress X1100 card), and the open-source drivers are working quite well. She can do almost anything she can imagine, and doesn't even need to turn Compiz off - which was a long-lasting pain for ATI owners. OTOH, I do recall recently seeing some people who had newer ATI cards being forced to turn off their composite window managers in order to get 3D games or fullscreen video right. So yes, I can confirm that the open-source drivers are much better.

But, the original poster asked particularly about WINE. ATI's open-source drivers will work well with 2D and perhaps some older 3D games. More "advanced" 3D games will not work, at least not well. OTOH, the proprietary fglrx is a completely different story - it sucks big time in everything. There is a small number of 3D applications which it will run, but most of the DirectDraw-heavy games and new 3D games will either be unplayably slow or lack some textures.
All of this is, and will stay, in my humble opinion/experience.