Ubuntu – ATI proprietary driver performance

atidriversperformance

I'm about to (at least, want to..) buy a laptop with an ATI Radeon HD 4250, and I haven't a good opinion on ATI's drivers. How is the actual performance of the open/proprietary driver (currently I have nVidia, and I'm very satisfied)?

The intended use for the laptop is: watching videos, programming in Java/PHP/maybe Qt… but, I like to know if Compiz runs well. Yes, I'm a hardcore (?) programmer that uses Compiz. 😛

Someone has this GPU? Experiences? Thoughts?

Thanks! 😀

Best Answer

Im using an Packard Bell easynote TJ75 with a ati mobility radeon HD5650, and its not bad at all.

Compiz benchmark is around 500~600 frames/sec, i can play good World of Warcraft or Call of duty MW 4 (under wine), for example (well, there is some slowdown sometimes).

BTW, im using the experimental drivers:

deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/ubuntu-x-swat/x-updates/ubuntu lucid main 
deb-src http://ppa.launchpad.net/ubuntu-x-swat/x-updates/ubuntu lucid main
http://keyserver.ubuntu.com:11371/pks/lookup?op=get&search=0x3B22AB97AF1CDFA9

Sometimes compiz has some issue (for example, does not load the windows icons, minimixe, maximize and close), but i dont know if this is really related with the ati card.

I have an ati on my desktop too, with ubuntu 9.10 no kind of driver used to works, with ubuntu 10.04 it works perfectly.

Here's a screenshot for you, with the compiz expo effect: alt text

As you see, ati card and drivers does not work bad at all.

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