AMD Catalyst VS Gallium3D

Ok, I'll admit to fronting AMD's graphic-cards the past few years... but, that ain't happening anymore. After struggling with *broken* driver-updates the past 2, I'm getting quite fed up.

Purging FGLRX and all it's components EVERY TIME THEY GET UPDATED is seriously testing my patience. Not to mention the piss-poor OpenGL performance in heavy-3d-engine games (especially games that feature NVIDIAs PhysX).

The bugs, video-artifacts and crashes eventually got so bad that I actually had to revert to the open-sauce driver (Gallium3D / MESA), just to play my Steam-games... not that video-acceleration worked flawlessly either (VLC / XBMC).

And I have to say; with the right config Gallium3D can deliver as good, if not even better 3D-performance than the binary proprietary driver ever could. Gallium3D/MESA works, but not perfectly. If you plan on gaming with an AMD-card on Linux, their binary driver (FGLRX) is the safer bet.

Researching AMD / NVIDIA lately got me angry on both holds, but for different reasons.

AMD for being (completely) incompetent (Linux-)driver-wise. I kind of suspect they're trying the old "your shit is unsupported, buy new shit!"-routine to pressure new sales. Well, good luck with that AMD... you'll need it. Especially with that crappy driver.

NVIDIA for dropping more lock-in effects (like: PhysX / GameWorks / HairWorks) than actual bug-fixes and/or updates to their driver(s). But at least their driver works!

So, next time I'm thinking of upgrading my graphics, the choice will be fairly easy... NVIDIA.

AMD; seriously... get your shit together!