XP-Ubuntu dual boot + HD 5870, am I screwed?

[Gulli]

I have a dual boot system with XP and Ubuntu 9.04, and I've ordered a HD 5870 which is due to arrive in two weeks.
ATI has so far only released drivers for Vista and Windows 7 and that gets me worried.

Will ATI release drivers for XP and linux within a couple of weeks, if not, will the card work with the 9.9 Catalyst drivers (for the HD 4890), or am I really screwed here (I do plan on replacing my XP with Windows 7 but without XP drivers I'd have to wait weeks before I can use my new card and it still doesn't solve the whole Ubuntu issue)?

 

[mindless728]

hmm the linux should be easy since you could use the mesa drivers at worst they should work

not sure on the catalyst 9.9, you can always try

 

[Prescott_666]

I don't know about XP. If they haven't written drivers for it yet, they may not plan to. You might be able to use the XP driver for the 4870, but of course it won't support Direct-X 11. Going to Windows 7 may be the best plan.

I recently gave up on Windows 2000 because it got to the point that there was too much stuff I couldn't get to run on it.

Someone will write a driver for Ubuntu. It may take a couple of weeks, and you may have to go through 2 or 3 versions before they get it right, but I wouldn't worry about Ubuntu.

 

[photonboy]

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=NzU0OQ

 

[leon2006]

There is no drivers for 5800 at the AMD website for XP-32 and Linux...

You have to go to Linux community for drivers for 5800. They normally come out with their own version.

When 4890 came out i use the 4870 linux drivers to start with and it work. But the architecture is almost the same for 4890 and 4870. The 5800 is a different hardware...

A lot of things can happen in 2 weeks. The board is a big hit and there will be a big demand to support linux and 32 bit application. The Caveat on that is the BIG FOCUS on soon to come out Win-7.

Also check the software on the CD that ship with the board.

It won't hurt to call the vendor and secure early information... That will reduce the level of surprise when you get the board.

I just hope AMD don't screw up the driver support this time. AMD has been pretty good in the last 6 months.

 

[papasmurf]

This is why I stick to nvidia, horrible horrible linux driver support, but xp? Seriously? You know the windows 7 release candidate was free to download like 6 months ago and they didn't change much between rc and rtm. The RC is about a hundred million zillion times better than XP. In fact windows vista was a hundred million zillion times better than xp. but who cares when you've got ubuntu eh, if you think gaming under vista is slow try it under wine 😛

 

[Gulli]

This is why I stick to nvidia, horrible horrible linux driver support, but xp? Seriously? You know the windows 7 release candidate was free to download like 6 months ago and they didn't change much between rc and rtm. The RC is about a hundred million zillion times better than XP. In fact windows vista was a hundred million zillion times better than xp. but who cares when you've got ubuntu eh, if you think gaming under vista is slow try it under wine 😛

I don't game on Ubuntu, that's what I have XP for.
I'm sorry, I didn't look into my crystal ball six months ago to see that there would be no XP drivers for the HD 5870, so I abstained from doing a complete reinstall to get Win7 RC and then having to do another complete reinstall when Microsoft decides to deactivate Win7 RC (do you have any idea how long a reinstall can take with all the apps I have?)
XP has been serving me just fine until now, it still gives higher fps than Vista, but as I mentioned before I was planning on going for Win7 after it's released.

 

[Gulli]

T

 

[Gulli]

This is for all the people who are googling to find out if they can use the HD 5870 with Win XP:

Yes, you can, there's an XP driver on the disc that comes with the card, no linux support though (the 48xx series drivers work for the most part, but you'll get that nasty "unsupported hardware" watermark in the lower right corner of your screen.)

 

[leon2006]

That would be good enough for me to enable my linux....

Thanks for the update