SciTech Software, Inc. today announced that it has released SciTech SNAP Graphics 3.0 for Linux. It offers support for XFree86 and X.org. SciTech SNAP Graphics delivers advanced 2D acceleration for business users, Plug-N-Play support for hundreds of graphics cards and now provides advanced XVideo acceleration for ATI’s desktop and mobile graphics processor, making enterprise wide deployment and management easier and more powerful than ever.
SciTech SNAP Graphics 3.0 Offers Video Acceleration
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Does this have anything to do with Xgl, luminocity or cairo?
or is is ‘just’ a (self configuring) single driver for all videocards
It’s ‘just’ a (self configuring) single driver for all videocards.
it is more like a single driver for all video cards…. a sort of “better” vesa
I remember in the early 90s, SciTech released a video driver for DOS that was amazing, all games I was playing at the time worked well, and Window 3.1 was better looking and appeared faster than using the native drivers for the trident cards I used in those days.
I am not sure how it will go under linux though, I might give it a go and compare it to the nvidia drivers already on the machine, I honestly do not think there will be an improvement, as these drivers are great.
Do they provide options like “RenderAccel” that nvidia provide for xorg..?
For those still using Matrox cards, the driver now supports the G450 and G550 in DVI mode.
Does it have some kind of hardware-3D-acceleration? If yes, how does it compare to official ati-drivers regarding speed?
From the (insert adjective here) article:
“SciTech SNAP Graphics delivers advanced 2D acceleration for business users, Plug-N-Play support for hundreds of graphics cards and now provides advanced XVideo acceleration for ATI’s desktop and mobile graphics processor….”
Doesn’t look like there’s a 3D acceleration claim there, so I’d assume the answer’s “No.”
i believe 3D support is an ‘in the works’ type of thing. anyways whil;e this driver is better then most default drivers it is not as good as the official drivers. especially if you need any sort of actual 3D.
This is a binary only driver under a property license right?
Why does it matter?
oh wait, never mind. dumb question…
Without 3D support, I just don’t see much point.
Configuration simply isn’t that hard anymore. The selling point of easy configuration doesn’t seem to be enough IMHO to pay for these drivers.
Free alternative: Use the Knoppix autodetection routine for a very high probability of the same plug-n-play capability.
Paid alternative: Spend the $20 license cost of SciTechs drivers on a cheap, but well supported video card. For example ATI Rage cards are in this price range or cheaper and have full support under X. If 3D is important to you, spend $15 extra and get a cheap nvidia card.
I like the idea, but the drawbacks are fairly severe.
I remeber hearing about them at least 2 or 2 1/2 years ago. At that time they “Were working on 3D” well years later and still nada. I wish they would, I think that a lot of alt OSes would support Snap-tech if they did 3D. It just doesn’t seem to be worth the money for just 2D.
They guys from Sci-tech have been on these boards multiple times in the last 2 or 2 1/2 years, explaining that the 3d thing wasn’t a priority, and that it wouldn’t provide the same level of abstraction as the 2d interface anyway.
Most of our focus currently on SciTech SNAP Graphics is for embedded systems and the Enterprise. Enterprise desktop users and Embedded systems users do not necessarily need 3D, but they need Video for training, conference calls etc. Hence we spent the time getting Video completed on all ATI graphics hardware.
We are working on 3D also, but that is not much comfort if you have been waiting years for it 🙂 For now if you are using Linux in an Enterprise environment it can provide a great solution to minimise configuration issues across the board. For embedded systems development it is second to none, and we have been shipping PowerPC and X86-64 versions of SciTech SNAP Graphics for Linux for some time now. MIPS support is also very complete. The desktop version for X86-64 should be ready soon.
For the desktop power user, unless you have a card that is not well supported you would be better off struggling to get the vendor supplied drivers installed 🙂
Thanks again for speaking directly to the users/potential users. That has always made me like SciTech.
My oppinion is that 2D isn’t really a problem in Linux. On almost any distro for the past few years, 2D works out of the box on install. Granted, after install, some handle it better than others (if at all)
However, 3D rarely EVER works on install. 3D on linux ranges from (IMHO) easy with nvidia to nightmarish with ATI and most other cards. This is a wide open market that paid distros might license and many users would gladly pay $20 for. I know that if I had not learned how over the years it would be an easy decision.
Also, as I said earlier, free 2D alternatives are very close in performance. If you are aiming at enterprise, you are targeting customers who have admins capable of using the Knoppix style autodetection. It isn’t that much harder to install than Snap once you know how it works.
So, would things like TwinView for nvidia cards work? I’m not thinking about switching since the nvidia drivers work perfectly but I’m just curious how much of the cards native functionality is supported.
Thanks for the info, it explains a lot. I still think it is a shame, but that is the way it is..
I’d think the advantages of this driver for an enterprise would include standardization, the potential for lower per unit cost in a large buy from SciTech, much easier use of the mixed bag of hardware typically in use at an organization, and, perhaps, the ability to continue to use hardware no longer supported by the vendors.
Autodetection is all well and good, but even when it gets it right, the setup still needs to be tweaked manually. (I’ve never seen an autodetection routine that’s telepathic enough to know the resolution the user wants to run at.) It’s a net gain for a business of it only has to pay admins to learn to use one video driver rather than many.
You are right that with mixed hardware Snap is a good solution.
My arguement was simply that standardizing the cards used would incur roughly the same cost as Snap, possibly less. In cases where the cards can’t be changed I would definately suggest Snap.
As for autodetection shortcommings, that would also apply to Snap. It isn’t telepathic either. In either case, a manual resolution setting will sometimes need to be changed in the same file.
I simply think that there is a good market for easy, standardized, fully functional (including especially 3D) video drivers for Linux and hate to see SciTech miss the chance to do it right. I would expect them to do a better job at it than most other companies/individuals.
One of the key benefits for enterprise users is that they don’t need to upgrade their current distro or even version of X11 in order to get support for graphics hardware that is newer than their software.
“Autodetection is all well and good, but even when it gets it right, the setup still needs to be tweaked manually. (I’ve never seen an autodetection routine that’s telepathic enough to know the resolution the user wants to run at.)”
Actually SciTech SNAP Graphics has a feature that we call ‘Opti-Mode’ that runs automatically at install time. Although it won’t choose the correct mode for Power Users who like ridiculously small text (like some of the guys who work at SciTech :-), it will choose an excellent default for most users out there. And completely automatically too.
So for most sys admins installing SNAP and letting it choose the defaults should be good enough for 90% or more of their users.
Anyone know if these drivers support the Render extension? If so, they might bring nice pretty composite effects to lots of people. Unfortunately, my Mobility 9700 card doesn’t support Render very well, and is only supported in the latest X.org CVS, so I’m looking for an alternative.
I agree that standardizing on a single card, say, for routine office machines, sounds reasonable, but it might make little financial sense unless the organization is new or is recapitalizing all of its hardware. In any case, they’re going to spend some amount of money on drivers and install and config costs.
As for 3D (meaning consumer-level gaming) standardization, I suspect that market is too competitive to permit the vendors to agree on real standards.
We’ll more likely see de facto standardization when Nvidia trumps ATI or vice-versa. Or when Microsoft rolls out something that compels vendors to tag along in tandem.
For large enterprise’s the ability to standardize on one card while nice in theory simply does not play in practice – IT departments phase out systems over time and replace them in blocks, not all at once. What this means is that at any one point in time a corporate enterprise is likely to have several different graphics chips in use.
Purchasing a quantity, of a single card may work for lets say 1000 systems, but would be horribly time consuming if you are attempting to swap-out say, ten thousand cards at a time. Standardizing on a single card also has inherent risk as the standardized card may no longer be available or supported when its time to buy new machines. Here again you are forced to make modifications to the one card for all systems concept…. In these environments SciTech SNAP Graphics powerful feature sets make it a great choice. We also understand that a home user may not see a compelling enough reason in SNAPs enterprise level features to shell out $19.95. It is for this reason that we launched MyScitech, which allows you to freely download a single SNAP driver that is custom built and matched to your specific system, free of charge (for non-commercial use:)
So feel free to try the driver out and let us know what you think, both positive and negative comments are always welcome and assist us greatly when we are trying to decide where to spend our resources
Cheers,
Andrew
IGP 340 and XVideo support!
I just got my license, can’t wait to try it out!