Graphics issue and KDE Upgrade

[nankura]

Hey guys

Quick note: im a newbie, but i want linux, so i beg for someone to help me with these situations. i know linux isnt perfect yet, but if i can just fix these phew problems, i will gladly switch over, so please feel free to treat me like a newb and give me stuff to copy and paste to the terminal to make it easy for me to understand

ok prewarning, this will be abit of a read haha.

Ok my little story - i started linux with freespire years ago, it was my first distro, after a while of using it, i found i couldnt keep both freespire and windows because i kept running out of space, and i didnt have a job, so i couldnt afford a new hd, so after a long break from linux, im back,

and frankly, i adore linux so much ,its nice, smooth and so much fun to use. but i always run into problems, but thats the joy is fixing them

Using ubuntu, i got pretty far, i had a long running problem getting League of Legends to run properly, finally i managed to compile wine with a bug patch and fixed the problem after 2 weeks of research

Then a problem became graphics, even after installing the latest ATi drivers by compiling distro specific packages, i was coping 30-10 fps in League of legends under wine with all my graphics settings on the lowest settings, using an ATi graphics card and drivers, whilst in windows 7, i get 200 solid fps in this specific game

Now i know wine isnt perfect, and 3d acceleration isnt great, but ive seen plenty of youtube videos of my graphics card running 3d games just fine under wine, with high settings, and the only reply i got on the forums was "get a geforce" now that isnt a solution to my problem, i dont have 200$ to pull out and buy a new card

I tried fedora, i couldnt even figure out this rpmfusion stuff and how to add ati drivers and x.org

so i cant figure out what im doing wrong, then i saw openSUSE, and i have to say, im loving suse

no distro has had out of the box support like this, all my stuff worked, 3d acceleration already installed. its amazing, i am gobsmacked by opensuse's simplicity, control panels, and everything been so useful

Who ever said opensuse isnt a desktop distro, is full of themselves

My hardware - make it easier for u guys to answer the questions

HD 5770 HIS GFX
ASUS M4A87TD/USB3 motherboard
AMD Phenom 2 955 CPU
4GB G.Skill Ripjaw Ram DDR3
500GB WD Blue HD

So now my questions are

Is there any fix via suse for my graphics driver issue?
are the included graphics drivers decent for 3D gaming and wine gaming?
How do i remove the included drivers and install new ones if i take that path?

And last but not least, is 11.4 the latest KDE 4.6, because ive seen videos of kde 4.6 reviews and that little desktop folder isnt on the desktop anymore, and theres that notebook stuff, and id really like to try those versions

ive heard alot of good stuff about kde 4.6

if theres an update, or a way to install that, how do i go about that?

i apologise for the long post, and asking so many questions, ive been unable to get a solid answer suited for a linux newbie anywhere, and i want to be as specific as i can so u guys can help me out

i really want to switch to linux, im tired of windows, i want a new experience, but until i get these problems solved, i have to dual boot windows, and frankly, windows has been annoying me the past phew months after using linux and its simplicity

thankyou
nankura

[reed9]

Yes, OpenSuse 11.4 uses KDE 4.6.

The opensource radeon driver does not have 3D acceleration with your card, so you will have to use the non-free fglrx (catalyst) driver. Instructions for opensuse are here.

A benchmark test from Phoronix with the latest catalyst drivers (which should be fglrx 8.831.2 in the 11.4 repo from the above link) is here. Looks like performance should be decent.

[nankura]

is that 4.6.2? the absolute latest KDE, because or am i missing something

because what i want is that look and feature rich kde 4.6.2 that you see reviews all over youtube for. the new one thats to take on gnome 3

[reed9]

No, it has 4.6.0 by default. You can upgrade to the 4.6.2, though.