Graphics cards for Linux
in [Linux Hardware]
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From: David Brown on 24 Jan 2010 17:34 Darren Salt wrote: > I demand that Bit Twister may or may not have written... > >> On Fri, 22 Jan 2010 16:15:24 +0100, David Brown wrote: > >>> I have /heard/ that with a modern Nvidia card, the open source drivers >>> are still very limited, while the binary drivers are very good. On the >>> other hand, for modern ATI cards, both the open source drivers and the >>> binary drivers are sort of middle-of-the-road. Thus for open source >>> only, ATI is the best choice - when you are willing to use binary >>> drivers, Nvidia comes out best. > > It should be possible to try out nouveau with Debian testing/unstable. (I > can't; no nVidia graphics hardware.) > I'm hoping to find a reasonable card /before/ buying one and trying it out! However, whatever I get I will be testing with the latest and greatest open source drivers as well as the proprietary drivers - I'll only use the binary drivers if they really make a difference.
From: David Brown on 24 Jan 2010 17:36 Bit Twister wrote: > On Fri, 22 Jan 2010 16:15:24 +0100, David Brown wrote: >> I have /heard/ that with a modern Nvidia card, the open source drivers >> are still very limited, while the binary drivers are very good. On the >> other hand, for modern ATI cards, both the open source drivers and the >> binary drivers are sort of middle-of-the-road. Thus for open source >> only, ATI is the best choice - when you are willing to use binary >> drivers, Nvidia comes out best. > > Heheh, I am thinking about not buying ATI ever again. > RS480 [Radeon Xpress 200G Series] (on board) Module: ATI Radeon 9500 - X850 > all I could get was somewhere below 60 FPS using teapot. > > Went an bought a > RV710 [Radeon HD 4350] Module: Card:ATI Radeon HD 2000 and later (radeon/fglrx) > teapot gave me 142 FPS on mandriva 2010.0. > > Installed mandriva 2010.1 Alpha1. Can only get 60.14 FPS max. Downloaded > ATI driver. Would not even run. > > Another place to look, http://www.free3d.org/ Unless that site is biased, it looks like ATI is the best choice when using only open source drivers - the best Nvidia scores were alongside cheap Intel integrated devices.
From: David Brown on 24 Jan 2010 18:00 Nico Kadel-Garcia wrote: > On Jan 22, 3:32 pm, Hans-Peter Diettrich <DrDiettri...(a)aol.com> wrote: >> David Brown schrieb: >> >>> I have /heard/ that with a modern Nvidia card, the open source drivers >>> are still very limited, while the binary drivers are very good. On the >>> other hand, for modern ATI cards, both the open source drivers and the >>> binary drivers are sort of middle-of-the-road. Thus for open source >>> only, ATI is the best choice - when you are willing to use binary >>> drivers, Nvidia comes out best. Do you think that is a reasonable >>> summary, or have I been reading the wrong web sites? >> The point is: most graphics cards manufacturers don't want to publish >> the tricks, built into their cards, by offering open-source drivers. >> Thus it doesn't make sense to buy a high-performance card, and use it >> with an crippled open-source driver. > > Only if it's built-into an otherwise useful system, or you anticipate > the open source drivers being completed in the near future. Take a > look at http://nouveau.freedesktop.org/wiki/ for some details on open > source NVidia drivers. That website confirms my suspicions about open source drivers for NVidia - they are apparently unable to do much 3D acceleration at the moment.
From: Shadow on 24 Jan 2010 18:15 On Fri, 22 Jan 2010 15:08:25 +0100, David Brown <david(a)westcontrol.removethisbit.com> wrote: >Any thoughts or experiences would be appreciated. OK. Never, ever, buy anything with SIS graphics. They filter any email with "linux" in it, or at least, appear to. Support is nihil. Personally, I use nvidia. 2 radeons had premature deaths with me. But that was some time ago (both were 9*** series) []'s > >David
From: David Brown on 24 Jan 2010 18:19
Darren Salt wrote: > I demand that Mark Hobley may or may not have written... > > [snip] >> Stick with open source compatible cards would be my suggestion here .... > >> Choose Intel or ATI > > That would be just ATI, then, unless you're counting motherboards as graphics > cards... ;-) > How good are the ATI open source and closed source drivers? My rough understanding is that with the closed source NVidia drivers, you get similar performance for similar tasks under Windows or Linux - in other words, if you can live with binary drivers, you get what you pay for with NVidia whether you choose Windows or Linux. What's the situation with ATI? How does performance compare between Windows, Linux with the open source drivers, and Linux with ATI's closed source drivers? What about features and stability? I don't mind if there's a bit of performance drop by using the open source ATI drivers as long as it's not a huge difference, but I like to have features working (such as multiple monitor support, and high quality graphics) and stability is obviously important. |