OT: nVidia driver [was: Wish list] -- understanding the GPU market

[Dave Jones]

On Wed, Jun 08, 2005 at 03:12:12PM -0500, Bryan J. Smith <b.j.smith at ieee.org> wrote:
 > Little Davie Jones wrote:  
 > > FWIW, I picked up a PCI-E Radeon X300 for not-many-beans recently.
 > > It works out of the box with FC4, with no need for proprietory drivers.
 > > The 3d isn't supported yet ... <BIG TIME CUT>
 > 
 > Please replace "PCI-E Radeon X300" with "PCI-E GeForce 6800" and
 > retype that and it will be the _exact_same_ logic.

Except the GeForce doesn't have any possibility of working 3d
any time soon, whereas the X300 does have a good chance.

 > nVidia _does_ put people on the MIT "nv" driver, and 2D _does_ work
 > with their newest NV4x series of cards -- typically in about the same 
 > development time as the ATI "radeon" and other drivers.

It's somewhat different in reality. The nvidia involvement in nv
is one engineer in his spare time when he feels like it.
NVIDIA don't actually employ him to do nv development, and theres
no commitment whatsoever from Nvidia to enhance it further. (I don't
think he actually does work on their binary 3d driver any more either
coincidentally).

 > Also note that the X300 is a prior series R300, and not the latest
 > R400.  It's like comparing to a GeForce FX5700LE.

As I mentioned in an earlier mail, at best we're going to be one
generation behind.

 > And there is some UtahGLX and other support for nVidia as well.

Which for modern Xorg based servers is next to useless.
That code has festered in UtahGLX for years, and no-one seems
interested in doing anything with it.

		Dave