What's a good video card?

[Robin Laing]

Bruno Wolff III wrote:
> On Mon, Feb 14, 2005 at 11:46:34 -0700,
>   Robin Laing <Robin.Laing at drdc-rddc.gc.ca> wrote:
> 
>>This is not new.  Older cards are not supported in todays linux. 
>>Either by the kernel or by the X server.  One of the things that 
>>forced me to get a new computer.
> 
> 
> That may betrue for cards that have binary drivers, but it does not
> appear to be true for cards that had open source drivers.
> 

My Mach 64 Pro that was supported in Xfree 3 was not supported in 4, 
at least not as well as in 3.  No work was being done on it.  Again an 
older card having support dropped by an OpenSource (at that time) project.

>>At least nVIDIA is working towards linux support with driver 
>>development.  I believe on their WWW site I read that they have made a 
>>common code base for their cards and drivers between Windows and 
>>Linux.  I have also read about people that have bad support from ATI 
>>even in the Windows environment.
> 
> 
> The following is more political than concrete. I think that developing
> binary drivers for Linux is not all that helpful. I would much rather
> see the specs released and have someone else write open source drivers.
> I plan on only buying video cards that have open source drivers.
> 
> 

I totally agree.  This won't happen unless nVIDIA can convince others 
that develop the chips to do this.  This issue goes beyond nVIDIA or 
ATI for that matter.  There was an interview on one web site that went 
into this issue at nVIDIA.

>>For me, the time wasted getting an ATI card to sort of work to getting 
>>an nVIDIA card to work was well worth the loss I took on the 9600. 
>>Days over minutes is my experience.  When I say 30 minutes from 
>>purchase to working it is the truth.  I looked at the time on my 
>>receipt after getting the card working and was shocked at how easy it 
>>was to get the nVIDIA card working.
> 
> 
> Well with the 9600, you get the worst of both worlds. A binary driver,
> plus poor support (as observed from comments I have seen, not personal
> experience) from the vendor.
>  
Tell me about it.  I only ordered the ATI 9600 after checking the ATI 
site.  It wasn't until later that I found a page on their site that 
stated their drivers don't support 3D and never got a response from 
ATI support.

> 
>>If you look at the nVIDIA site, you will see that there are only 4 
>>drivers for video cards and that is based on BSD or type of processor. 
>> There is no difference between cards.  How much easier can it get?
> 
> 
> Getting the driver with X in the first place.
> 

Agreed.  I did read someplace that nVIDIA has stated that their binary 
driver can be distributed with Linux but I think that the closed 
source is why it isn't.

I would rather have a closed source working driver than a poor open 
source driver.  I have been down that road.  I do have an ATI 7200 at 
work and it is great for most of what I do.
-- 
Robin Laing