best video card for use with open source drivers?

[Peter Gordon]

Dr. Michael J. Chudobiak wrote:
> So... does anyone have suggestions for the "best" AGP video card /
> driver combo for 3D gaming (say torcs, for sake of argument), if you're
> restricted to the open source drivers?
>
> Intel's newly-free drivers don't count, because you have to buy a whole
> new computer (no plug-in cards)...
>
Older (pre-R300) ATi Radeons are currently the most powerful add-on video cards
supported (almost [1]) entirely by Free drivers. I've got a 9250 in my box
(sometimes labelled as a "9200 PRO", 0x5960 chip ID) and games like BZFlag,
PPRacer, etc. run very smoothly at their highest settings. You could also try
an R300 or R400 series card, as the driver for these is in development and
supposedly works well enough for basic gaming so far, but it is entirely
reverse-engineered, so be forewarned that it may or may not provide the same
level of stability or performance....

[1] Full 2-D/3-D acceleration support, video scaling through Xv, and XRender
acceleration through EXA, but texture compression (S3TC) is not implemented
due to its legally questionable nature. Neither FSAA nor Anisotropic Filter is
supported (yet?).

-- 
Peter Gordon (codergeek42)
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