[PLUG] A good 2D-3D gaming video card for Linux?

[Fedor G. Pikus]

2D? Pretty much any high-end card will do, Matrox has probably the best
reputation for 2D quality, and good Linux support. 2D parts of Radeon and
NVidia cards are also well suported, and you'd need a really
good monitor to notice the difference in quality, if there is indeed any.
Also, other features like DVI, dual DVI, TV in/out, etc, may be more
important than the tiny differences in 2D quality between different
high-end cards.
For 3D, if you want the ultimate gaming machine running Linux, there is
only one option, one of NVidia's high-end cards (Geforce4 Ti 4600 is the
ultimate in both performance and price, although the next generation of
NVidia cards should be out very soon, at even more ultimate price). Ti
4400 seems like a good compromise, but stay away from all Geforce MX
cards.
You will depend on NVidia's binary drivers. That could be a problem if you
use a development kernel, or patch your kernel with some pervasive enough
patch which breaks the NVidia kernel module (which you'll need to compile
for your kernel from source they provide, unless you use unmodified RedHat
or Suse or Mandrake kernels, in which case you can also compile the
source, or use the module they compiled for you). However, if the binary
drivers work for you, then they work very well.


On Mon, 30 Dec 2002, Alex Daniloff wrote:
> Hello Linix folkz,
> Could somebody please recommend any good
> 2D-3D video card or a chipset name for
> Linux with at least 64MB or 128MB RAM.
> It has to be fully supported, be easy in
> installation and configuration without
> a fuzz.
> I'm building ultimate Linux
> machine for game programming and other
> very heavy graphical stuff.
> Any info, thoughts or suggestions are greatly
> appreciated.
>
> Thanks.
> Alex
>
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-- 
                                  Fedor G. Pikus
Mentor Graphics Corporation         | Phone: (503) 685-4857
8405 SW Boeckman Road               | FAX:   (503) 685-1239
Wilsonville, Oregon 97070           | http://www.pikus.net/~pikus/