[PLUG] Linux: ATI or nVidia?

Elliott Mitchell ehem at m5p.com
Tue Jul 26 01:28:00 UTC 2005


>From: Scott Van Hoosen <svanhoosen at yahoo.com>
> I'm looking to buy a new video card, something with some nice 3D
> capabilities. I've always bought nVidia cards in the past, but I'm
> wondering if ATI would be as good or better for Linux. It seems like
> you get more bang for the buck with ATI now, but I'm not sure (I
> haven't been up on video cards for a couple years). I know nVidia has
> closed-source, downloadable drivers for Linux. How are ATI's drivers
> handled?

Generally ATi is slightly more power per dollar, but notorious for bad
drivers. nVIDIA is legendary for high-quality drivers (both Linux and
less-abled "OSes"). If you want the 3D capabilities then you'll be a
slave to the binary drivers, luckily both companies offer them.

nVIDIA's GF5### chips turned out to be a lemon generation, somewhat
faster but not really much better than the GF4### chips (but they still
had good drivers). The more recent GF6### and GF7### cards look to be
extremely good though. ATi's R9### chips were an awesome generation, but
they've been followed by the unimpressive RX### chips. At the moment
ATi's X800 is now a generation behind nVIDIA's GF7880, in theory they
should be coming out with something soon but that was originally expected
*months* ago.

> Suppose you wanted to spend $150 or less on a good video card for
> Linux, which card on ENU's list would you buy:
> 
> http://www.enuinc.com/vgx.html

If your motherboard supports PCIe cards, the MSI NX6600-TD256E is a
mid-end one generation back card. Otherwise it seems that ENU's selection
of nVIDIA cards is rather sparse right now.  :-(


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