Re: [Sheflug] Happy new year... and video cards :-)

[Alex Hudson <home@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Sun, 2006-12-31 at 16:33 +0000, Chris J wrote:
> Anyhow, I'm looking at upgrading my system at some point in the new
> year, and have plumped for an Athlon X2 and associated mainboard, but am
> having problems selecting a decent video card.
> 
> I'm looking for something that at least supports 3D and OpenGL, and
> preferably isn't nVidia (mostly due to limited support in open source
> code and an otherwise potentially problematic driver supplied by nVidia
> themselves).
> 
>  From doing some poking around, the ATI Radeon's seem to be a fairly
> good choice[1], but does anyone have any experience one way or the
> other, or any alternatives?

Well, you're pretty much stuck with ATI versus nVidia - the Intel chips
have excellent support, but you just can't get them on a desktop :(

>From the point of view of which card, first have a think about the level
of 3D support you need. If you're looking at just running a compositing
desktop or something, you don't need anything particularly good - I
would grab a cheap r200-based ATI (9200 or similar - check the numbers
_really_ carefully though). The drivers are excellent in my experience,
and it's powerful enough for GL-based desktop effects.

If you need something a bit more powerful, it's either ATI r300 or
nVidia. The r300 drivers are slightly further along, and if they're like
the r200, they should be pretty good. The nVidia cards are getting a
free driver too, though - "nouveau" - although it's probably a good way
off still (realistically, maybe more than a year) so it depends on how
long the card has to last.

Personally, I think if you want the best card with current free software
support that's improving, r300-based ATI cards is probably the best bet.
Maybe troll the user list for the r300 driver project and see which
cards people are using? (ATI don't make their own cards IIRC, and
different manufacturers wire the chips up differently - so even if you
have basic driver support, you could have issues with DVI or similar if
you get the wrong board - I could be worrying you unnecessarily here,
though ;)

> The whole nVidia avoidance goes to the mainboard as well as I've read
> problems or lack of full support for the nForce chipset, including not
> being able to get sound.

I have an nForce chipset desktop - I cannot recall which nForce, I'm
afraid - and it works fully (I did have to wait for the forcedeth driver
to become available, though). Might be nForce 2. More recent chipsets
are probably problematic.

Cheers,

Alex.


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