Re: Suggestions for Graphics Cards

Intel graphics cards are terrible. Sure they have open source drivers,
and thats a really great thing - but they are horribly under powered
compared to nvidia or ati.

Nvidia has good linux drivers, although they are blobs.

Ati has mediocre linux drivers, which are also a blob.

The nouveau (speling) driver is coming along so well that its now the
default for nvidia based systems in fedora. I also understand RedHat
have commited some resources to working on its progress. My personal
feeling is that it may follow the same path that the nvidia network NIC
driver (forcedeth) took; that is that once it was sufficiently reverse
engineering, nvidia started patching it and it became the proper driver.

AMD has released some ati specs, but they are still far from being the
beacon of OSS graphics that they were some years ago.

I havent looked at matrox cards lately, but they are still around but are
pursuing niche's that ati and nvidia arent concerned with (8 & 16
output video cards for example)

Personally, i sell my soul a little and go with Nvidia. But if a good OSS
alternative arrived, i would rip out my machines cards and replace them.
I would also recommend them at work etc.

Dean

On 1/25/2010, "Henare Degan" <[email protected]> wrote:

>Hi all,
>
>During LCA the Nvidia PCI-e card in my
>desktop(/TV/stereo/virtualisation host/etc.) died [cue violins].
>
>I said I'd never buy Nvidia again because, with Intel's open graphics
>drivers, we've got a choice. My problem is, it doesn't appear that I
>can get a PCI-e (or even PCI) Intel-based graphics card - they all
>seem to be integrated on the motherboard.
>
>What are my options? I don't do any gaming, the only 3D requirement is
>desktop effects.
>
>I'd like to get Intel because on my notebook it Just Works but it's
>not essential if there are other Open[-ish] options out there.
>Obviously replacing the motherboard will be on the more "fun" side of
>the options.
>
>Cheers,
>
>Henare
>
>Ps. the host is up-and-running thanks to a ~10 year old SIS PCI
>graphics card I scavenged from an ancient box lying around. After a
>quick X reconfig on boot it Just Works (albeit in 1024x768), damn I
>heart Linux.
>--
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