[NTLUG:Discuss] video card recommendation

[Bob Netherton]

> Ralph (the OP) wants to stick with pure open source drivers.  Ideally
> he wants the new Intel card... but it isn't out :(

Hey Chris,

What's the rationale for open source on the driver ?  With a track
record of free (but closed source) with excellent performance and
complete functionality (ie accelerated 3D), why would nvidia not
be a good choice ?   There is an argument to be made for them to
protect their IP as long as they play nice with the community, which
I think they have done.   I may be mistaken on this point, but I'm
pretty sure we  include their closed source drivers in OpenSolaris so
redistribution doesn't seem to be a problem for them.

> Thus the "Nvidia is better" argument, may not apply in this case.

Just trying to understand.  I'm a pragmatist, not a purist :-)

> I know I've been forced to use the commercial driver for both
> Nvidia AND Radeon lately because of lack of good support in
> the open source drivers....

Not wanting to ruffle any feathers here, but all of the open source
drivers stink.   You have to get the guys working in the GPUs to
do the driver work.  There's not enough information published to
write a good driver.   Most of the time you're better off running
Windows (where the drivers are the best) and do some sort of
desktop virtualization like VMware or VirtualBox rather than use
the open source drivers.

We're totally nVidia in this house.

> But I know work is being done on the Radeon side, and I'll
> admit, I haven't tried the new open source stuff there yet.

Not going to hold my breath on that one :-)   I have to support
several OSes in my Enterprise :-)  and nVidia is the only one
that is consistent across all the platforms.


Bob