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New Linux look fuels old debate (ZDnet)New Linux look fuels old debate (ZDnet)Posted Apr 18, 2006 14:00 UTC (Tue) by pheldens (guest, #19366)Parent article: New Linux look fuels old debate (ZDNet)
The age old answer:
The open r300 (for ati radeon) driver, though unstable and feature incomplete for some cards, is the fastest open 3d solution atm.
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New Linux look fuels old debate (ZDnet) Posted Apr 18, 2006 15:31 UTC (Tue) by djao (subscriber, #4263) [Link] You just hit the nail on the head. The reason customers aren't asking for open source drivers is because people who care about open source drivers DON'T BUY NVIDIA CARDS, so they don't become nVidia customers. I know that I for one have consciously avoided nVidia video cards for exactly this reason.It would be nice if the product manager could have figured this out logically instead of sticking his head in the sand.
New Linux look fuels old debate (ZDnet) Posted Apr 18, 2006 16:01 UTC (Tue) by ken (subscriber, #625) [Link] Well I care and I still have a NVIDIA card. Why then you ask well since the only reason to buy a new card is gaming and you need a new card to play new games there really are no alternative.
If you do not play games buy a computer with Intel graphics onboard to get an open platform. I don't think it's even necessary to register to download the documentation for intel chips.
But I really like to know how to make my whish for documentation for nvidia in a way that they understand.
New Linux look fuels old debate (ZDnet) Posted Apr 18, 2006 17:13 UTC (Tue) by s_cargo (guest, #10473) [Link] By the way... Do you mean "Hear hear"?
New Linux look fuels old debate (ZDnet) Posted Apr 18, 2006 18:02 UTC (Tue) by rdorsch (subscriber, #5833) [Link] Does anybody know, which is the latest graphics card with a stable opensource driver? I always try hard to get hardware whose drivers are available under an open source license, because - good chances that it works out of the box in Debian - higher stability (I learned my lesson, interestingly from an AVM Fritzcard DSL. AVM is the company which is very unhappy about the open source requirement in the USB code of the kernel) - easier upgradability (I learned my lesson here as well, after an upgrade I could not configure my telephone system (Auerswald COMpact 2104) any more. The vendor provides a java application which has trouble with the serial interface after the upgrade) I also don't care if I need to pay significantly more for hardware with open sourced drivers. It saves me a lot of time and trouble and that counts higher for me.
New Linux look fuels old debate (ZDnet) Posted Apr 18, 2006 21:13 UTC (Tue) by pheldens (guest, #19366) [Link] Matrox g400 / Radeon r200 (Ati 8500-9250) have been solid for years.3d opengl performance is ok to play quake3 or ET (~72 fps sustained for a radeon 9000)
Or r300 (still shaping up, is reported to work even on some X600 and X800 models, and can run stuff like Doom3)
here's an overview:
New Linux look fuels old debate (ZDnet) Posted Apr 18, 2006 22:03 UTC (Tue) by drag (subscriber, #31333) [Link] Intel has had their onboard stuff have good support.
Their GMA cards (Graphics Media Accelerator) are much much much better then their old 'Extreme Blaster 2' stuff. They are feature complete and offer modest performance. (enough to play Quake3 and such).
They claim comparable performance to a ATI 9800, but I doubt it. I figure they are a bit faster then the r200 stuff.. Although I don't know about how wonderfull the drivers are, I don't own one.
The main problem with them is that they are onboard and do shared memory sceme. I think that they are probably fairly crippled by this.
If they were on seperate cards with dedicated RAM I think that they would have a lot more potential. I know I'd by one.
Personally I am tempted to switch from AMD to Intel specificly because of this. Always used AMD, but...
You take a Intel 920 dual-core CPU with a Asus P5LD2-VM motherboard that uses the 945G chipset it should make a kick-ass little Linux workstation. Drivers supported nearly out of the box, nice compact SMP configuration. DDR2 memory isn't something that I am excited about though.
But the best thing is that according to the Xen Wiki http://wiki.xensource.com/xenwiki/IntelVT both that motherboard and the proccessor should support the Intel VT extensions allowing you to run Linux along side FreeBSD, OpenBSD, Windows, and whatnot in a Xen environment. So that would be fun to have.
I am very tempted.
Hot stuff Posted Apr 18, 2006 22:57 UTC (Tue) by man_ls (subscriber, #15091) [Link] Sure, why not. Just be sure to have a mighty power supply and some serious cooling; according to gamepc they still run too hot. The 920 system is eating like 40 to 50 Watt more than the comparable 3800+ X2 from AMD. Not that I'm worried about ecologism; but power translates to money and noise, and noise translates to headaches and aspirin in the long run.Meanwhile, I have found elsewhere that Intel Core Duos run quite cool; but unluckily they don't support those VT extensions, or 64 bit. When they do they will be interesting.
Hot stuff Posted Apr 18, 2006 23:49 UTC (Tue) by drag (subscriber, #31333) [Link] Oh ya they do run hot, but that's normal for Pentium 4 type proccessors.
But it's not that horrible. Not like the 8xx series were. Nothing that the 'scythe ninja' can't take care of.
Combine that with a high quality heatsink, a spacious case with 12cm rear fan, and maybe a little creative ductwork then I bet I can get that sucker to run quiet.
Also they are very reasonably priced. 240 bucks for the 920 versus closer to 300 dollars for the X2 stuff. Even though the X2 is going to be a bit faster in most stuff.
Then on top of that I would go for the onboard video so the power requirements, I expect, would actually be less then a AMD system with a semi-modern ATI or Nvidia video card. No crappy video card fan, no small motherboard fan.
Dammit.. now I am convinced.
New Linux look fuels old debate (ZDnet) Posted Apr 19, 2006 9:25 UTC (Wed) by pheldens (guest, #19366) [Link] About onboard stuff, I have an Ati Xpress 200 (r400) northbridge for intel cpu on this cheap ($50) Asus P4RD1MX motherboard and there's no decent support for its pcie / onboard mem yet because Ati hasnt released specs to the dri folks for shared memory initialisation.It's a nice PCIE entry board otherwise and cheap but good quality.
With proprietary drivers X200's 3D performs a little less than my AGP 9000, and is unstable, 2d is stable. And may be a good alternative to the Intel you mentioned.
New Linux look fuels old debate (ZDnet) Posted Apr 20, 2006 19:17 UTC (Thu) by Arker (guest, #14205) [Link] So far the best I know of is the ATI Radeon series. Which is why I'm still using it. I'd love to use more powerful video cards in my systems, but without free drivers that's just not going to happen.
I hate to buy the ATI cards, because the company is being so unreasonable these days, so if anyone can point me to a comparable solution from another company please do.
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