[Wylug-help] Linux-compatible graphics card

[John Hodrien]

On Thu, 24 Aug 2006, Aaron Crane wrote:

> John Hodrien writes:
>> nVidia still gives the most reliable accelerated behaviour under X.  It
>> still has *many* bugs and performance issues, but fewer than others...
>
> Well, that depends on how you define "fewer" and "others".  I have a laptop
> which has both an Intel and an nVidia chip.  Using the nVidia graphics,
> there are some occasional colour problems when switching graphics modes, and
> it can't resume from suspend-to-RAM.  But with the Intel chip, everything
> works fine.

It's also got a lot to do with what I consider 'accelerated' to mean.  Intel
certainly provides for a better ride with power management than nVidia, but it
just doesn't have the performance.

Can you buy Intel chipset graphics cards?  I thought they were normally
onboard affairs.

> As for performance: the laptop manufacturer claims that the Intel chip is
> for "stamina" mode and the nVidia for "speed" mode.  That may well be true
> for Windows (or even for Linux with the non-free nVidia drivers), but
> Ubuntu seems to have better 3D acceleration out-of-the-box on this system
> with the Intel chip than with the nVidia one.

Absolutely.  But then if you use the nv driver you're not much better off than
using vesa.  That's if nv doesn't just lock your machine up because their
understanding of the nvidia cards is incomplete (not their fault).

I wouldn't recommend using an nvidia card without the binary driver, as it can
lead to a slow machine and a noisy one (fan defaults to 100% unless told
otherwise).

> Intel have also taken to open-sourcing their graphics drivers, with each
> component under the same licensing terms as the project it needs to be
> contributed to:
>
>  http://www.intellinuxgraphics.org/
>
> I like the idea of supporting a company that's trying to do the right thing
> for users of free-software OSes.

Certainly an action to be applauded.

> That said, these people say they offer a guarantee that the kit you buy
> works with Linux, and all their graphics cards are nVidia:
>
>  http://openforeveryone.co.uk/perifs2.php?id=1
>
> I've never bought from them, though, so this isn't specifically a
> recommendation.  But, Qef, you might like to take a look if you haven't
> bought a new graphics card already.

nVidia graphics cards with the binary driver have IMO provided the best fully
accelerated experience.  TwinView works as it should do with no problems.
There are some issues with using two PCIe cards in one system.  The nvidia
engineers on nvnews.net are *unbelieveably* responsive when you have problems
under linux, and don't laugh at you when you have problems running at
3840x2400 or when you're tiling together four 1600x1200 panels.

jh

-- 
"To fall in love is to create a religion that has a fallible god."
                                                      -- Jorge Luis Borges