I'm doing a much needed upgrade on some of my hardware, and after all of my nvidia woes, I wanted to ask the question, which video card on the market right now is the most suitable for linux? All of the information I found was pretty out dated, so what is everybody's opinion? I am mainly interested in newer 3D cards (no older then 3 yrs) so if anyone has any experiences they would like to share, please do. Please be specific and provide pros/cons for things like support, performance, ease of use, ...etc.

thanks!
...drkstr

the NVIDIA Geforce fx5500 is an awesome card. Good price and awesome power!

GeForceFX is pathetic compared to GeForce6 and GeForce4. A GeForce6 6200 is a good card to play games on low budget. If you are a hard core gamer, buy GeForce7 7800 GTX or GeForce7 7900.

nVidia:
Pros:
Support...5 out of 5
Ease to configure...5 out of 5
Performance...4 out of 5

Cons:
TV out saturation set to 0 which means black and white picture. Need to use nvidia-settings to adjust saturation to 128 to get color.
TV out does not support 1024x768 even though hardware can do this.
Lacks 2D acceleration.


I have not use an ATI card in Linux. People said ATI is increasing Linux support but the setup is still tedious. ATI includes a utility that automatically edits the X Window config file, but it does screw it up.


Conclusion, nVidia is the way to go if you want no trouble running games. The performance of an nVidia card outpaces ATI cards.

Thanks for the good info. It seems like nvidia is a pretty popular choice. Does any one know of any models that support 2D and 3D acceleration?

thanks!
...drkstr

All of them

For very strong performance on a budget, I'd start looking at a 6600GT or 6800, the 6200 is okay but will struggle with any yet to be released games that may catch your eye. I'm also upgrading my video card but I'm tossing up between a 7900 or waiting on a DX10 card that should be available in the next 3 months or so. ATI are saying that there will be updates for the X1900 to make it DX10 compatible but they've said other things that are yet to be implemented...

I'm using a Geforce4000mx and my tv out is 1024x768 works great.

Ge-Force 6600Gt has worked perfectly for me, especially with Transgaming Cedega and Doom3

Having gone through the process of installing Linux drivers for both ATI and nVidia cards, suffice it to say that nVidia has earned my business, period. I own three mid-level nVidia cards, and would recommend them without hesitation.

The above is strictly my own opinion, based on my own personal experiences.

nVidia 6600GT worked great for me.

My new 7800GT didn't work right until I installed the NEW 1.0-8756 driver which just came out on Friday (April 7, 2006).

I think the general consensus here is to stick with nVidia