I'm going to get a new desktop and not sure if it's better to get a nVidia or ATI graphics card for linux. I've only used Intel prior to this.

The open source drivers for nVidia and ATI don't support 3D, do they?

As far as I know, people have had fewer issues with nVidia's proprietary driver than ATI's. But I also heard that AMD has made ATI drivers open source, so things may improve in the future. How true is this statement?

What models from nVidia and ATI have you found best in terms of stability and general performance?

Btw, does Linux support SLI and Crossfire? Which has fewer problems under Linux?

Thank you very much

Corporate workstations still ship with nVidia Quadro graphics, if that answers your question. I was miserable when I owned an ATi (or however they capitalize it) in 2004. It performed about the same as my current Intel integrated graphics on my laptop.

The open-source nv drivers do NOT support 3D, nouveau will at some point (with alpha support for some cards):
http://nouveau.freedesktop.org/wiki/FeatureMatrix

The open-source radeon drivers do support 3D, but only for some cards, see 'man radeon'.

nvidia definitely has the better proprietary drivers and 3D support. I have not heard of AMD doing anything like that, where did you get that idea ?

It's hard to say, I have to underclock my card to prevent crashes. GeForce 8800 GTS 512

SLI technically is supported if you configure it properly:
http://us.download.nvidia.com/XFree8...hapter-25.html

AMD has released specifications for all GPUs up to the HD4995. In addition to continuing to support all HD cards with the proprietary driver, AMD has been paying for development of open source drivers to support all cards. Such drivers now exist for all cards to up the HD4995 (though for the HD cards, getting 3D acceleration does currently require using development code and often compiling that code yourself).

The open source drivers are quite stable (more stable than any proprietary driver I've ever used, whether from AMD or nvidia)

Drivers and specifications for the HD5xxx cards are on their way, but there is no time frame currently.

Adam

I recently argued with ATI softyware guys over this. I went to the trouble of finding an email on ati or amd and flaming it with my thoughts.Somebody answered, and passed my venom to their linux guys.

Summary: From about 2002 to 2007 ati did zilch with linux software drivers. Now they are playing catch up. Biggest issue with current drivers is that they didn't facilitate certain approaches, e.g. opengl, so glxinfo gives lousy results. They expect to finish catching up by end 2010. The company view clearly is that windows is a better platform for graphics than X. They are trying to use a common codebase in ansi c as far as possible. From a software point of view, they are 'obsoleting' products (like my RS690) very quickly, and expecting us to go to the Open Source drivers, which they are adding code to also. They pointed me at a large number of commits they had made.

I expect that by end 2010, new products will be supported fairly well, support for older ones will diminish rapidly with age, and support will be passed to the OSS drivers, which might also be pretty good by that stage. Today, I would buy nvidia, or others. By mid next year, I would be thinking hard, and looking. If ati post on phoronix.com, they think they have told the internet. It's about the only site they inform.

Well, you'll never see me buying an ATI card again, I've had enough of their **** in the past. It's not only the drivers that are bad, it's the cards too, from my experiences.

I don't particularly like nvidia either, the drivers aren't perfectly stable, but at least the cards don't have major issues, from what I've seen.

Personally, I won't buy a card that doesn't have open source drivers.

Adam

How about nVidia SLi with two physical displays? There seems to be a lack of info about it (from what I see in searches).
I'm considering a new machine myself, but if I can't have SLi with two displays in Linux (read: expanded desktop) I might as well forget about SLi altogether.

to me that doesn't make sense, how would SLI help here ? what is your goal ?

The fact that the driver is open source masks something. Graphics companies seem to equate open source with second class. The ATI oss drivers are for older chips, and have 'partial support' (Whatever that means)

Nvidia refuse essential information to the oss driver writers so oss drivers for nvidia lack basic functionality.

Short version:
I have two screens now, if I upgrade to something better performing I want two screens on that, too.

Long version:
First, want/need two displays to display more (code, video, <add your favourite>, ...) - visual multi tasking in other words.
Second, want SLi for more GPU processing power in video, games, ...

SLi isn't necessarily there for improving two displays, because it won't. It's to improve graphical performance when I require it, in other words when i'm not working but playing.

right, but the problem is how is SLI gonna work with two monitors ... that I'm not sure about.

The ATI OSS drivers support 2D and 3D acceleration on all r100 through r700 GPUs (up to and including the HD4950), though, admittedly, the HD2*** through HD4*** cards are only supported in development code. Only the very recently released HD5*** cards are not supported at all, but 2D support should hopefully be arriving shortly. All specifications needed to support 3D acceleration on all r300-r700 GPUs have been available without an NDA for quite a while now. In addition, AMD currently directly and indirectly pays individuals working on the open source and closed source drivers (the GLSL compiler for the open source r6xx/r7xx mesa driver, for example, was written and committed by an AMD employee). AMD does not appear to equate open source with second class, and the biggest reason why the open source drivers lack functionality present in the closed source drivers is likely due to the head start the closed source drivers have, thanks to the policy previously in place at ATI, prior to the acquisition by AMD.

Adam

Well, there's this.. FAQ at SLizone.com but it only speaks of Windows, which doesn't help.
The hardware can do it, but can the driver? from what I understand TwinView isn't supported under SLi, but there is 'Mosaic' for "Quadro Plex Visual Computing System (VCS)"
Whatever that beast (VCS) may be.

Hmm, well, I can't seem to find too much on the topic, maybe ask nvidia. Maybe they can add support for twinview or recommend something else.