Nvidia or ATI for linux?
 

I am probably going to be buting a new video card soon. Since I only use linux, I was wondering what would be best nvidia or ati? ATI's are cheaper, but if the drivers suck, there is no point. As far as drivers go for linux, which would be the best way to go Nvidia or Ati? Or does it matter that much. (I have been using nvidia cards for a while, gf2 mx, and now gf4 mx, and they aren't too bad in linux, but now I want something nice like a a ati 9600/nvidia 5600 and up)

I just upgraded my Linux box from a ATI 9000Pro to a Nvidia GeForceFX 5600 about a month ago and I was pleasantly surprised at how much easier it was to get the Nvidia 3d drivers running that it was for the ATI drivers. Of course, that could all have been user errors but I tend to stick with things that I can use regardless of the general population.

rberry88

I have a Radeon 7500, and after some initial problems, some advice from people here, and a lot of browsing web pages, it seems that while ATI was once a very good manufacturer for Linux, they have become less willing to supply high quality Linux drivers for their new cards in a timely fashion. Furthermore, I read something about bin files (???) and drivers that "taint the kernel", although I am unclear to the meaning of this.

It would appear that NVIDIA is the manufacturer of choice now for 3D support under Linux, with better drivers that provide faster frame rates.

Again, this is from research, not first-hand experience. If you wish, I can post some of the links for the WebPages where I found this information.

Good luck!

nvidia are the best :D

The ATi drivers works great when they finally work. I'm using SuSE 9.0 which has special drivers for it, with own installation guides so it's easy to install them, but I think it's problems on other distros. I would go for NVIDIA.

NVIDIA rocks.

afaik (i havent checked in a while) ATI does not supply drivers for linux.

I know that nvidia does provide drivers for linux. I have had nothing but good experience with nvidia cards in linux.

And if you want to multi-head it takes about 3 minutes to set up XF86Config with an nvidia card.

The kernel becomes tainted when you don't use a GPL driver. Its a licence issue.

> The kernel becomes tainted when you don't use a GPL driver. Its a licence issue.

Thank you for that explantion VectorDrake.
Greatly appreciated! :)

My experience has been that if you buy the latest and greatest video card from _anybody_ you should some degree of difficulty simply because support for it most likely won't yet exist for it. It's kind of a vicious circle - if you want to use the latest kernel, the drivers for that new kernel haven't been developed yet, and if you want to use the latest drivers, they're (generally) written for older kernels.

Of course, that is not to say that the cards won't work, or that their performance will automatically suck, but only that you likely will need to put a lot of work into the task if you expect to take advantage of the advanced features of the card -- don't expect that you can simply drop the new card into your box and instantly enjoy massive performance improvements because you probably will have a lot of tweaking to do before everything works optimally. Check some of the other forums here at LQ and you'll find no shortage of posts related to video card installation issues - they should give you a more realistic picture of what's involved. -- J.W.

As most will agree, ATI provides better bang for the buck than any other card if you're using Windows. As far as support under Linux, NVidea has a better track record of supporting the OS so far. I think that the latest ATI cards are better than the NVidea ones, but who am I to judge? I run an old system (BTW, this one is overclocked for the first time). My ATI Rage 128 Pro works fine under Linux, as its drivers are included in XFree.

From my understanding, you'll have better results with less work if you get an NVidea card (remember they bought 3dfx a while ago, so they have a good 3d base and they already knew what they were doing). Of course, as a Canadian, I'd have to recommend ATI (a Canadian company) regardless of the support trouble. They seem to be coming around.

I just bought the Nvidia GeForce FX 5950. I had minor issues with RedHat and the Nvidia drivers but its a real breeze in Gentoo.

The most common thing I've heard on video cards is this:

"ATI for Windows...Nvidia for Linux"

Now I have to update the rest of my system to come up to par with this new video card.

The Card In Action

Well, I will reiterate objorkum's comments that ATI cards deliver great performance, at least once you get the drivers sorted out. On my old Radeon 7500 I get about 1400 FPS on a 2x2 window, with about 240 FPS in full screen mode which may not dominate, but it's not too shabby (I think) for a relatively old card. There has been a fair amount of movement in terms of newer drivers for ATI cards; there are other threads here at LQ focussed on that topic. Anyone considering an ATI board may want to check those out too.

Crashed - hey man, bitchin box. Very cool. OT: side question - I vaguely recall checking out your site a long long time ago, and if my memory is still in reasonably good order, I seem to recall you having some post about playing poker in AC, where your hand was pretty good off the bat, but started looking a lot weaker than your oppenent's, and on 5th street he raised you big time. But then on the river you got exactly the card he would have needed to turn a strong hand into an unbeatable one, and you won with a better 2 pair than his 2 pair. Or something like that, maybe it was a full house. Anyway, if that was your story, you should post it up again. It was great -- J.W.

DRI Project
 

Hello. I used to have a Radeon 8500LE a few years ago. Using the drivers supplied by the DRI project http://dri.sourceforge.net all of the OpenGL games that Mandrake came with (Tux Racer, Chromium, etc) worked extremely well after installing these. I've never tried a present-day 3D game though so I can't offer any input there. I remember seeing drivers supplied by ATI as well. The NVIDIA drivers at the time were still easier to install although I had (and to this day still have) problems with text mode character corruption which I've found reference to from other users on occasion.

I think it's really a matter of personal preference above all else. Just my 2 cents.

You have the same case as I do, the Lian-Li pc65B (actually its a modified pc61) but I love the case. It looks like you need to do some wire management like I do, otherwise this case is awesome. I only need to stealth my CDRW on the front and put a new switch on my cathode light and I'm set. Nice setup you got there.

OK, now back to the previously scheduled topic of discussion....

rberry88

Thanks for all the replies. I think it would be safest with nvidia. I have always been rather pleased with them, there drivers always installed fine, except for when I first got the 2.6.0 kernel, but there was lots of info to get it working. My gf4 mx440 is really dated. The only thing keeping it alive is the rest of my system.