Hi folks,

I would like to known what are your thoughts about what is the best 3D graphic card for linux.

I am buying a new computer and I am selecting a graphic card from ATI/Radeon or NVidia/GeForce and I want your help to make a decision.

Integration with SuSE/Linux is may biggest concern.
I have an old system with a GeForce 4 and SuSE 10.0 and I am not happy. The acceleration by hardware is not enabled after a kernel update and I can not figure out what is wrong. May be this issue deserves a specific topic about.

anyway, any comments and ideas about a 3D/OpenGL graphic card will be appreciated.

best regards,

Both NVIDIA and ATI require you download proprietary drivers for 3D acceleration.

Overall, Nvidia provide better Linux support than ATI, but I believe ATI have the most recent open-sourced cards. IMHO, if you want a current card, get an Nvidia one, if you want the best fully open-source card get an ATI.

It's all down to priorities. . .

If you want a problem free system go nVidia. ATi drivers suck. Some of ATi cards have drivers by other people they may be good but ATi drivers suck. I have a ATi radeon 9800pro 128mb. I got it to work after a long time, it was a real pain. I also have a 6600gt by nVidia. I just popped into their site downloaded the driver ran it modified a config file (documented, ie they tell you what to do) and rebooted. Since then I have been problem free!

Get a card that is actually supported in Linux instead of one that is supported only by binary only drivers. Matrox G series, older ATI Radeon cards and so on are supported in the kernel and in X.


Håkan

nvidia, no questions asked

The problem with that is performance sucks on older cards if you want to do anything 3D.

Nvidia. I have owned around 4 nvidia cards in the past 5 years, and every single one just needed the proprietary binary drivers installed.

Unless you absolutely HAVE to have everything released under gpl'ish licensing, I would go nvidia. They have arguably the fastest latest cards around, and their proprietary drivers work almost automagically.

You run the install program, make a few small changes to xorg.conf, and blam! full support for your cards features. (Xinerama, full hardware acceleration, opengl, etc..).

just my $0.02

I am running SUSE 10.0 and use an Nvidia 6600GT (AGP) manufactured by MSI without issue. Runs Doom 3 (for example) just fine. I only had to add the latest Nvidia drivers via YOU (YaST Online Update) and everything set up perfectly. In my case, it was easier than updating drivers in Windows.