List of video cards most suitable for Linux platforms
 

Hi, I'm looking for a small listing of moderately priced video cards suitable for a Linux platform where super graphics are not a requirement. Does anyone know of such a listing? NevadaBill

The short answer is to choose nvidia over ati.
If you are not a gamer or 3D graphics editor, these low budget nvidia cards should work just fine:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16814130585
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16814130586
I have an nvidia 8400GS and an nvidia 210 and I can tell you that they both work well with either the binary blob nvidia driver provided by most distros, or the nouveau open source mvidia driver.

Most moderate graphic cards are going to be functional.
Getting every special feature to work is the problem. The fewer special features the less problems there will be.
The odd built-in video chips cause the most trouble because they could involve special interfaces designed by the board manufacturer, that they handle with a special windows driver.
Any board build for an AGP or Express slot will have to have a more general interface, but could still involve a special windows driver.

I have used nVidia, Matrox, Savage.

The Savage is the most trouble for me, it works with Huge kernel, but removing unused features causes drawing errors with the window decorations. It is only the X11 driver that has problems.

This question will likely get replies as to what card has worked for several people.
Your best action is to select some cards that appeal to you and then do a search for problems and reviews on Linux sites about those cards. Pick one that survives that process.

If it is nVidia, and you use it for OpenGL graphics on demanding games, you may have to use nVidia's closed Linux driver. Other cards will have similar problems.
There is no list that is up to date on this kind of information. The lists that I know of are about 10 years out of date.

Sorry, I dont know of any current list.

Best to avoid the ATI/AMD cards under HD 4XXX (4XXX has had its closed soruce drivers support ended). Not really a problem though, teh 4XXX cards are 4 years old now and the newer cards are better.

nVidia midrange cards should all be suported with the closed drivers, the open soruce drivers could still need work with the newest cards (GT6XX cards).

ATI is dead, dude! :) AMD/ATI video drivers, both open and closed source, have got a lot better than they were in the past.

I wouldnt touch a 8400GS now. Too many models, there are G86, G92 and GT218 verions. GT218 is the best of them.....but why risk gtting one of the older and hotter G86/G92 versions when you can get a G210 and know you will be getting a GT218 GPU.

AGP is dead, dude! :) PCIe (PCI'e'xpress) and AGP nVidia/ATI/AMD cards should run just fine with the open drivers (less features, less performance, less of a stuff around) or closed drivers. Apart from very old cards where support has ended. Or very new cards which probably wont have decent open source drivers yet and may not have closed drivers, or the closed dirvers may need a few more updates to get everything sorted. For 'moderately priced', normal use cards for use with linux its best to avoid the newest stuff out of the AMD or nVidia plants. Once they have been around for 6-18 months most problems will have been sorted.

This doesn't seem to be necessarily true anymore.

It might be true if you assume that you will be using the proprietary, binary blobs. However, if you want to avoid their shortcomings [1] and you consider the free and open source radeon and nouveau drivers, you will see that radeon performs way better than nouveau [2] [3], and supports openGL 3D acceleration very well (just avoid the 7000 series for now, look at the cards tested by Phoronix), while nouveau doesn't [4] [5]. The reason is that AMD/ATI is actively supporting the open source community by providing developer documentation for their hardware, while Nvidia doesn't and the nouveau driver is the result of reverse engineering (that's why Linus was pretty harsh on that topic [6]).

The open source radon driver might still be inferior in performance when compared to the binary blob, and your system will probably have to meet some requirements if you want to to get the most out of your card. On the other hand, it will not make the card obsolete when the manufacturer decides to stop supporting it. If you have an Nvidia card, and want openGL support, then your only choice is the binary blob: while it will probably work really well, when the company stops supporting the card you'll have to switch to nouveau, losing openGL capability, unless you can still run some legacy driver. [7]

Best regards,
Philip

Here's what I have and it all works fine on linux:
9500gt CentOS
ATI 6950 - ubuntu
ATI 5770,5870,6870 -ubuntu (bitcoin mining)

Haven't had any drivers issues that I have noticed. Maybe look at grabbing any of these cards. The 5770's are dated now but are super cheap used on ebay ($65-70).

Hello

I don't have a listing for you, but will say that I've never had a video card that didn't work under Linux. I should add that all my video cards have always had nvidia chipsets.

List of video cards compatible with Linux platform.
 

Thanks for all the help, every one of which is useful and sets me on a course out of complete ignorance to destinations to explore more exactly what would be appropriate for my needs. Thanks again.

Thanks so much for your to-the-point help. Based on your evaluation I have ordered from Newegg the "EVGA 01G-P3-1302-LR GeForce 8400 GS 1GB 64-bit DDR3 PCI Express 2.0 x16 HDCP Ready Low Profile Ready Video Card" for only $32.00.

Hello

I was returning to suggest EVGA as my own preferred brand, but see you've just ordered the same. Hope it works out well for you. Let us know how it goes...

Well, I suppose that is why I said that the short answer is to choose nvidia over amd/ati.
I am aware that amd.ati is supporting open souce, but at the same time they have dropped support for many of the older cards from their binary blob driver. Nvidia supports their cards longer, albeit with their binary blob, but it works well in my experience.
If amd/ati open source drivers evolve to the point that they are better supported and work better than the nvidia binary blob then I will happily switch, but until then I will use nvidia.

Hi tommcd - what I wanted to do with my post was to share some information about open source graphics drivers, providing some first-hand links that could help the OP in making his decision; it was not intended to criticize you in any fashion. :) In fact I had a very good experience with Nvidia myself, using the proprietary driver. However, recently I had to buy a new card and I decided that I wanted to use an open source driver with it. That's why this time I chose AMD, after checking once more the radeon page on the Xorg website: the latest driver is not perfect, but after some tweaking I got it to perform very well with my card (Northern Island family, 6000 series). To make it short, I preferred to have de facto long term open source support, better integration with the distribution and more stability, while losing some fps. Given that there are shortcomings on both sides, the final choice is up to you, based on what you care about.

All the best,
Philip

I have recently used both the geforce 210 and geforce gt 630 and both performed well with linux, as have all the nvidia cards i have owned over the past decade or so(using the nvidia driver).
If you are planning on buying an nvidia card, check the nvidia site, some of the older cards are no longer supported.