ATI or NVidia?
 

I'm looking forward to buy a new graphic card.

So, what would you suggest, an ATI or NVidia-based??

Which of them are more 'compatible' with GNU/Linux; which are easier to install?

It depends.

On the Open Source (good) side. . .
ATi all the way, most of the Radeon chips support 3D acceleration.
The Open Source nVidia drivers only support 2D.

On the closed source (evil) side. . .
ATi has good drivers and are really starting to pick up in their Linux support.
nVidia also has good drivers but I have read about more problems from nVidia's drivers then with the ones from ATi.

Yep I agree.. I've always had an easier time with ATI.

Even back with the Geforces, I had a few hiccups when probing and sometimes drivers didnt work as promised.

LOL, if you do a forum search........you'll find that ATI drivers have
lots of problems in the 2.6x kernels...........

Go with nVidia.......the drivers may be closed source.....but
at least they work!!

Ohh.. forgot.. I'm talking about older versions.. nothing that came out the past 1.5- 2 years!!

Guess I shouldnt have said anything!

Definently nVidia. ATi drivers still arent very good (especially with WineX), but the nVidia ones are perfect.

Wow, I am surprised by the "go with ATI because it is easier" response. Just do a simple search and you will see that more people have trouble with ATI driver than with Nvidia drivers. At the moment Nvidia is way more linux friendly. That doesn't mean that ATI doesn't work, it will just take longer if there is a problem. They are getting a lot better, that is for sure.
Right now - go with Nvidia - performance seems to be a little better, support seems to be a little better, and there installer is much easier to use.

I agree go with ATI in my experience it proforms better, and like slackMeUp said supports 3D acceleration

Yes, but the OSS ATI Driver acceleration is poor.

In a nutshell, buy an nVidia card. And I'm an ATI devotee :)

Hehe.. it's not like the nVidia OSS driver even does 3D anyway.

Like I said:

For the Open Source side of things, ATi is the way to go.

Some people only want to use OSS drivers, because using nVidia's or ATi's binary drivers taints the kernel and your system from being fully open source and free.

If you want to play heavy 3D games, get a console, or worse yet install Windows.

ok,

thanks for your response.
i think i'll buy a nvidia-card

greets


:cool: :cool:

Good to see that you came to a choice. . .

Have fun with your new card.

Drivers from Nvidia are not closed source. In Nvidia's documentation you can extract the binary file and you will then get source code. Nvidia is better when it comes to OpenGL. When you are running DirectX programs ATI is better. LINUX uses OpenGL to render objects in 3D. LINUX does not use DirectX.