Hi,

What is the best possible video card for use with Linux? I want to run the latest games (COD4, Bioshock, UT3, etc..) but I've heard that it's difficult to get a driver for a hot vid card on Linux.

For example, is there a linux driver for the NVIDIA GeForce 8800 Ultra? How about an ATI Radeon 3800? If not, what's the best available card that will work on Linux? Does the distribution matter?


Here's the current NVIDIA cards:
http://www.nvidia.com/object/graphic...s_buy_now.html

Here's the ATI cards:
http://ati.amd.com/products/home-office.html

5incerely,
5oup

It's not so much a matter of the drivers (nvidia has the best support - don't care what anybody says) as that there is no DirectX in Linux.You'll have to resort to wine or cedega for most games and that is a mixed bag.

As the Linux ATI drivers are quite crappy (and ATI is a crappy company too, from my experiences with their crap), I would get an nvidia card. If you want the status of nvidia drivers and support on linux see their readme:
http://us.download.nvidia.com/XFree8...ppendix-a.html

Also, note that there is no directx on Linux, it is a product marketed by and for Window$ only. Now, wine does have some support for it, but not perfect support and certainly not the latest, and cedega supposedly has significantly better support.

There is no doubt that Nvidia has historically had better driver support than ATI. OTOH, ATI has open-sourced their drivers, and some people say they are gaining fast. Probably, the best place to get current status info is on the Phoronix web site. If I was buying new cards today, I'd probably go with Nvidia, but I think there is no reason for ATI card owners to despair.

Specific message to the OP ... If games are your biggest consideration, stick with Windows.

:/

Of course we can always take what the masses are shovelled, but like many on this forum, I'm trying to shake free of Windows.

I've switched to Open Office for productivity, switched all my email addresses to web-based so that I'm not dependent on any email package, and I've substituted the GIMP for Photoshop. Development and other tools are better in Linux, so games are the last holdout for me. They're the only reason that I boot into Windows. If I can find a Linux vid card that gives me decent FPS in the latest games then I can delete XP and use the partition for something else.

If you want to buy an nvidia card, buy at least a 7000 series card, any lower and you may have problems playing the latest games.

im not really a big games player these days, but ive been playing 'Sauerbraten' over the past week, good fun for half an hour, i forgot how much fun a FPS can be. ive got an nvidia geforce 5700fx, so its a fairly old card, and using the nvdia driver from their site, works quite well.

id still say 'xtris' is my favorite game tho, but with the nospeedup option, so its mellow

I am looking for the same Solution now. Do not trust what ATI and AMD say. They do not work on open source drivers for Radeon, it was just a trick to get more customers. They did indeed lie about help to develop open source drivers.

So, there is only one variant for Linux - it is Nvidia.

The problem then is that nvidia does exactly the same thing as ATI they refuse to help in any way in the development of FLOSS 3D accelerated drivers or even decent 2D drivers, except they make higher quality cards and drivers, so I would go with them. One day, far in the future, nouveau may come out with a nice 3D accelerated nvidia driver, which will probably be better than the one nvidia provides, so far they have a 2D driver faster than the one provided by nvidia, seems nvidia disabled some features in their release of the open-source 2D accel driver, and obfuscated the code so no-one could figure it out without reverse-engineering.