Yet another "Which graphic card to choose?" thread

[plafuro]

Hi all,

OK, ok, i'm sure you hardware gurus are fed up with this kind of questions, but i'm just going to ask again:

My old video card has passed out and i have the oportunity to choose among one of these:

Xpertvision GeForce 7600GT| 256MB | AGP 8X | 1xDVI | 1xVGA
Gigabyte GV N76G256D-RH | GF 7600 GS | 256 MB
ASUS N7600GS SILENT/HTD | GF 7600 GS | 256 MB
Sapphire RADEON X1650 PRO | Radeon X1650 Pro | 512 MB

I Always had video cards with radeon chipsets, and it worked just alright (well with all the tweaking needed for the fglrx drivers to work...) and i don't know if i should give nvidia an oportunity .

I use all the beryl eyecandy and until now i couldn't play my 3D games on the same session and had to start a gnome session with the non xgl/aiglx xserver... nvidia cards don't have that problem do they?

Well, thank you all in advance :)

[SmSpillaz]

Hi all,

OK, ok, i'm sure you hardware gurus are fed up with this kind of questions, but i'm just going to ask again:

My old video card has passed out and i have the oportunity to choose among one of these:

Xpertvision GeForce 7600GT| 256MB | AGP 8X | 1xDVI | 1xVGA
Gigabyte GV N76G256D-RH | GF 7600 GS | 256 MB
ASUS N7600GS SILENT/HTD | GF 7600 GS | 256 MB
Sapphire RADEON X1650 PRO | Radeon X1650 Pro | 512 MB

I Always had video cards with radeon chipsets, and it worked just alright (well with all the tweaking needed for the fglrx drivers to work...) and i don't know if i should give nvidia an oportunity .

I use all the beryl eyecandy and until now i couldn't play my 3D games on the same session and had to start a gnome session with the non xgl/aiglx xserver... nvidia cards don't have that problem do they?

Well, thank you all in advance :)



Go with the GeForce 7600 with 256 RAM. Launch CompComm with the NVidia server. There is no chance that you will get black windows unless you never close stuff ;-)

[plafuro]

Thanks for the quick reply, SmSpillaz ;)

So, one vote for nvidia...

[Jupiter]

ease of use, compatabilty and great performance go with nvidia

[CalcProgrammer1]

I have a Radeon X1600Pro (Diamond was who made it but it shows up as ATi), and generally I love this card. It performs well on gaming and general 3d effects.

The problem isn't that ATi's cards are stupid or lacking in features, it's that ATi doesn't seem too concerned with making decent Linux drivers (and although they are supposed to work without problems, the Windows ones have their share of bugs too, but not in the video itself, just the control panel). The older Radeons (pre-X1k series) use the Open Source "ati" or "radeon" drivers, which I think are supported in Beryl without too much pain to set up, but the new ones have not yet been added to these driver packages, and you must rely on ATi's proprietary "fglrx" package. Although 3d games work in fglrx, some key components are missing, such as AIGLX, and you won't be able to run Beryl without installing Xgl, and you won't be able to use GL apps while Beryl is running (to play Jedi Academy in WINE, I must log out, select a GNOME session, log back in, then play, then log back into Xgl to get Beryl back).

[ianni67]

I have a Radeon X1600Pro (Diamond was who made it but it shows up as ATi), and generally I love this card. It performs well on gaming and general 3d effects.

The problem isn't that ATi's cards are stupid or lacking in features, it's that ATi doesn't seem too concerned with making decent Linux drivers (and although they are supposed to work without problems, the Windows ones have their share of bugs too, but not in the video itself, just the control panel). The older Radeons (pre-X1k series) use the Open Source "ati" or "radeon" drivers, which I think are supported in Beryl without too much pain to set up, but the new ones have not yet been added to these driver packages, and you must rely on ATi's proprietary "fglrx" package. Although 3d games work in fglrx, some key components are missing, such as AIGLX, and you won't be able to run Beryl without installing Xgl, and you won't be able to use GL apps while Beryl is running (to play Jedi Academy in WINE, I must log out, select a GNOME session, log back in, then play, then log back into Xgl to get Beryl back).


With Xgl, I don't need to log out to run an OpenGL application: I just run it on DISPLAY 0
[code:fd67d]DISPLAY=:0 glxgears[/code:fd67d], for example.
I loose the window decoration for that program but it runs okay and no need to logout.