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Re: Graphics cards with Free drivers



Lennart Sorensen wrote:
Well it certainly works with 2.6.24 which is the kernel currently in
unstable.  Until 2.6.25 enters unstable I won't have a clue if the
nvidia driver works with it, nor will I particularly care. :)
The nvidia-breaking change was before 2.6.24, so there is hope.
I have to use a recent kernel for reasons other than nvidia.
Maybe you are lucky having not exactly the same hardware as me then.
There are many nvidia cards after all.

That is certainly true.  I have a 6600GT and an 8600GT at home, and a
5200FX and 6200 at work.  So far so good.

That could happen - but I don't think so when all trouble go away by
using the vesa X driver. Vesa having useable (although not fantastic) performance
also means I probably aren't using the GPU all that hard when it locks the
machine.

When you enable 3D mode the power consumption of a video card can go up
by quite a lot (close to 100W on high end cards).  So 2D and hence VESA
could work great with a crap power supply, but 3D mode would fail.
That argument is fine _if_ I use the 3D stuff heavily - such as some game
with a decent number of fps. But I did ordinary work using X, lightweight
stuff that vesa can handle too. Nvidia's driver probably use more gpu features
than vesa, but the amount of work needed for a plain desktop with
no eye candy is minimal. I don't think that does much for power consumption.
No continous repainting of the screen, just using the gpu a bit to help out with
the occational rectangle or text string.


Helge Hafting


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