Re: Preferred video cards for 3D?
<quote who="Michael Jinks">
> Hi all.
>
> We're in the process of drafting a proposal for upgrading the Debian
> machines in our public computing lab, as well as replacing our last
> remaining SGI machine with a Debian box. The SGI in particular is mostly
> used for scientific visualization applications.
>
> I know this question gets asked on a regular basis, but given a need for
> quick and clear 3D imaging (OpenGL, usually), is there currently a clear
> preference for which video card to use?
my opinion:
if you want raw performance, with somewhat mature drivers and not
have to worry about having to run the bleeding edge - nvidia is
the king. there is the issue of them using a closed source kernel
module though. Depends on how you feel about using them. I avoided nvidia
for a long time as the driver matured, but for me it is almost
rock solid on my 2.2.19 kernel. I think i have only had 2 problems,
one where if I kept swapping back and forth between console and X
the console would lockup eventually(Since i do this so rarely it's
not an issue), the other was I had some kind of crash, and all of
a sudden X could not detect my video card anymore. its like it was
gone.
if you want to work with a company that is slightly more open with
the community try ATI, their performance is very good but I believe
they too use a closed source kernel module. I haven't tried ATI
since Mach64 .....
3DFx Voodoo3 series are nice cards with fully opensource drivers, much
slower then ATI or Nvidia though. I read recently that nvidia revoked
a lot of the opensource code given to the XFree team so the status
of the drivers may of dramatically changed since I was a serious
3DFx user(about a year ago). When I did use them on a day to day
basis it was VERY solid. I played unreal tournament(openGL) almost
every day for weeks on end without a single problem.
Then there are the real slow Matrox G400 series, which at least for
2D is the most stable card I've ever used. I plan to buy more from
them soon.
There are faster cards..but I think they only have good drivers
through AcceleratedX(www.xinside.com), last i checked, the AcceleratedX
3D drivers were not debian-compadible, and I don't think they had
plans at the time to fix them sadly. I use AcceleratedX on Solaris/x86
and some freebsd systems.
If i were making the decision, and cost was an issue I would probably
go for Nvidia cards(probably Geforce3, geforce4 is a little too new
for my taste, i use a Geforce2 MX at home)
nate
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