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Re: Best Video Card



On Sat, Apr 15, 2006 at 01:28:09PM -0400, Manaen Schlabach wrote:
> Well I am finally thinking about upgrading my tired old radeon 7500. 
> I know that ATI and Nvidia both have decent cards but their drivers
> are completely closed.

Their official drivers are completely closed, there are open-source
drivers available (as you probably know).

> I know and understand that companies must
> protect some of their trade secrets but I would like very much to
> support a graphics manufacturer who opens their specs as much as
> possible to opensource and free software developers. 

Very noble ambitions.  I'll admit that I don't know much about the
openness of graphics cards because I haven't bought one since I truly
made the switch to a fully linux setup.

> Having said
> that, what are everyones thoughts about which card that might be?  At
> one time it was Matrox are they still the most GNU/Linux friendly out
> there or has someone else taken the lead on that? 

That's what I've heard, but it's probably old information.

> I wouldn't mind
> supporting ATi/nVidia if they at least opened up their specs on old
> cards (say older than 3 years)

I don't know if it's via openning of specs, but you can get 3d
acceleration on an ATI Radeon 9200 or below, IIRC.  I don't know about
nVidia.

> do they really have that much to lose
> by doing so?

I wouldn't think so...

-- 
Christopher Nelson -- chris@cavein.org
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Rocky's Lemma of Innovation Prevention:
	Unless the results are known in advance, funding agencies will
	reject the proposal.



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