video cards

[Mark J. Dulcey]

Matthew Gillen wrote:
> My nvidia card from 2 years ago is flaking out on me (flickering the display
> for a while, then locking up my computer).  Once I removed the nvidia card
> and relied on the onboard video, everything was stable, so it must be the
> video card going bad.
> 
> So I'm wondering what the current state of video cards are for linux.  Is
> ATI finally back in the game or not?  I'm looking for something that is
> mid-range (it's replacing a Geforce 8600) to play games in windows (nwn2),
> and also be a mythtv frontend (in linux, with full HD playback).
> 
> And, since I've already been burned by this when they did their last
> naming-scheme change, what do the various numbers/card-names mean for ATI
> and Nvidia?  Nvidia seems to be going back to 3-digit numbers, which bugs
> me.  I figured out their 4-digit system the hard way: the most significant
> digit was the generation marker, and the *third* digit indicated how
> high-end the card was (an 6800 was higher performance than a 7300).  So how
> do the 3-digit ones compare to, say, a 9800GT?

First, I'm rather sour on ATI right now because of their dropping Linux 
support for their older cards. If you have anything older than a Radeon 
HD2000 series card their current Linux drivers don't support it. (That 
means there are computers that are STILL IN PRODUCTION that have no 
current driver support!!) And since the current ones are the ONLY ones 
with support for the new version of X Windows, you're stuck; you can't 
upgrade to Ubuntu Jaunty or Fedora 11 or any other distro that uses that 
new version of X. If you don't care about 3D performance there is a 
decent open source driver for the older cards, but its 3D performance is 
pitiful; I tried Second Life on my ATI-based laptop (running the Karmic 
beta, which has a newer open source driver than Jaunty does, from the 
live CD) and suffered a 75% drop in frame rate. So I'm leaving that 
system on Intrepid for now.

ATI does seem to be doing a better job on their drivers for the newer 
cards, though they don't always manage same-day releases. The entire 
HD3000 and HD4000 series is supported; I wouldn't count on the brand-new 
HD5000 series cards working yet, but they will be soon.

Meanwhile, NVidia continues as before; no decent open source drivers 
(there is one but it's even more lacking in 3D capability than the ATI 
driver) but a good closed source driver that supports all their cards. 
The GForce GTS 250 is a renamed 9800GTS so its performance is exactly 
the same - 10-20% faster than a 9800GT. The higher numbered cards in the 
GTS 200 series are based on the next generation GPU; a GTS 260 is 
probably about twice as fast as a 9800GT and they progress upward from 
there. NVidia has a GTS 300 series in the works but it's not out yet, 
and I expect the drivers for it will be shaky for the first few months 
based on experience with past generations of NVidia hardware. I think 
the G 100 series are downclocked mobile versions of the 9000 series; 
you'd have to check out the specs on NVidia.com to figure out which is 
comparable to which.

Most video cards have at least a 3 year warranty, and in the case of 
NVidia 8000 and 9000 series cards it might even get extended because of 
the known manufacturing problems with those GPUs. So make sure to 
contact your video card manufacturer and see if your card is covered.