[wellylug] Hardware opinions

Wood Brent pcreso at pcreso.com
Sat Aug 30 16:09:42 NZST 2003


--- Robin Hinde <rjhinde at nzpcaws.computers.org.nz> wrote:
> On Fri, 29 Aug 2003 09:33, Jonathan Harker wrote:
> > This is no longer true. ATI in fact cooperate with the open source
> > community by releasing specs. nVidia refuse to, and continue to develop
> > closed-source drivers instead. So actually, ATI is a better choice for
> > Linux, since the drivers are potentially better written and supported, and
> > also for ideological reasons. This is why XFree86 comes with full 3D
> > support for ATI Radeon but not for nVidia cards.
> >
> > <bait>
> > Besides, ATI Radeons are much cooler cards!  :-)
> > </bait>
> 
> I'll second that - I bought an ATI Radeon 7500LE because it was the fastest 
> PCI video card I could buy, with the advantage of not needing a fan ;-) Cool.
> 
> Although it was a problem for me to get going, the card itself is well 
> supported  by XFree86, although TV out is probably never going to be 
> supported properly due to the DCMA and Macrovision; apparently information on
> 
> how to get TVout working cannot be made available to the development 
> community.


Um. I've sold plenty of cards with both chipsets, run both Linux & Windows.
They both work fibe & there is not really a lot of difference in performance.
You get what you pay for, & at the high end they tend to take turns for the
crown. While ATi protagonists cite the virtue of ATi's open source
collaboration, as the above msg mentions, this only goes so far.

So for Linux you have the choice of ATi with incomplete but OS drivers, or
nVidia with a choice of adequate 2D OS drivers or pretty functional but
proprietary 3D drivers. I have found nVidia to generally work better with Linux
(tho Matrox is another option :-) than ATi. If you purchase a commercial Linux
(not the dowmloadable versions) some distro's include the proprietary drivers,
& will automagically install these for you. 

Overall, they all work pretty well, the philosophical argument supporting ATi
gets a bit specious though. If I support a Linux distro by purchasing it,
should I not use the nVidia drivers coz they are proprietary? 

Advice, worth what I'm charging for it, get the cheaper of the cards which
meets your needs, & download & install the latest drivers via the ATi or nVidia
websites.

If you are shopping in NZ, see the graphics card range from www.bdt.co.nz. They
sell (only to dealers, but you can still see RRP & specs) Leadtek (nVidia),
Gigabyte (ATi) & Matrox cards. It's a handy place to make comparisons. 


Cheers



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