[wellylug] video card choice

[Peter Jones]

-----Original Message-----
From: Brent Wood [mailto:pcreso at pcreso.com]
Sent: Wednesday, 17 January 2007 1:43 p.m.
To: richard at walnut.gen.nz; Wellington Linux Users Group
Subject: Re: [wellylug] video card choice



--- Richard Hector <richard at walnut.gen.nz> wrote:

> Hi all,
> 
> Any suggestions on linux-friendly video cards?
> 
> I want free drivers, PCIe, for a new AMD 64-bit machine, and ability to
> do dual-head. Does anything exist?

I've generally found the nvidia binary drivers work fine with a dual head
card.
I know a couple of systems which used Matrox dual head cards.

So either should be OK for you.

I believe there is a techical difference between one dual head card & two
cards. I assume you are talking about a single dual head card?

The issue with nvidia (IMHO) is a philosophical one. The open source driver
is
limited. The nvidia binary driver works well, & nvidia seems to take Linux
support seriously. They have said why they don't (or can't) release the
driver
as open source. If you will only use open code, then you may have a problem,
but if your mind is as open as the code you may prefer, you may decide to
use
use it anyway :-)

ATI also have binary drivers, but I've never had much success getting them
to
work fully. Perhaps an indication of my lack of understanding of X Windows
rather than anything negative about ATI.

The open driver projects for nvidia & ATI are claiming to be close to
effective
these days, even though 3D acceleration & such is unreliable.


My 02c anyway....


   Cheers,

      Brent Wood


I've got a Radeon 9600 working fine with Suse 10, using the drivers provided
by Novell.
You have to register with Novell before you can get the drivers but there's
no charge.
Haven't tried the dual head function yet, but it appears to be supported.

Peter



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