[NBLUG/talk] Video Card suggestions

troy fryman at sonic.net
Tue Feb 10 11:40:04 PST 2004


On Mon, Feb 09, 2004 at 09:55:40PM -0800, Mark Street wrote:
> Ah Hell, I am still on the fence.  Maybe I will just close my eyes and pick 
> one....  Everything else was a breeze....  with video cards everybody is 
> using everybody else's chipset, you never know if the off brand card will 
> work with the drivers from the chip manufacturer for Linux.  Maybe off the 
> shelf is best with video.

If it uses an Nvidia chipset, then it will work with Nvidia's Linux
drivers, no matter the manufacturer.  Mfg's who use faster video ram
will get you a card than can be clocked faster, and that's about it.
For me, picking a video card is a almost a no brainer -- whatever nvidia
card is currently at the price/performance sweet spot is what I'm
getting.  It's not a complete no-brainer because Nvidia has the
deceptive habit of marking their cards with misleading names.  For
instance, the geforce 4 mxNNN cards are really somewhere between a
high-end geforce 2 and a low-end geforce 3 in performance.  Basically,
stay away from anything with 'mx' in its name.  As for mfg's, my last 3
cards have been either Gainward or Leadtek branded, (both are generally
overclocking friendly) and I've been very happy with all of them. 

Now, if you care about the fact that Nvidia's proprietary drivers will
taint the kernel, then you'll need to look elsewhere...

-troy




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