Current Video Card winning horse?

[Shlomi Fish]

Hi Ira,

On Tue, 9 Oct 2012 12:44:47 +0200
Ira Abramov <Lists-Linux-IL at ira.abramov.org> wrote:

> Ahoy maties!
> 
> The time has come for me to upgrade some of my antique hardware, and I
> have ordered myself a nice mega-monitor with the ass-whooping
> resolution of 2550X1440. This means the old VGA on board won't do and
> I need to look at higher-end stuff (DVI-D at minimum). I googled this
> issue quite a bit, limiting google for results only from the last
> month and still I'm not sure who do we not-hate this month (I suppose
> I'm looking at ATI and nVidia)
> 
> Requirements:
> - have it play nice with Xorg (Debian/Ubuntu).
> - preferably FOSS drivers, but only if rock solid.

If you care about FOSS drivers, then you should definitely avoid all Nvidia
cards. Nvidia has been incredibly hostile towards FOSS and has given little
support to the nouveau project for creating FOSS Nvidia drivers. See:

http://www.petitiononline.com/nvfoss/petition.html

Recently the built-in "nv" driver was discontinued, and Nvidia recommended
people to use the VESA driver until they can install the nvidia driver (without
mentioning nouveau which is also an potion)

On the other hand, Intel and ATI/AMD have been very supportive and released
specifications and helped the development of open-source drivers. 

Due to many hangups I had with an nvidia card, I have started nicknaming Nvidia
"hang-vidia".

I suggest that we as open-source enthusiasts vote with our wallets and boycott
Nvidia. 

Otherwise, I am a happy user of a laptop with ATI Mobility Radeon™ HD
4570 card, and a Core i3 desktop machine with the “Intel Corporation
Sandy Bridge Integrated Graphics Controller (rev 09)” and they both
work fine. As far as I know, the Intel Graphics adapters are not shipped
separately, so that leaves us with ATI.

> - preferably a GPU that supports CUDA/OpenCL (though the only client I
>   have for it ATM is BOINC
> https://boinc.berkeley.edu/wiki/GPU_computing )

CUDA is a proprietary nvidia technology. Recent ATI cards have support for
OpenCL with the proprietary fglrx drivers, and there's ongoing work for support
for that in the FOSS drivers.

> - preferably dual-port, so I can send a signal to a secondary
>   screen/projector.

I recall the ATI HD 2600 Pro card being dual-port, so I assume most other recent
cards will be too.

> - No special gamer mad features needed. The most 3D I'll do with it is
>   probably Desktop Cube :)

Well, desktop effects and most games I tried work fine on both my cards. (Some
games require enabling this - http://people.freedesktop.org/~cbrill/libtxc_dxtn/ ,
but otherwise work fine.).

Regards,

	Shlomi Fish

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