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Best Supported Video Card For Linux/XFree86?
Crixus asks: "I'm about to build a dual CPU box on which to run Linux. Currently, what is the best supported video card under the latest Xfree86 releases. Which card(s) can I buy that would be obvious 'can't go wrong' choices?" This question pops in to the submissions bin quite a bit, even though we have discussed this issue several times in the past. However times change, and as the years pass the technologies change. What does this year offer in the way of compatible video cards for XFree and Linux? Those of you who have this question might also want to check out AnandTech's October Video Card Comparison.
The Matrox Millenium cards have been the only cards that I've had 100% support and 0% trouble from. I've built many high-end systems (both Intel and Alpha) and ran different OSes (Linux, NT, W95, BeOS, Solaris). The Matrox cards are wonderfully engineered and are totally supported by most every h/w and s/w vendor out there. Go for it. You won't be dissapointed.
According to Matrox, the binary only part cannot be open sourced due to third party licenses, as well as Macrovision implementation - which cannot be revealed yet.
However, they're planning to release more documents for their cards..
I have Matrox G400 here (Dual head) and I Geforce at work. Although the NVidia driver is way faster in 3D - it crashes a lot, and leave you with a graphical screen - and you have to reboot in order to exit this mode..
Sigh...
Hetz (Heunique)
Nop.
The binary only part of matrox drivers has now been compiled on Alpha also, so Alpha users can use Dual head now..
Hetz (Heunique)
You say multihead there in XFree86 4.0.2, does that include those single G400 cards with multihead on it? It'd be wonderful to throw out one of these cards I currently use. :)
I recently got a new box with a nvidia card, so I thought I'd throw in my $0.02 here.
/dev/nv* when it booted up. I assume that that means I should get off my ass and build the kernel module that I downloaded huh? I'm guessing that that will solve my problems.
With X 3.3.6, the voodoo 3 2000 and 3500 (which I have direct experience with) work great. They are fast, provide nice 3d through glide, and quake3 play works wonderfully.
Ditto with X4. Using the tdfx driver, and the tdfx and agppart kernel modules gave me the same performance (and fps) under debian's X 4.0.1.
I upgraded to a K7-900 and nVidia GeForce 2 GTS (32mb) card and have had a chance to play with it. The card dropped into X4 just perfectly, and no great pains were gone through to get it all working.
I have yet to get q3 going under it though. This is party my laziness however. The provided nvidia drivers work fine, but when starting quake, there is serious stuttering (think switching to software gl emulation). I downloaded and threw in the nvidia drivers off their page, and then I was bitched at that the system couldn't find
However, if anyone has any advice to a gamer about what kernels are supported/patched for the nvidia drivers, or which files should be downloaded/installed, I'd appreciate it.
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I would say my voodoo3 2000 is a very nice card. One of the first supported by Xfree86 and OpenGL/mesa GLX GLU.
I would bet that the newest Voodoo5 is a damned decent card on any linux box.
Just my $0.02 worth
It does depend a lot on what you're doing. If you
want a nice card for driving big monitors, and getting work done, along with the occasional 3D game, I'd say go with a Matrox G400. They're really nice, well supported, and for all the features that work now and will work someday (DVD), they're a good deal. I'd stay away from the 450s for now, just because they're still rather new, and from the reviews I've seen they only really beat the 400 in price. I've had a Millennium 1, 2, G100, G200 and now a G400 and all
have worked wonderfully under linux.
theres no hardware gamma correction with matrox cards in linux. thats why i went with ati (r128) instead. it works in xf4 with some glitches, like switching text mode problems, but havent tried xf-4.0.2 with it yet.
You just have to use XFree86 4.0.x with the NVidia binary drivers.. the current version they have released is 0.95.
Apparently, the GeForce2MX won't work right if you use the standard 'nv' driver that come with XFree86 4.0.1, but with the 0.95 X driver and the matching GLX driver, the GeF2MX works great, and has very impressive performance in Unreal Tournament to boot.
- jon
Ganymede, a GPL'ed metadirectory for UNIX
I have a VD3000 in my box and it has given me no problems at all. I am really happy with it because it just does what I want and I have not had to mess with it at all.
I love stacking my barbecues in the shed at the end of summer - you can't beat a bit of grill on grill action.
Installation under BeOS:
1 install sound card and Ethernet card
2 Boot
Finished
--
"Science will win because it works." - Stephen Hawking
I've had a Geforce DDR since this summer, with mixed results.
With the default 2.2 kernel, XFree86 4.0 setup I had at the time, following instructions I got the NVidia drivers compiled and set up pretty easily. Hell, if you're running an untouched Red Hat (or some others) without even recompiling the kernel, then you can pretty much download their RPM drivers, change a line in XF86Config, and restart X.
Sure, there's something that made me uneasy with using binary-only drivers and loading a half-megabyte kernel module, but oh well. Oh, and did I mention the annoying bugs? There's the "X hosed if a 3D app gets killed suddenly bug", and the "horrible graphics glitches when switching between multiple X servers" bug, and the "if anything goes wrong, your text consoles will be permanently black until you reboot, even if restarting X works fine" bug, and well, you get the picture. Some of their problems got a little better in the 5 revisions of their Linux drivers I've seen. Some didn't. Will the rest of them get fixed, including the "we'll have this fixed in a few days messages" on their months old Linux FAQ? I don't know, but I don't like that the answer depends solely on the NVidia Marketing Department's appraisal of my value as a future customer.
But anyway, X was pretty stable, Quake III was damn fast, and life was good.
Then I decided to try 2.4, because of better support for my motherboard's onboard sound among other reasons. The Nvidia kernel module wouldn't compile against test7, test8,... I uninstalled all the binary stuff, switched to the open source 2D drivers, and forsake 3D support outside of Windows for months. Fortunately, the beneficial effect this had on my GPA prevented the loss from angering me greatly.
Finally, someone came out with a patch to compile the kernel module against 2.4.0-test11, and stuff ran great again with the NVidia drivers. Same niggling bugs, but 3D was golden.
Then came 2.4.0-test12. Now NVidia's drivers compile but don't work, so I'm back to the open source stuff. Of course, when I mean don't work, I mean *really* don't work: If I run X with the closed nvidia driver, it fails and thrashes the screen until the next (blind or remotely logged in) reboot. If I run X with the open nv driver, it works, but I don't get 3D, and if I were to foolishly run an app linked to the binary NVidia GLX drivers (like 3D Xscreensaver hacks, before I turned them off), it crashes the kernel.
That's right. Do you want blazing fast 3D support, or do you want months of uptime? NVidia's drivers remind me of software I had to fix at work last summer: use them in exactly the situations that the original coders tested with, and you're gold. Try something that should be within the design spec, but is still out of the ordinary, and down it goes. You can debug code by understanding what can go wrong and preventing it, or you can debug it by running it, fixing whatever leads to a crash/error, and repeating it until you stop seeing crashes. nvidia_drv.o smells like a product of the latter method.
I've had some problems (including crashes that resemble the black screen Linux crashes, but with no known cause) with the card under Windows too, but not too much more than the problems I have with everything under Windows. I had an epiphany the other day, realizing that if just one binary-only third party driver under Linux can suck like this, what happens in Windows where *every* driver is code that neither I nor Microsoft gets to see or debug? I almost pity the Windows OS developers now; they probably get blamed for three times the crashes they're actually responsible for.
Anyway: if you want blazing fast 3D, there's really no choice but NVidia. Their hardware is a generation ahead of ATI and 3dfx, and two ahead of everyone else out there. If you want a card that's excellent at everything else, and are willing to trade excellent Linux drivers for mediocre 3D acceleration, go with Matrox.
What are you talking about? The nvidia drivers are very fast in linux, slower then windows by a couple fps, dri doesn't mean shit, its just an extra layer of stuff that would make the drivers SLOWER. nvidia has their own direct rendering system.
I have a Voodoo3 3000 AGP/16MB in my Linux desktop machine right now. The drivers are great, all resolutions supported and great 3D support. Beyond that, I wanna say you can get a Voodoo3 3000 AGP for about $80 now.
Perl - $Just @when->$you ${thought} s/yn/tax/ &couldn\'t %get $worse;
I have a Voodoo3 2000 AGP in my card at home.
Works great under XF 3.3.6 and only ran me about 60 bucks when I bought it.
well you have to remember that issues that used to be associated w/cards are no longer a real issue b/c of the softbooting of the BIOS by Xfree4. I have an AGP Voodoo3 3k and a PCI Cirrus Logic 5446 and it works fine w/dual heads.
I've been running a multihead system (Riva 128 AGP & Voodoo 3000 PCI) for a while and I really like it. I was suprised when the two cards came up togethor without any real effort (XFree86 -configure rocks BTW), however, when I recompiled my 2.2.x kernel to include support for SMP the machine would lock about half the time I tried to start X for the first time since the machine had been rebooted. After I got X started it was no problem until the next reboot. I suspect there's some sort of problem in the int10 code for softbooting the second monitor with SMP. Oh well. I just upgraded to debian woody and compiled a 2.4 test kernel and the problem seems to be fixed, I havn't had any problems softbooting the second card since.
Just my two cents, someone else might find them interesting or useful.
I came. I saw. I coded.
so, let me get this straight, you're comparing the install of a whole line of video cards with a specific video card / motherboard / sound card combination, that from bad driver composition makes it a pain and making it look like Windows 2000 is inferior because of it. I'm sorry if I find that a bit of a weak argument if you're trying to go for the Linux is better than Windows Rally Chant. I mean, I've had my share of incompatibilities and driver peculiarities, but I rarely blame the os as much as I blame the driver writers and component manufacturers, mainly I'll blame or praise the os for the ease of actually instaling the drivers, or the ease or figuring out a problem, and for the most part I do have to say that Linux can be quite daunting in that respect.
matguy
matguy(.com)
There is no choice for a good video card. There are tons of choices. And even quite old ones.
For a 3D, generally NVidia cards will go. Specially if you wanna play the few, unfortunately, OpenGL games that go on Linux. However if you are doing some thing like scientific work where you need some tough 3D stuff, forget about TNTs and GeForces. They are good, fast, but the NVidia's hacks are miserable when you come out of the game arena. Conflicts happen, frequently you fall into segfaults and more curious, NVidias are horribly slow with some apps. Well, it's NVidia's fault, some standards should be followed anyway. In the "scientific" case, even a Voodoo3 will do a much better job rather than the latest GeForce. Maybe others will do the bad work but I didn't test any.
And if your taste are 2D graphics, then things get worser. NVidia and late 3Dfx make only an average quality 2D system. They work relatively fast but quality is HORRIBLE. Well, if you have something to do with design. The more professional you are the worse it comes. In this case even many modern AGP cards get 0 in comparation to their old PCI sisters. Till now people use Diamond's like FireGL for graphics, as colours are much more perfect on them than its modern counterparts. Only recently I saw one ATI Rage AGP card where I could get right into design tasks without thinking too much about how the thing is set up. On NVidia I always get things wrong. On Voodoo I always curse their reddish mess.
So you may try to get an "ideal card". Ok, my question: What you wanna do?
And no, the current cards suck in 2-D speed
Are you running a 300dpi monitor or something? Jesus, the current cards are fast enough in 2d, quality is much more important.
Scuttlemonkey is a troll
Agreed. Since we're on the ATI subject, I've got an All In Wonder 128 card (the 16 MB version, not the Pro/32MB one).
OpenGL support does exist by default in XFree86 4.0, but it's quite slow. I get 50-60 fps with Windows on my Celeron 400, but only 35-40 fps in Linux. When explosions come in Quake 3 I actually see what I call the "webcam effect".
Video capture is out of the question, of course, since there's no software for it. There's a program called xatitv that works well, but it hasn't been updated in about 5 months, is quite beta and doesn't enable bilinear filtering on the TV image, giving you the 'line effect' when the image moves sideways. (Remember that PAL/NTSC are interlaced)
2D support is pretty good, but what card can't handle that nowadays?
In any case, stay away from ATI if you want to play 3D games in Linux.
[before someone comments on it: XFree 4.0.2 gave me a 5% speed increase in exchange for a very unstable server]
Flavio
Actually, it only happens all the time if you don't know what you're doing. As soon as you understand the finer points of partitioning with FAT/NTFS4/NTFS, MBRs, and installation order, it only needs done once.
I started with a 95/NT4 dual boot, then upgraded to Win98, the took NT4 to 2000, then wiped out 98 and put WinME on that partition. And I have a copper-heatsinked GeForce2, and play a mean Barbarian or Paladin in D2, so you can consider me a gamer; I support a corporation full of NT4-based domains for a living so I guess you can consider me an office guy.
It works fine.
And to stay on-topic, My Linux box is running a very nice VLB ATI card with 1meg of VRAM under RH7.0 to proxy my DSL to the iMac and the PC. Price? The cost of some dinner for the guy that gave me the PC and helped me set up the firewall. :)
SlashSigTheorem: Humorous, Political, Critical, Constructive- If you have a
I'll let you make up your mind on that issue.
If you're interested in why NVidia's drivers are closed-source, I would recommend reading this brief interview of an nvidia developer.
i guess you're not a fan of porn. if you've been on the internet for 7 years, how could you have avoided it?
my choice for best video card under linux, anything by matrox.
Why read the article when I can just make up a snap judgement?
"The card performs very well in windows (200+fps easily in q3a)" I doubt it! My roommate has a Athlon 900 with a 5500 and the max fps I have seen in 80. Also my little brother has a PIII 800 with a 5500 and he gets about the same fps... I wonder what drivers you use to get 200+ fps.
Quake III on my GeForce 2 MX under Win2K would freeze after a few minutes until I turned my AGP setting in BIOS from 4x to 2x. The frame rate is still good and I haven't had any problems under Linux, except that it takes a few seconds to switch into graphics mode.
Brent
100,000 lemmings can't all be wrong.
If you're intending to game a lot, shelling out a few hundred dollars for a card from NVidia wouldn't seem like a losing proposition.
If the machine is destined to sit in a closet, or maybe even a desk, where it's main role would be anything less graphics intensive (development, server tasks) then why shell out extra money for a graphics processor you'll never need... You can pick up an 8 meg ATI Xpert@Work AGP card (so it doesn't take away from your PCI slots...) for less than $40 or $50 dollars. And for me, it's been rock solid. You could even get away with spending less, if you knew you'd never be plugging the machine into a display that was running at higher than 1024x768.
It's oh so hard to make recommendations to people without having all the information that you need.
I think the best place to look is to start with is Big Ed's Tech Site http://bigedstechsite.com/ or Tom's Hardware review (not sure of the URL). There is also the linux hardware database http://lhd.datapower.com/ .
Lots of cards are supported now, and the LHD, is a good place to get the reviews. Now if people would only use it and submit their ratings of hardware....
Well What are you waiting for go to it!
I don't want a lot, I just want it all!
Flame away, I have a hose!
Only 'flamers' flame!
I love BeOS, but I have to point out that this is true if the cards are supported in the first place, which is a big if.
-------
Vidi, Vici, Veni
I got a GeForce 2 GTS for a visualization project at work. Boy, what a miserable experience.
The last driver released by NVidia was on 9/5, so I'm hoping they come out with another one, maybe for the 2.4 kernel (the current one only works with 2.2).
You have to build a kernel module that works with the agpgart module (which is mature in 2.4, but only experimental in 2.2 btw). Then you update XF86Config to use their GLX driver. I had some problems compiling the kernel module because of problems in the kernel headers supplied with Redhat 7 - the SMP #defines were screwed up.
But eventually I did get it all set up and working - with some GL programs. But many GL programs - including several of the Xscreensavers and GLUT demos - make my computer crash instantly with no warning. It just *POP* resets. I've traced through several GLUT demos with a debugger and I still can't find the exact thing that does it but I think it has to do with display lists. I've tried setting it up on SMP and non-SMP configurations, but to no avail.
The bottom line: The NVidia drivers crash my computer HARD every time I try to do anything meaningful with OpenGL.
-------
Vidi, Vici, Veni
Plug in card.
Start gaming.
You forgot some steps:
Start cursing because the games you want to play don't work properly under Windows 2000.
Repartition hard drive.
Re-install Windows 98 for games.
Find driver CD because new video card is too new for Windows 98 to have shipped with drivers for it.
Re-install games in Windows 98.
Re-install Windows 2000 because Windows 98 blew away Windows 2000 partition.
Re-install all of your other software in Windows 2000.
And don't tell me this doesn't happen all the time, because I work in an office full of gamers most of whom have gone through the above...
This card works just fine for me with one exception (and I'm also wondering which card can do this). I would like a card that could do a color depth of 32 on Linux. I have to stick with 16 right now because GIMP and some other applications create a white bar across the screen everytime I undo (with GIMP) or resize the window with other apps (not all of them GTK). I used to have a Matrox G200 at work and that was a great card. I was able to have a 1280x1024 console (nice IRC session size without the need for X, being able to use w3m for a good majority of web browsing, midnight commander was great too in this aspect) which is just a treat to have.
I wouldn't recommend the Voodoo3 2000 (as I have it because I duel boot and Voodoo3 2000 allows me to play Diablo II 3dfx), but definately go for a Matrox450 if you can afford one.
"It's here, but no one wants it." - The Sugar Speaker
_______
2B1ASK1
Hmmm - But Xi Technologies is not ATI.
A third party is providing the "driver".
Also, although I'm not sure, I expect Xi technologies actually provide the X server for the card and not the driver, but I may be wrong here.
I'm looking at a 1.1Ghz Athlon, and lots of memory/disk space. Debian unstable will be used to power the whole thing. One thing I'd really like though is to be able to pipe the Cable TV into the box, and then also pipe the XFree Display out to my 60" TV. The idea being with the amount of HDD space I'm installing I should be able to pull off using my computer as a intellegent VCR. Plus it'll make Quake III just rock.
The Video Card I've been looking at is the Matrox G450eTV as discribed here : http://www.matrox.com/mga/products/marv_g450_etv/h ome.cfm .
Any experiences with doing TV signals under Linux (or even just URL's to places to check) would be appreciated.
I can fully confirm this. I own a GeForce MX and a AMD750 based board.
For me turning off AGP support also helped to bring my Hauppage TV-card back to stability.
CU...
Marcus Camen
I've always configured boxes with linux in mind ... for 2D machines I usually use:
Quantum IDE HDD, BX board, ATI RagePro 8MB, 3COM 3c59x compatible and a standard ATAPI cd-rom drive. ... ... since I bought it, i've had 0 problems in Windows or Linux ... works 100%, no issues whatsoever. I dont give a ratsazz about frame rates, who cares about FPS ... I find the visual quality of Q3 and other games to be just grand on my V3
Works A-OK out of the box with X3 and X4, for all my purposes
For 3D I am using a Voodoo 3000 card
GREG
--- ask me about nihilism, I will have nothing to tell you.
Yes but that driver is still 2d only... Basic 3d support is still forthcoming. (The 2d driver is pretty sweet though, looks great, nicely accelerated, and supports both XRender and XVideo extensions)
------ 24.5% slashdot pure
Cirrus logic and trident. 3dfx too. All work with their generic drivers on high res. Never had a problem configuring to get 1280x1024 (for you developers).
---
-
ping -f 255.255.255.255 # if only
Bottom line, you may aswell stick to windows if you are going to allow closed source binaries into your kernel.
Yes! Yes! Because lord knows it'll take FOREVER for NVidia forever to come out with the patch, since they hate their customers and love nothing more than to cackle with evil mercenary capitalist glee while the pathetic fools who bought their products go down in flames; whereas the champions of open source stand always at attention, since they have nothing better to do in their lives than write bugfixes.
I mean COME ON. By providing the linux community with drivers (open or closed) NVidia has shown that they value linux users as customers. They have a vested interest in maintaining a good reputation in the linux community, which means keeping drivers updated, stable and secure. Not to mention your whole closing statement, which basically spits in the face of the entire Linux community. God forbid Linux stand on it's own merit as an operating system. If Micro$oft released all its application/OS source code tomorrow, would you switch to windows? This type of pig-headed Open-Uber-Alles attitude is really irritating. Just because Open Source development has some benefits over closed source development does NOT mean that it is a panacea.
----
Dave
MicrosoftME®? No, Microsoft YOU, buddy! - my boss
- Dave
Tv out on a g450 doesn't currently work and should hopefully be fixed in future versions of the driver.
Please explain to me why a company in the business of developing software is a "scumbag company" for charging money for software that they've funded the development of? The possibility that they might give a product away for free seems counterintuitive. This is a fairly common thing within a capitalist system. A company makes something, and then they sell it at a profit and make money. Seems logical, eh? Especially if you want that thing to continue to be made. I like that a whole lot better than, "company makes something, gives that thing away for free and then goes out of business because they didn't make any profit."
I have to agree with this, I've been running an SMP box for arround 2 years now (first with PII300's, now with PIII450's, soon to go to 700's) and Matrox is definitly your best bet for compatibility and overall X funtionality. I used a Matrox G200 with a cheap 17" monitor, no problems. I haven't used the G4XX series, but from what I hear they should perform similarly. I'm now using a GeForce 2 GTS (last summer my G200 got fried, along with my motherboard) and I had buy new monitor for it (19") because it wouldn't support 1280x1024 on my old monitor, and it still won't go up to 1600x1200 in X (will in W2K) and I get persistant flicker due to a 60Hz refresh rate (I have a small desk fan running beside the monitor, 60Hz power + 60Hz refresh rate = Flicker). If you're interested in 3D modelling, there's also some useful Mesa patches for Matrox cards, I got fairly good FPS in blender.
--- "Komm liebes Kind, geh mit mir Ein ganz schoenes spiele, spiel ich mit dir" -- Goete
Yes, stay away from the GeForce 2 MX, UNLESS YOU HAVE THE ABILITY TO READ AND/OR OPERATE A COMPUTER.
Sure you have to be careful to get rid of old GL stuff, but it is pretty well documented, and pretty logical which files will cause problems.
The GeForce 2MX is pretty damn sweet under xfree86, although I believe my shady motherboards APM was causing crashes.
Don't do this, because there are no X drivers for it. Well, technically, there are drivers for it, but unfortunately some scumbag company called Xi Technologies is selling the thing for 80 bucks. EIGHTY BUCKS.
Third party Radeon drivers for linux are expected Q1 2001, but I suppose we shall see. Also, as an added bonus, ATI has a java applet on their page that happily crashes linux netscape after a couple of page views.
ATI may be willing to part with design specs for driver development, but I'm not exactly sure if that necessarily makes them linux friendly.
Be aware.
Works great.
sup
Speaking from experience here. I have a GeForce 2 GTS.
nVidia's linux drivers are very fast. maybe the timedemos show better scores in Windows, but subjectively, playing Q3 in linux is smoother. I haven't played in W2K though. Maybe it has to do with 9x's sucky multi-tasking.
The only problem is that these fast drivers are closed-source. The only thing that ever crashes my system is X. They don't always wake up after apm puts the graphics card to sleep. The machine is completely hung and only a hard-reset will do. Whenever I recompile my kernel and forget to recompile the nVidia kernel module, my graphics card locks up hard and there's no way to get it back. I have to "use the force" and switch to a virtual terminal and login as root and reboot without being able to see what I'm typing. These are exactly the kind of annoying things that would have been fixed in open source drivers by now.
I understand why nVidia has closed source drivers. They have other people's IP in them and they have fancy tech in there that would give an edge to the competition (at least that's what they believe and we don't have the evidence to determine otherwise). Their drivers are fast, but they are closed source and that is a serious downside to consider.
To make a long story short, if 3D gaming on an x86 under linux is your highest priority, get an nVidia card from a good manufacturer that is based on the reference design.
If stability is more important than 3D performance, get something else.
Although, I guess now with XFree86 4.0.2 you could have the best of both worlds. Use the open source drivers that come with XFree86 normally, but switch to the nVidia drivers when you want good 3D. GF2 and MX weren't supported in 4.0.1.
If you want a CRISP and sharp 2D display and reasonably fast 3D, go with the Matrox G200. You can get these used for next to nothing. I recently got an 8 meg AGP for $20.
The G400 is a step up. It has much better 3D performance than the G200. Matrox 3D is not industry top-of-the-line at current. But like the G200, the G400 has the sharpest display in the business. It also has dual head support, either on the card or as a cheap add-on option, depending on the model. Dual head is great if you can find a second, cheap monitor. Like the G200, you can find G400s cheap. I've seen them go for $60-80 for the 16 meg single head version.
The G450 is pretty much the G400, except that multi-head is the only version sold, and the second display shares the same fast RAMDAC as the first display, meaning you could run two very sharp displays in the 2048x1536 range. (The second display on the G400 multi-head loses significant clarity or refresh rate (your choice) above 1600x1200.) There are, however, some issues with drivers for the second head destabilizing the system. (Hopefully someone knows more about when this may be resolved?)
If you want FAST FAST FAST 3D above all else, are willing to sacrifice a bit of crispness at the higher resolutions, and aren't militant about demanding open source drivers, have a listen to the nvidia and ATI advocates. Both are excellent cards, though ATI's driver support is currently a little behind nvidia's.
I second this, for unbeatable 2D performance and open driver support the Matrox G400 is the way to go.
If you want extremely fast GL support and don't mind waiting around for months before getting the latest and greatest of features (RENDER for example) because the drivers are closed, try an NVidia card.
-- iCEBaLM
Visit us at #nvidia on irc.openprojects.net and we'll try to help you out.
-- iCEBaLM
I think that G400 from Matrox is currently the best choice, it has really fast 2D, high freq. and resolution support (I have it running at 1600x1200x85Hz at 32bpp on a Sony 500PS and it really rocks!). With Matrox you get all the goodies of the new XFree 4.0.x, and have support for DRM (Quake3 at 40-60fps), XVideo (DivX, BTTV, DVD) and soon full dualhead/Xinerama support.
And the most important Matrox is a company that really support Linux, releasing detailed info on their products and not binary drivers that work ocassionally.
Just my opinion, but although you are planning to run only quake3 and need 120fps because you have fly-like eyes you won't go wrong buying a G400 (I would suggest a MAX for the dualhead and the extra speed, but other G400 are also very good).
- german
And I had a similar problem. I have an Abit BP6 with two o/c'ed Celerons. When it came to a gfx card I chose the ATI Rage Fury Pro VIVO 32mb (Rage128Pro chipset). I can't say I've tried the 3D in Linux - but everything is really sweet elsewhere. Xwindows is fast and more importantly - very reliable image (no disappearing icons or wierd colors). Like the question says, SMP with the latest XFree86 (4+) this card is GOOD!
It's also an excellent price atm.
insignificant sig
I am assuming that you are going to be using XFree86 and not AccelX or another X server.
If you plan on using XFree86 3.3.6, then I would suggest going with a Voodoo 3 3000. The Voodoo 4/5 drivers are extremely immature and most likely will not ever reach the performance level they should.
I would suggest, however, that you go with XFree86 4.0.2 and get an NVidia Geforce 2 (GTS/MX/Ultra). I personally have 2 dual CPU Intel boxes and use the NVidia Geforce 2 in both of them. XFree86 4.0.1's included nv driver did *not* support the Geforce 2. This has been fixed in 4.0.2.
If you are wanting multi-monitor display, go with a Matrox G400. It is an extremely nice card, but doesn't quite have the power when it comes to gaming.
wolf31o2 Developer, Gentoo Linux Games Team
Second that. Matrox Millenium 2 (PCI) has been my card of choice for a while for 2D under Linux. Rock solid, no problems whatsoever, good performance.- -------------
-----------------------------------
Jobs? Which jobs?
... responses want to do a lot with one box. I also see that same behavior with a lot of "sysadmins" running web/mail/dns/db/etc.. all on the same box.
Just an observation.
I know that we are not made of money. But if you have money to blow, I would get two separate systems. Crank out 2D performance with a Matrox card on your Linux system and reserve this for work. Dork out a W2K/98 system to play games and run the biggest and baddest 3D card out there because you know that Windows will support it.
I run Linux as my workstation because I am ten times more productive with Linux than I am with Windows; (I actually know Windows a lot better and I could only dream to be a called a Unix geek but I digress).
When I get home, I do not work. My home rig is there to check e-mail, play mp3's and of course, play games. Linux is great for all and everything else but Windows is champs for gaming (only... nothing else). (Please do not respond with Quake III on Linux because we all know that UT is the best FPS game out there).
But if I had to settle on a card, Matrox G4xx. Dual head, superb 2D performance and good (not superb) 3D performance.
ChozSun
ChozSun.com
And ethical responsible from a linux point of view.
- --[... The secret of the hanged man, the smile on his lips... ]-- -
Dude, DRI and AGP stuff comes from your kernel config. Get recent test kernel and off you go. You can tell if it's working by a: performance and 2: glxinfo and make sure you don't run at anything but 16bpp or your performace will suck rocks.
"If you love someone, set them free. If they come home, set them on fire." - George Carlin
If you're looking for
Performance: Get a GeForce2. In everything from 3D OpenGL to 2D X performance, it whips everything else out there (including the G400)
Features: Get a Matrox G400. They tend to have the most feature support.
Picture Quality: Get a Radeon. The Radeon's 3D and 2D quality is amazing, though the 2D performance is a little limp.
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
The card performs very well in windows (200+fps easily in q3a),
>>>>>>>>>
Not really. GeForce cards are cheaper and faster. And it takes a P4 1.5GHz with a GeForce2 Ultra to run Q3 at 204fps at 640x480. I seriously doubt that a V5 get anywhere close to that.
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
get a card that supports vesa 2.0 (or higher) and then use the vesa framebuffer kernel driver, and the xserver for framebuffer
if you later switch to another vesa 2.0 compatible card, it will magically work w/ X w/out any configuration changes (unless it doesn't have enough memory for that resoltuon and color depth...)
Need a Catering Connection
uhmm .. no. I whish so. IIRC the geforce2 with its binary only driver is the fastest one for 2-D X11. I don't remember where it was, but they showed benchmarks (x11perf) where the geforce was about 30-40% faster than the G400 MAX.
;)
... anyone knows of any card company is making research in 2-D cards ? I don't play fps games. I want FAST 2D cards. And no, the current cards suck in 2-D speed.
Now for politcal reasons, this is a total different story. I whish nvidia would open at least the 2-D specs of their cards.
(so that new features won't run only on MGA chips
besides
Samba Information HQ
I have had some personal experience with NVIDIA cards and Linux running on an SMP system. To sum it up briefly:
:-(. We are running Linux 2.17 and XFree 4.0.1, with the latest NVIDIA drivers (version 0.9-5). The only way we could get the system work reliably was to turn the hardware 3D off and use the Mesa libraries (that come with XFree). With the hardware 3D acceleration turned on the machines keept locking up, and always under different circumstances, mostly though when more than one OpenGL context was active at a time. But some credit is due to NVIDIA - Descent 3 was running always without any problems with 3D h/w accel. turned on.
...draw your own conclusions. I personally don't think there are enough SMP users out there yet to make it a serious enough concern for NVDIDIA to fix this problem.
:-)
NVIDIA + SMP = BAD CHOICE!!!
In the graphics lab where I work we have about 10 dual CPU Dell's with GeForce2MX graphics cards, which the lab purchased on my reccomendation
If you check the NVIDIA's LINUX FAQ, they acknowledge the SMP problem exists and promised it would be fixed in the next release. Maybe I would believe them, except that that's exactly what they promised in the FAQ that came with the previous release:-(
If you decide to go with a single CPU system, the card is quite reliable and fast, although I did lock up the system after couple of days. With SMP system, you have basically two choices: disable h/w 3D acceleration or run only Descent 3
We tried 4 different versions of NVIDIA's cards (TNT2, GeForce, GeForce2 MX and GTS) with 3 different kernels (2.14, 2.16, 2.17) but the results were all the same - lockups, lockups and more lockups. We even tried to experiment with turning on/off DMA for our hard-drives, without success. Sometimes the entire system would freeze up - could not even ping it; sometimes only the X-server locked up, which could be re-started remotely. The lockups would occur sometimes after only 20 seconds of work. On occasions all you would have to do freeze the system was to start a single OGL application. Other times the system would work fine for up to 30 minutes, with five OGL windows running simultaneously, but then freeze when you quit one of them... completely unstable and unpredictable system.
I have not tried the h/w 3D acceleration with the new 2.4 kernel yet. Perhaps someone else has, in which case I would love to hear their story.
Pavol Federl
email: pfederl@netscape.net
The ATI Rage support has come a LONG way and my ATI 128 works excellent under Xfree86 4.x. I do recommend this card for >=4.x!!!
"You'll die up there son, just like I did!" - Abe Simpson
There is no reasonable defense against an idiot with an agenda
:wq
As everyone else said, it depends on what you want to do with it. If it is 3d you are after www.anandtech.com has done some benchmarks, and and nvidia geforce2 seems to be the clear winner:
http://www.anandtech.com/showdoc.html?i=1331
Of course nvidia isn't opensourcing their drivers, so you may want to go with another company for that reason alone.
Sigs are awesome huh?
Doesn't Xfree 4.x probe for refresh rates? It seems to have got my monitor refresh rate correct with no mode lines in the XF86Config file...
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
While I'd definitely go for a Geforce2 if they had open source drivers, I'll never buy one of their cards while I have to rely on them for a binary module. My Matrox G400 at home is very nice, and if I needed a little more I'd go for a G450. You won't get the FPS of the Geforce but you won't have to worry about Matrox deciding to stop supporting Linux either.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
1) Which card will give a screen, right out of the box, with XFree86 standard configuration
2) Which card has the most goodies, acceleration, 3D instructions, multiprocessing, cheese-grating, etc., best supported under XFree86
For question one, lots of popular cards work, if they've been out for a while.
For question two, that's a whole debate.
I'm using the latest drivers from voodoo.. q3a has a FPS lock it uses, I don't remember the var off the top of my head.. hit ~ for the console and type sv_ and hit tab for the list, its something like sv_maxfps I think. The default is 85 iirc. I set this to some ungodly high number and thats the only modification I made, the textures stayed at best, all eye candy switches were on. I did this at 1024x768 resolution. The machine is a dual pIII 850 with 256mb ram, and com_hunkmegs in q3a is set to take 100mb on startup.
If I feel like it, I may try to snap some screenshots if you still don't believe me. I've heard of people hitting 400fps but they were looking at a wall or something. I was looking across a space map (mostly black, textureless environment.. q3dm17 if anybody cares).
Don't doubt what you don't take the time to understand..
I've got a Voodoo5 5500 in my box, and I tried some beta drivers (availiable at linux.3dfx.com) that really didn't perform very well.
I was unable to get any color depth greater than 8bpp as I recall. This was on xfree 4.0.1 and I followed their instructions to the letter. I tried this on slackware-current (current as of a month or so ago).
The card performs very well in windows (200+fps easily in q3a), but if you're considering buying one to run in X, I'd suggest you stay away from the voodoo4/5 line until they produce some better drivers.
It depends on if you need fast 3D or not. As much as open source zealots hate to admit it, NVidia has the best Linux 3D support out there right now. I've been using their drivers since they were released, and they haven't crashed in months (since the latest version was released). Setting up the drivers can be a pain, however, unless you've done it before. So, if you just want 2D, and maybe limited 3D, then go for Matrox. Once the ATI Radeon drivers are available (I'm not sure if the 4.0.2 ones support 3D), you may want to try that, too.
------
Well, its not exactly a walk in the park, but Geforce 2MX's surely work. First you'll need XFree85 4.0x. Then you'll need to visit NVIDIA's ftp site for the drivers (RPM or tarball, your choice). Its all fairly well documented, though if you run into trouble, #nvidia on irc.openprojects.net should be able to point you in the right direction.
"Well I have found that a the earlier Geforce 2 work a treat (I am running a Diamond Viper V770)"
Geforce2? No. TNT2? Yes.
The current version of Red Hat Linux is 7, which uses XFree 4 support for ATI Rage 128 cards - try it, the support is vastly improved, you even get accelerated 3D out of the box :)
I'd recommend Matrox G200. It works great with X 3.3, 4.0 and it works great under console - framebuffer is a great thing with those. Beware of G450 - I'm still having major problems with it. Lots of them. With drivers switching monitors being the least of them. Of course situation is probably slowly getting more and more mature - g450 framebuffer driver got into 2.4.0pre12, and there is a tool for switching back monitor heads made by Petr Vandrovec. Just stay away from S3 cards. Have been having lot's of problems with 'em - I tried 3 different chipsets before my box stopped randomly crashing.
Yeah, you're probably right.
XML causes global warming.
- Do you need 3D acceleration?
- Only fast 2D?
- Is dual head something you're interested in?
If all you need is good 2D support, there are many cheap cards that will work for you.If you need good 3D performance, then your options are more limited, though I'm sure most of your responses will focus on this area.
XML causes global warming.
geez, rtfm if you can't install the module, coz the gf2mx works great with X.
Of course if I'm wrong someone please correct me, I'd love to get X running on my box again.
I'm the big fish in the big pond bitch.
My Matrox G400 seems to work fine under XF4. However, I've had a few problems trying to do advanced things like setting up dri and agp. I don't even know if it is using dri or not right now since the debian packages make things a little easier.
I just recently built a dual CPU linux box, and went with a GeForce 256 based card. The card works wonderfully with nvidia supplied binaries _except_ that there are issues with OpenGL (GLX) when running SMP.
Excerpt from nvidia FAQ concerning linux drivers for TNT/TNT2/GeForce/Quadro Chips:
***6.5.7 OpenGL + SMP
Some of our internal testing has revealed random lockups on SMP systems when running OpenGL. We are unsure of the exact cause of this, but we will find it and fix it for our next driver release.
***I've personally experienced lockups when trying out OpenGL screensavers, and I look forward to updated binaries from nvidia that will fix the problem.
-GregThe GeForce 2MX is pretty damn sweet under xfree86, although I believe my shady motherboards APM was causing crashes.
I had instability nightmares for ages with my TNT2U on an AMD 750 chipset mobo, until I turned off the NVidia AGP support... After about six hours of coding (and maybe a couple of sessions of Quake III Arena :-) ) I suddenly realized that it hadn't crashed at all. Since then I have had only two crashes in four months, which is pitiful for a Linux machine but much better than a crash every two hours or so before the change.
Scan your /etc/X11/XF86Config-4 file for the Section "Screen" ... EndSection. Add the following line
It isn't guaranteed to fix every NVidia crash, but I've had reports from a few people that this fix has radically improved stability. Especially if you happen to have an Aureal Vortex soundcard in your system.
Cheers,
Toby Haynes
Anything I post is strictly my own thoughts and doesn't necessarily have anything to do with the opinions of IBM.
I have an ATI Rage 128, and it's just excellent. I've had nothing but good experiences with it. It works under every operating system I've tried without hassles (Linux + other X running UNIX variants, BeOS, QNX RtP, and Windows), and I had no problem getting it configured with XFree86 3.3.6 and 4.0.1.
I did have problems running the original Corel Linux 1.0 installation because of my video card, but then I switched to Mandrake and everything was fine. I'm just guessing, but I suspect that this has been fixed in the latest Corel distro.
v
Hmm... well I wouldn't take advice from someone with your mastery of the English language. bou? what the hell does that mean? And it's "a lot", not "alot".
Besides, I have four operating systems installed on my desktop now, and I use them all frequently to know what I'm talking about, thank you. Go troll elsewhere. Shoo.
v
I traded in for a Matrox and the display quality is unmatched. Sure I don't get stupid high frame rates, but I don't need like supid frames anymore.
I need a crisp, high quality screen. I have it.
blessings,
"Only in their dreams can men truly be free 'twas always thus, and always thus will be."
--Tom Schulman
We just got new dell boxes in at work and they came with geforce2 cards. They're quite fast 85-90 to fps in Q3. Uhmmmm.... testing network utilization. Sure. You only need to get the kernel module. insmod it and start X up. Works great.
Yep, I never spell check.
More incorrect spellings can be found he
Forgot to mention that we were using the latest binary X from Xfree86
Yep, I never spell check.
More incorrect spellings can be found he
I've had wonderful success from my ATI Rage Pro Turbo 128 AGP.
It's the RageProTurbo based off of the RageII that gave the original PCI card AGP 2x support.
The various man pages, HOWTO's, etc. are generally very good, but they're not necessarily completely up to date. If you check the video card HOWTO's you'll see that the 3Dfx-HOWTO was last updated in February of 1998. So, it can be nice to get current information.
Hello, I must be going. I'm here to say I cannot stay, I must be going.
Hello, I must be going. I'm here to say I cannot stay, I must be going.
It may not be what you are looking for, but I have a cheap (and I mean CHEAP!) Riva TNT2 Vanta video card that has been perfect.
(tho I haven't upgraded to XFree 4.x; I'll wait untill RH 7.1 to do that)
It's reliable, performance is good, and the price just can't be beat. 16 MB AGP level 4 on an AMD 450 MB/chip. Perfect.
I have another one in a Windoze box and it plays 3D games pretty nice, too.
(40 bucks NEW on Ebay!)
-Ben
I have no problem with your religion until you decide it's reason to deprive others of the truth.
You're refering to the Rage128 Pro, a speed-boost of the Rage 128. The "RagePro" was a *MUCH* slower beast that evolved from the RageII.
Which ATI card are you talking about? The rather slow "RagePro" series came just after the even slower RageII. There was a RageProTurbo that finally enabled AGP support. There is, however, the much different and much newer/faster Rage128 series, including the Rage128Pro. *Great* card for 2D and even moderate 3D. Sure isn't a Radeon, though (but doesn't have Radeon prices either...)
Most of my boxes with GFX have the Matrox Millenium II PCI. The machines with larger monitors have the 8 MB editions, the rest have 4 MB. Way more than enough for a 2D card. Works great, can't complain. May try an ATI Radeon if/when drivers come available.
Figure out what you want. Something that works and will be trouble free or the latest wiz-bang thing that'll be dated soon anyway. You can get some 'killer 3d' board and alpha drivers, but you'll pay dearly for it (both the hardware and downtime). Or you can get a conservative card, have few or no problems, and leave the 3D to your Dreamcast or PS2. Sorta like trying to overclock your Mom's Honda Insight vs driving your Dad's midrange '97 Mercedes-Benz E320.
Let's face it... to be honest, I use Windows half the time, most of my machines are set up for a dual boot. That said, I look for cards that work well under both xfree86 and windows. ATI makes great hardware, but their drivers.... well, their drivers stink. The RagePro finally got decent windows and Mac OS drivers about the time the Rage128 shipped, though the win drivers performed a bit better. And thus far, only their Mac drivers for the Rage128 have impressed me. Both the Mac and Win drivers for the Radeon fail to impress, I'm afraid that it'll be months before their Radeon drivers are 'up to speed' with decent stability and performance.
But because I'm not all that excided about performance and the latest wiz-bang thing, I've been pretty happy with the Matrox Millenium II PCI under both Windows and Linux on the PC platform. The G400 has worked well for me as well, though I only own one.
Well I have found that a the earlier Geforce 2 work a treat (I am running a Diamond Viper V770) and have yet to expirience an X crash. One thing that I would warn you about however is that XFree 3.3.6 does have a better/wider support for graphics cards but on the flipside 4.0.1 (latest release of XFree86) does give better performance
Could I suggest that you look here for a list of graphics card XFree86 supports (to varying degrees). Personally if you want relability rather than performace I would say an ATI Mach 64 based card would be good. If you want speed though a geoforce 2 should see you right....
Cheap UK and US VPS
I have had good experiences with a Matrox Millenium 2 and an older ATI card (not sure on the model). Both of these were pretty close to plug and play. My Voodoo 2000 PCI took a little work, but ran fine once it was configured right. I had an old S3 card that took me a week to configure, complete nightmare (...challenge).
So, I'd put my vote in for late model (but not brand new) Matrox and ATI. $0.02
Err the NV driver in Xfree4.0.2 is deffinately open source :)
And actually the 2d preformance was better with it, than with the 0.95 driver from Nvidia (ok shoot me if the driver version is wrong, I'm at work not on my machine)
No, there is no open source 3d driver as far as I know, but its rumored to be comming, and thats good enough for grandad, and good enough for me.
You are only young once, but you can stay immature indefinitely.
Belive it or not, this ac really ins't a troll...
every old isa video card I have works under XFree3.x and 4.x usually at 8bit color, 800x600, and the trident 512k cards at 1024x768 as I reacall. For awhile I had a cheesy 4meg agp card that wasn't supported under Xfree, and used the isa one. Gimp ran fine, Netscape ran fine, text was clear, crisp etc. Some 2d games even ran ok. If your not doing heavy graphics, there fine...especialy to use for a second display or a web browsing terminal.
You are only young once, but you can stay immature indefinitely.
I was in no way starting an OS war. Actually I use 2000 and NT4 most of the time and I started toying around with Linux about a year ago...as a challenge for myself.
I can guarantee you that I had my troubles installing Linux on different hardware constellations (I talk quite exotic older hardware), but then I already had troubles with very normal 3Com Network cards where the drivers delivered with the card were total crap. Another one: ever tried to install and ISA and a PCI Adaptec SCSI card (different chipsets) in the same PC when you run NT4. Not a very good idea when you NT4 is booting from a SCSI disk and the drivers were overwritten. (Nice little BSOD after NTLDR)
The original posted shared his experience with the GeForce2 MX on Linux and I shared mine. He, has his platform, I have mine....We're talking experiences, not complete tests on any imaginable platform possible. Geez...
Ahhh...the great dumpster continuum. Many a free computer will be found there. -- sowth (748135)
Thanx, I'll check that out :-)
Ahhh...the great dumpster continuum. Many a free computer will be found there. -- sowth (748135)
Hope this will help you. I'm not a guru or so, I followed the instructions and (after some searching and trying) I made it work.
I use Peanut Linux 8.1 (it is some small slackware derivate, methinks) with KDE (no Gnome, sorry).
Good luck!
Ahhh...the great dumpster continuum. Many a free computer will be found there. -- sowth (748135)
V3-2000 AGP is supported well under Linux. Never tried 3D, but 2D is fast and drivers are quite stable under Linux.
I hate to sound too uppity, but the question was for screen cards that are "obvious 'can't go wrong' choices?" Most of the suggestions I have read are for the newest, coolest, bestest card to get, but NOT slam dunk choices. I think the 'can't go wrong' choice would have to be a S3 Virge system or a Matrox Millenium. If the question was expanded to be the 'can't go wrong 3D cards' then the answer would be TNT, TNT2, or Matrox G200. For 'leading, bleeding, KEEEeeewwwwlllll' cards I would have to say: 'may the Force be with you'. Wink, wink, nod, nod....
Religion and science are both 90% crap..but that doesn't negate the other 10%.
I can't get the NVIDIA supplied accelerated modules working. All attempts to do so have led to system instability, when it was able to load at all. The nv.o driver that comes with XFree86 works much better, although I'd be lying if I said perfectly.
My advice is to avoid NVIDIA if you want 3D support and are using an i810 or i815 chipset. I hear that the difficulty is conflict with AGP because of the integrated video controllers. I don't know about other platforms.
If you are modding me down because you disagree with me, use the "Flamebait" category, not the "Troll" one.
Penguins mothers are never bored. The Linux Pimp
--It's Pimptastic!--
at work we've been having problems with the Savage cards with the S3 chip set, so we switched to Diamond Stealth 550's, they work pretty nicely.
How Jaded Are You?
I don't really go in for all that 3D stuff, but if you need a real workhorse card that you can pick up for $40, that works out of the box on any OS you toss at it, handles low-end 3D, and doesn't have any glitches (AFAIK), try the ATI XPERT@Work and XPERT@Play line. They come in PCI and AGP and all have 8MBs of VRAM. I've never had one fail to be automatically recognized or work on the first go. Ever. After a few hundred installations, you get to know your H/W and I prefer to have a few of these around to make SURE I can get video.
--
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
We don't want to go to RH7 just yet -- it's our paranoia for x.0 products. :)
/etc/fstab dos
/dev/da1a /msdos vfat rw 0 0
We've only installed XFree86 4.0.x on one RH6.2 box -- it wasn't pretty, but it works. Of course, the fact that it has to run in 8-bit mode to support the old astronomical software isn't too great, either.
Thus sprach DrQu+xum.
# grep
DrQu+xum: Proof that the lameness filter doesn't work.
I found this out the hard way -- Rage Pro 128 is not supported in RedHat 6.2/XFree86 3.3.x. SuSE has patches for it, I understand, but if you've got one of these cards, you'll be better off running XFree86 4.0.x. /etc/fstab dos
/dev/da1a /msdos vfat rw 0 0
Thus sprach DrQu+xum.
# grep
DrQu+xum: Proof that the lameness filter doesn't work.
I'd really like to see the entire XF86 video code revamped, though. Why can't there be automatic probing of valid refresh rates, like there is in every other OS with a decent SVGA system? The technology for doing so has only been there for six years (like that isn't enough time for the X crew to pick up on it).
"Ancillary does not mean you get to rule the world." --U.S. Circuit Judge Harry Edwards, speaking to the FCC's lawyer
ATI Rage Pro Turbo PCI/AGP (Mach 64-based)
ATI Rage Fury/Xpert/WTF AGP (Rage 128-based)
ATI Rage Fury MAXX AGP (Rage 128-based)
ATI Rage Fury Pro DVI AGP (Rage Pro 128-based)
3DLabs Oxygen VX1-1600SW PCI (Permedia 3-based)
Number Nine Revolution IV 1600SW AGP (TTR4-based)
nVidia GeForce2 GTS AGP
nVidia RIVA 128 AGP
Matrox G400 DVI AGP
Matrox G400 Max DH AGP
Matrox Millennium II AGP
Should be done in a couple of weeks (hollerdays in the middle, don't ya know).
Some anecdotal experiences... Voodoo 3 support is quite nice. My wife's desktop (Mandrake 7.2) works great with her Voodoo3 card, 3D support out of the box. Also I have found my first-generation GeForce 256 to be well-supported (using Red Hat 7 or Mandrake 7.2) I have had numerous difficulties with the Voodoo Banshee, however. It's a great little card (I picked up several cheap recently and use them in my servers, kids' machine, etc.) but it is not overly well-supported. I have difficulties getting anything beyond 256 colour X with Slackware or Debian + Banshee (although this could be my fault - I haven't dug too deep as 256 colour X is "good enough" for the boxes using Banshee). Red Hat 6.2 was a dream with the Banshee (as it seems to be for X configuration in general) although 3D support had to be added post-installation. Mandrake 7.2 had problems with the Voodoo -- 2D worked fine but 3D was hit-and-miss (some applications like Tux Racer worked fine out of the box on the Voodoo 3 box but not with the Banshee).
I have never ever had a problem with 3dfx's voodoo 3 3000. it has never given me any problems.
anything from S3 sucks
Xfree86 is quickly approaching the point where this will no longer be an issue.
Most modern and legacy cards now have decent support under XFree86. And with the recent addition of a VESA driver, we are getting to the point where you will hardly have to consider the video card issue when you install Linux.
My advice is to find a card that advertises itself to be capable of meeting your requirements, then check the XFree86 docs to see what kind of support that card has. If these two items are a close enough match for your needs, go for it!
Personally, I only use Laptops, so I am stuck using whatever graphics chipset the manufacturer included on the board. But since 1993, I have never had a problem getting at least 16bpp out of a laptop.
"Ask Slashdot" questions... Good God man! 10 seconds on linhardware.com could answer this question for you. And people wonder why the Linux community is so unwilling to help out unmotivated idiots like these.
In College I always heard my instructors say 'It's more important that you know where to find the answers than it is that you have the answers memorized... Well I hate to tell you, but asking someone else was never 'how to find' the information.
ONE LAST SUPER-IMPORTANT DETAIL!!!
This isn't mentioned ANYWHERE in NVidia's FAQ (thanks a lot, NVidia). If you're using a Geforce2 on a Via KX133 or KT133 chipset motherboard, you'll need to do one more thing.
NVidia's driver comes with a kernel module that needs to be loaded. That kernel module depends on the agpgart.o kernel module, and as of yet agpgart.o doesn't have explicit support for those chipsets (although it works fine with them). When you try to load it with insmod or moddep (as the Makefile in the tarball does) it will fail.
This article at www.tomshardware.com explains the fix for this.
http://www5.tomshardware.com/graphic/00q4/001002/www.tomshardware.com (!)
This rating is Unfair ( ) ( ) Fair (*) Funny
Sigh... If only. Modding would be so much more fun.
I've used linux a *lot* in the past, and so far the only video cards that absolutely suck are the ones embedded in motherboards. Personally, I like ATI cards, and my personal workstation has a Rage AGP Pro or something of the like. Voodoo based cards are gaining increased support, and 3D acceleration is almost good enough to be respectable in Xfree86 3.3.6, when last I checked. XFree 4.0.1 supports a tremendous amount of hardware, though it's lacking in serious 3D acceleration. It all depends on what you plan on doing with it. What may be the best idea is to try 3.3.6 with 3D acceleration, then 3.3.6, then 4.0.1 and see which one works out best for you once you have selected your video card.
-- "If evolution is outlawed, only outlaws will evolve." -- Jello Biafra
Thanks Alot! I had this problem before, it pissed me off so much, woohoo! =D