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Modern Video Cards with Open Specs?

Posted by Cliff on from the an-extinct-hardware-species? dept.

JessLeah asks: "I've been having trouble finding decent, 3D-accelerated drivers for video cards (of late-90s/early-2000s vintage) under Linux. I'd just get a newer card, but it seems like the situation for newer cards is even worse. The market at present seems to be little more than an nVidia/ATI duopoly, and neither nVidia nor ATI have open specifications available for their chipsets. As a result, both of them presently have binary-only, x86-only, Linux-only XFree86 drivers as their sole alternative to Windows. Are there any modern chipsets (with a reasonable cost) that actually have open specifications available online -- or, at a minimum, open-source drivers that can actually compile on things other than Linux/x86" What was the last video card with open specifications that you can remember?

7 of 63 comments (clear)

  1. Re:I don't get it. by schapman · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I think it has more to do with the IP involved in video card drivers. The hardware on newer vid cards is so similar that a lot of performance and image quality comes from the driver. If ATI and NVIDIA open sourced their drivers, it would make it very difficult for them to compete with each other. It would just come down to brand loyalty or pre-bundled stuff w/ pre-built pcs. One of the reasons ATI is competitive at this point with NVIDIA is that they have a higher image quality in their renderings than NVIDIA. The video card market is not just about hardware at this point, bad drivers will result in crappy sales as much as bad hardware. Look at the ATI of the past... before the 9700pro came out ATI was notorious for crappy drivers. They fixed them, brought out good hardware.. and have steadily gained on NVIDIA ever since. [/ramblin] Now that I'm done w/ that, I'm all in favour of open source software.. but for some things I'll gladly support binary only.

    --
    Wouldnt you like to be a pepper too?
  2. They may not open the code by redelm · · Score: 3, Interesting
    NVidia & ATI have large portions of their drivers closed because it's GPU code. No-one has compliers for it but them. They probably don't want to reveal their secrets, and may not even be able to if some of that code or algorithms have been received under secrecy agreement from others."

    1. Re:They may not open the code by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting

      What makes you think the engineering labs of each company haven't reverse engineered their competitors' drivers? If I were in such a competitive business (and I am), I would have savvy engineers dedicated to doing just that.

    2. Re:They may not open the code by ZorinLynx · · Score: 4, Interesting

      I remember back when you'd buy hardware, it would come with DETAILED technical specs, even schematics, describing how it works, how to program it, and what each part was. These days it's like "NO YOU CAN'T HAVE THE SPECS YOU MIGHT VIOLATE OUR COPYRIGHT/PATENT/INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY CRAP".. Why did companies GET like this? I mean, if anything it was easier to copy the technology BACK THEN!

      I still have the manual for my Epson LX-800 printer. In the back is a detailed programming guide, which explains exactly how to print different densities, how to control the firing of the pins, etc... All open, all available.

      I still have the reference manual for my Apple II plus. Inside is a complete schematic of the system, along with assembler code for the entire ROM.

      I really hate this new trend of "everything's a secret". Gahh, what a greedy, messed up world we live in.

      -Z

  3. I've heard good things about Matrox cards. by Bombcar · · Score: 2, Interesting

    But they can be spendy. Matrox also makes some cool multi-head displays.

    --
    Fellowship 9/11
  4. Re:I don't get it. by aminorex · · Score: 2, Interesting
    That argument might hold water if it weren't for the
    fact that all the binary drivers from nVidia and ATI
    suck ass, while the open source 3d drivers written
    by the user community actually work, and don't crash
    your system.


    So, the end result is that instead of buying $450
    video cards, I buy $30 cards which actually work.
    I buy them for myself, for my employer, for my
    family members, and especially for my friends (who
    would otherwise frag me far too easily).

    --
    -I like my women like I like my tea: green-
  5. Re:Recommendation by Danny+Rathjens · · Score: 2, Interesting

    nvidia's binary driver breaks my tv capture card(ati wonder) for some strange reason(geforce4200ti, tv works using nv). I can't investigate and solve the problem because I don't have the specs or source.
    I was going to buy Matrox for my upgrade on the premise that nvidia and ati's binary-only behaviour was annoying, but now I see that Matrox is joining the binary-only club too. :(