Recommend a video card?

Lennart Sorensen lsorense-1wCw9BSqJbv44Nm34jS7GywD8/FfD2ys at public.gmane.org
Fri Feb 9 21:09:10 UTC 2007


On Fri, Feb 09, 2007 at 03:23:47PM -0500, William O'Higgins Witteman wrote:
> Can anyone recommend a video card for Linux?  I have a couple of
> criteria, but I think most bars are set pretty low:
> 
> 1. DVI out - I am looking at an LCD monitor, and most require DVI - my
> Matrox G450 is VGA only, and I understand that LCDs do well with digital
> input.
> 
> 2. Can perform basic 3D rendering - at least the OpenGL stuff to some
> degree.  I'm not gaming, but I wouldn't mind be able to at least
> experiment with xgl/compiz.
> 
> 3. Cheap.
> 
> 4. Has acceptable performance with open source drivers.  I am not going
> to install any binary-only modules.
> 
> The last one is not negotiable.  If someone has an older card gathering
> dust that would fit these criteria, I would happily buy it from you.
> Thanks.

Well lets see:

DVI implies not old.
Open Source 3D implies old as far as I can tell.
Cheap implies old or at least low end which often implies no DVI.

You can get ATI 9200 cards (AGP or PCI) with 128MB refurbished from
ATI's online store, although they are VGA only, not DVI.  The open
source driver for that may be functional for what you want.

The R3xx based cards (9500 to X8xx) seem to be starting to work, but not
fully for some features.  So perhaps a 9550 or something (also available
refurbished) is an option.  They do have VGA and DVI it appears.

There certainly is no simple answer that fits all your requirements.

--
Len Sorensen
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