# What graphics card to buy?

## guido-pe

Hi,

What graphics cards are currently well-supported under Gentoo Linux?

I have recently acquired a new, faster mainboard+cpu, which I'd like to use to upgrade my computer, but it turns out this new board doesn't have an AGP-slot, only a PCI-E slot, so I'll need a new graphics card as well.

It appears to me that, currently, graphics card support under linux is a big and complicated topic, and that pretty much every single card out there has at least some problems here and there. Shopping for one feels like stepping into a minefield.

Is there /any/ pci-e graphics card at all available on the market right now that

- works with open source drivers

- offers hardware 3D acceleration

- supports xv

- supports Xinerama with different screen resolutions

- supports screen rotation

- allows me to use a framebuffer console

- allows me to switch back and forth between X and the console (some newer radeon hd cards appear to have problems with that)

- supports aiglx (and compiz)

- is tested and known to work well?

(at the same time, of course)

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## alex.blackbit

the situation is not as bad as you think, but of course it is a good idea to take a moment to decide what to buy.

having the wish to use only open source drivers makes it even a bit more difficult, but not impossible.

there are generally only two chip vendors, amd (ati) and nvidia.

the open source drivers for ati chips are currently in a much better state, but support for nvidia chips is increasing because of the Nouveau project.

support differs for the chip families, R300, R500, ...

inside one family support is quite equal.

take a look at http://www.x.org/wiki/RadeonFeature.

support for r600/r700 chips should come soon, link.

decide whether you want a silent or fast card.

take a look at [1], [2]

when i last buyed a graphics adapter, i wanted the fasted passively cooled ati card with 3d support under linux with open source drivers and ended up with a msi x1600. that's fast enough for me. i don't know what you need. mine was 8$ on ebay.

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## Martux

Hi!

I have a Geforce 8800GT here, which works very, very well (with the binary driver).

You should have the least rouble with Nvidia-cards in general, at least they always worked for me.

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## MaximeG

Hi,

If you really want something full featured :

Go for nVidia since the support for ATI is currently and unfortunately wobbly on Linux.

I can't really tell for Xinerama and screen rotations, I don't use them.

But I have an nVidia for the moment that supports everything else : Compiz, Gaming, FrameBuffer, switching from X to Console ...

The drivers support also SLI,PhysiX,CUDA on the (almost?) latest GPU on the market such as 280gtx.

If you really want to go into 3D accelerated stuff, and takes (almost) full advantage of your modern card, I'd forget the open-source drivers though.

That being said, I believe the opensource drivers for ATI are better than nVidia's.

I'm sorry to say that, but open sources driver lack _a lot_ of support from ATI and nVidia and are, if you want a full featured 3D and modern card, far from being enough.

If you don't plan to use your card for gaming, then you may consider the intel cards.... but .. well ... I wouldn't name an intel card a "full featured modern 3D card"

[EDIT] Unless you're an open-source purist : Go for nVidia with binary drivers.

Best Regards,

Maxime

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## d2_racing

Hi, I have a Nvidia Top260 and it's pretty good  :Razz: 

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## jongeek

Yeah, another vote for nvidia, despite the proprietary driver issue. NVidia cards have always worked without problems for me, whether its using Xinerama, 3d acceleration or playing movies.

I've used some radeon HD cards in the last year, with the open source drivers, and they just don't work well for anything other than plain 2d desktop display. I've had crashes when playing movies or trying to get it working with more than one display.

IMHO, you can get excellent quality, stability and feature support by going for an NVidia card, or you can go open source with an ATI card and get none of those things. Yet. I have confidence that the devs will eventually get the ATI drivers up to snuff, but they're just not there yet. Especially in terms of the feature set you listed.

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## i92guboj

If you want 3d acceleration and open source drivers Intel is the only way to go. The RadeonHD driver is not quite ready, and it doesn't support 3d acceleration for newer cards anyway.

In you want performance, stability, xinerama, whatever else, go nvidia, but then the driver is closed.

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## rkfsm

I too put a vote for nVidia. I have a desktop with an nVidia chipset & GPU and a laptop with an Intel chipset with an ATI GPU. 

I have almost constant framebuffer issues when I switch screens with the ATI and it is barely fast enough to play video. nVidia has a binary driver, but I have never had any problems with it.

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## alex.blackbit

i never used xinerama, but with my radeon x1600 the following works with the xorg driver and mesa:

xvideo

compiz-fusion

3d games (doom3, ...)

3d games with wine

screen rotation (randr)

framebuffer (uvesafb)

vt switchingabsolutely no problems.

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## beandog

Getting an Intel video card (for an HTPC) was one of the dumbest things I've ever done.  Stick with nvidia.

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## Martux

I' ve never had a single issue in dual-head mode with the nvidia binary driver.

Just make sure this is in your xorg.conf:

```

Section "Screen"

Option         "TwinView" "1"

EndSubSection

EndSection

```

and make sure to set USE="xinerama" in /etc/make.conf > voila!

There' s even a graphical frontend called "nvidia-settings" which makes it an ease to configure screens.

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