Hi!

I'm planning on assembling a new system, and I'm wondering what brand of video card to pick. In the past (several years ago), I've had endless problems with ATI cards, and been more or less happy with various nVidias since. However, the driver situation may have changed significantly over the past few years, and I do have some video artifacts (and heavy tearing in apps like mplayer) with KDE 4.2 on my GeForce 7600 GS.

So I'd like to hear which of the two is generally considered "better" for the KDE 4 series. I'll be using two screens (1920x1200 each at least) and a TV card, so things should run smoothly and quickly with effects, OpenGL stuff and video playback, and without serious driver bugs...

I'm running Kubuntu and don't plan to change that. I might also hook up a third monitor to an extra video card for video playback at my bed, but that'll probably be independent of my regular desktop, so unless KDE minds the presence of a second card, that shouldn't make much of a difference for my choice of primary card.

I also had the same question: nvidia or ati.

My previous computer had a nvidia G400mx that any restricted driver would lock up the PC, requiring a reboot.

So I've tried this time an ATI 4870, more specifically Gainward 4870.

It's quite fast and had no issue whatsoever with the 9.3 driver and "normal" applications.

The only issue that I have, and I can't really pin point it to the board or the driver, is that sometimes when doing a fullscreen of a video with mplayer, for example, the pc locks up. But that's it. I've upgrade today to 9.4 version of the driver, and let's see how it goes.

Otherwise it's ok, I haven't regreted it.

nVidia currently produces the best* drivers for Linux so if you want your system to work the nicest in Linux from the moment you built it go with a nVidia card. The older the better to guarantee more stability (I.e. GeForce 8 or 9 if you can and can justify the lower potential** graphics output, I have a 7800GT myself and it has never once crashed, caused corruption or had slow performance in the 1.5 years I've been using it in my primary system).

If you want something that will be the best in one or two years it's hard to predict as nVidia is really pumping out more stable drivers every single week and ATI is releasing more and more hardware info and code drops to the community. It would probably be best going with ATI as it's easier to see future potential stability with an open codebase vs a closed one but be warned that currently the drivers are quite unstable and cause a whole pile of problems with KWin and other compositing managers.

* For end-user support and stability... And to certain degrees of "best".
** No point getting a super-duper fast card if it causes your system to crash every time you try to start a 3D program now is there?

Zarin wrote:it's easier to see future potential stability with an open codebase vs a closed one

An open codebase is no guarantee. I just bought a computer with an Intel 3100 graphics card and I have had over 10 Xorg hangs since thursday with OpenGL enabled in desktop effects so, for stability, I have had nothing but to turn off OpenGL.

Open source has many advantages, but stability does not come as standard.

Ignacio Serantes wrote:... have had over 10 Xorg hangs since thursday...

Both the later Intel and ATI drivers are in very poor shape right now as both they have started pushing out DRI2- and KMS-based drivers and this is what's causing the instability. Before these updates the drivers worked better.

Maybe I should have used "future potential compatibility" instead of "stability". The chances of nVidia including support for KMS and XRandR 1.2-1.3 anytime soon is slim as they have rewritten their entire memory manager from scratch instead of using what's used by all other drivers. The big thing I want is GPU objects and will be a part of a future XRandR release, unless nVidia suddenly decides to implement all older XRandR features that have been available in other drivers since a few years ago I don't see them supporting this new feature either. GPU objects allow multi-graphics card monitor setups where you can drag windows between all screens. Without it you can only have a multi-graphics card setup where you cannot drag windows between them.

If you're assembling a new system, then look for a slightly older, non-HD Radeon. You want one of the r500 chipsets, which are the newest chipsets supported by the open source radeon driver. Because they are slightly older, they're cheap. Then in a year when radeonhd stabilizes a bit, you can upgrade.

I picked up a Radeon X1550 for $20 USD, and it kicks butt. KDE4 desktop effects are silky smooth, the response is snappy, etc, etc. But it's not for hardcore gaming, as Mesa doesn't yet support some of the newer OpenGL addons. But if you don't need pixel or sample buffers, you won't notice. I don't do TV out, so I can't comment on that.

On the other hand, if you need a proprietary driver, stay away from the ATI Catalyst driver. Hold you nose and go with nVidia.

Thanks for the numerous replies. I won't be getting a cutting edge card because 1) I don't need it and 2) I want one with passive cooling. I might go back to doing some 3D programming sooner or later though, so it should be *somewhat* current.

So far, I'm leaning towards nVidia as I might have to rely on the official drivers in either case. Perhaps a cheap older ATI with open source drivers as a secondary card for the "video screen".

How are the current nVidia drivers for KDE 4.2 dual screen setups? I know the older cards (my laptop's GeForce FX Go5200) were rather tedious to set up for two screens with KDE 3.5. Never tried it with the 4.x series so far.

Musgit wrote:So far, I'm leaning towards nVidia as I might have to rely on the official drivers in either case. Perhaps a cheap older ATI with open source drivers as a secondary card for the "video screen".

You cannot run both a nVidia and ATI graphics card in the same machine at the same time. nVidia drivers completely replace the DRM system making it incompatible with other drivers that use the open source version (Which is ATI and Intel).

Musgit wrote:How are the current nVidia drivers for KDE 4.2 dual screen setups? I know the older cards (my laptop's GeForce FX Go5200) were rather tedious to set up for two screens with KDE 3.5. Never tried it with the 4.x series so far.

nVidia TwinView works fine, I use it on my system without any problems.

I thought ati cards are better since i saw some 2d rendering benchmarks, so i got an ati card, its annoying to set it up and get working but after its working its fine, it usually takes ati a while to release new drivers which sucks

I have NVidia GeForce 9600 GT on KDE 4.2.2. and QT4.5 and I don't have any problem. I am happy I bought NVidia 4 months ago

SmilingSun2 wrote:I thought ati cards are better since i saw some 2d rendering benchmarks, so i got an ati card, its annoying to set it up and get working but after its working its fine, it usually takes ati a while to release new drivers which sucks

I am no longer using the ati card, i'm using the integrated nforce graphics output with the 180.51 drivers, there doesn't seem to be a performance difference. I have also stopped using kwin's graphics, it just isn't as fast as compiz-fusion. Compiz-fusion + kde4-window-decorator + nvidia + latest driver is what i think is the best.

sucks to see an integrated nvidia chip matching the performance of the discrete ati radeon hd