Looking for an nVidia GPU, but not sure how well they are supported.

[-Tam-]

It has been a while since I bought a computer, and looking at all the GPUs I have no idea how to see which one who are supported well in Linux.

I have two criterias:
- It have to be fairly silent.
- Support well in Linux, preferably both open source and closed source drivers.

The computer is mainly going to be used for gaming, but I don't need any hard core graphics or anything.
I have been looking at the 750 series, but I can see several have many issues, and some none, so does:

- Manufactorer
- GTX vs GT
- TI or not
- 1GB or 2GB
... and so on, have anything to say?

If not any of the 750 cards are well suppoerted, should I bo for older ones?
Would appriciate some suggestions

[Kano]

Basially every Maxwell GPU (750, 750 Ti, 970, 980) has low energy usage idle. I would go for at least 2 GB VRAM, that allows higher resolution textures in games like Serious Sam 3. Up to 750 Ti the Nvidia 340 (or 331 like Ubuntu uses) driver series works, for 970, 980 you need 343+. If you search for a low noise card maybe try Asus Strix, it has a 0 fan mode as long as the GPU is cool enough (below 50 C) - it is of course one of the most expensive ones. Cheaper cards are of course also fine, but get at least the 750 Ti, because it is much faster than the one without.

[-Tam-]

Actually, an ASUS GTX 750 Ti 2GB was what I first bought, but, based on 14.10 based distributions:

- It does not seem like the open drivers are working correctly, and I get a very low resolution in live-sessions (and I occasionally run distros live).
- When I go to driver manager, I get a message saying no proprietary drivers in use, and it does not seems like I can install the drivers from the manager.
- When I download the driver and run the command, it says I have to exit X.

So as of now, it seems like 750 have terrible support, but does anyone know if this is something that will be fixed in the near future?
If not, does anyone know if the 740 are better supported, or do I have to go way back?

[Kano]

Poor live systems you use. Kanotix Spitfire special would work. I could build images with 343 driver as well, it is just not default.

[-Tam-]

As of now I only have Mint and Lubuntu on the stick (just got a bigger one to get room for more distros on it), but I usually have Manjaro (which I have downloaded again, new version was released recently and latest drivers should be in place, so will try that later), Kali, Arch, Fedora, Magea, and a bunch of others, so you would probably find something you like

I can install the proprietary driver manually, but still, the open driver does not work, so basically, should next versions of distributions recognice the cards and let me install the proprietary drivers properly, and should I assume that the open driver should work a lot better? If not, I would rather just change the card.

[klaphark]

I'm also an owner of a GeForce GTX 750 Ti and I can't say support for this card is terrible, it's just lacking support from open-source drivers. I use Ubuntu 14.10 with the latest (manually installed) proprietary drivers and it performs great, my card is almost inaudible and games run nearly identical to their Windows counterparts. The biggest reason for me to buy this card is it's price and the excellent power to performance ratio.

Looking at this feature matrix nouveau support for NV110 (GTX 750 and GTX 900 series) is coming along quite nicely and most things are done or WIP. The big question is when we will see these updates in Ubuntu because Canonical is quite slow (understatement) in adopting upstream packages. I think it's fair to assume that Ubuntu 15.04 will at least contain booting/working nouveau drivers (though not feature complete or with top notch performance) and an updated version of nvidia-current (>= 334.21) that officially supports Maxwell GTX 750 cards.

If you can't wait a few months and want a good mid-range card that is supported by both open- and closed-source drivers my suggestion is to look for a new/second-hand GTX 660 2GB. It performs a tiny bit better than the GTX 750 ti at the cost of a higher power consumption at load. An AMD card would be more or less a tradeoff because while it has decent open-source radeon drivers the proprietary ones are lacking compared to those of Nvidia.

[mike4]

Nvidia proprietary drivers are excellent (mostly faster than Windows etc. ) and simple to install for experienced Linux users.
I have a Asus GTX 770 and x-plane is ~20% faster.

[gufide]

Got a GTX 970. Dead silent (fan do not turn on until a graphic expensive app is launch) and perform quite well. Did not tried the open drivers though.

[Isedonde]

Generelly, open source driver support for AMD GPUs is much better than for Nvidia GPUs since AMD actively works on these drivers. There might be some exceptions, i.e. some AMD cards definitely have/had issues, and maybe some Nvidia cards have good open source support (I doubt it).

Closed-source nvidia seems to be quite popular, while closed-source AMD ? well, almost everyone hates it. Closed-source AMD still has more OpenGL features compared to open-source AMD, so you still need it for some games. For desktops and some/most games though, open-source works fine.

So ? you probably have to drop the "nvidia" requirement, or drop the "good open source support" requirement. You can't have both AFAIK.

[Kano]

It is not fully correct, latest Maxwell will never have got full 3d support without binary firmware (signed firmware requirement). Kepler maybe but currently asks for firmware files. The older cards usually work for basic 3d things without extracted firmware but need it for vdpau. So you can get much more working when you do:

http://nouveau.freedesktop.org/wiki/VideoAcceleration/#firmware

Radeon only works with binary firmware but this is at least officially available in the linux-firmware git. But buying AMD because of that would be completely wrong.