I've used nVidia cards under Linux in the past because of driver support, but the past year or so I've endured a lot of suffering because of driver issues, and I am willing to try out the other side. I know ATI Linux support is supposed to be terrible, but can it really be much worse?
I've got two monitors, a 30" 2560x1600 and a 20" 1600x1200. The 20" is rotated which seems to cause most of my grief. I've never gotten any of the OSS drivers working, and the binary driver is limping, at best. I've spent countless days fighting to get things working.
In order to get it working *with rotation*, I have to use Xinerama. That means no compositing and truly appalling performance. I mean, just scrolling in Firefox can be a joke. And it was fussy to set-up. And it's a somewhat unstable. This is with a fairly dated GeForce 7800 GT.
If I get a more current nVidia card, will I be able to get this setup actually working? I mean actually working - not this Xinerama crapfest. Is ATI a viable option these days? I've been so frustrated with nVidia that I would really love to give my business to their competitor this time around.
The card I'm looking at is a Radeon 5750. It's a good price-point for me, performance is decent, and it's low enough power that there are passively cooled versions available (yay).
My needs are:
#1 - Actual, functional dual monitor support at the above resolutions *WITH ROTATION*.
#2 - Minimal pain and suffering getting it working if possible.
#3 - Snappy desktop performance. I don't want to wait for a week and a half for Firefox to scroll.
#4 - Decent video.
#5 - Decent (not high-end) gaming performance. I will boot into Windows for games.
I've got two monitors, a 30" 2560x1600 and a 20" 1600x1200. The 20" is rotated which seems to cause most of my grief. I've never gotten any of the OSS drivers working, and the binary driver is limping, at best. I've spent countless days fighting to get things working.
In order to get it working *with rotation*, I have to use Xinerama. That means no compositing and truly appalling performance. I mean, just scrolling in Firefox can be a joke. And it was fussy to set-up. And it's a somewhat unstable. This is with a fairly dated GeForce 7800 GT.
If I get a more current nVidia card, will I be able to get this setup actually working? I mean actually working - not this Xinerama crapfest. Is ATI a viable option these days? I've been so frustrated with nVidia that I would really love to give my business to their competitor this time around.
The card I'm looking at is a Radeon 5750. It's a good price-point for me, performance is decent, and it's low enough power that there are passively cooled versions available (yay).
My needs are:
#1 - Actual, functional dual monitor support at the above resolutions *WITH ROTATION*.
#2 - Minimal pain and suffering getting it working if possible.
#3 - Snappy desktop performance. I don't want to wait for a week and a half for Firefox to scroll.
#4 - Decent video.
#5 - Decent (not high-end) gaming performance. I will boot into Windows for games.
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