Asking for recommendations for a new card.

[liam]

Hi all.

I'm currently using an 8400GS (260.19.21) and a Q6600 with 4GB @ 1066. I've had problems over the last couple of distro cycles (including current Fedora) so I tend to think I can discount X. I run Gnome almost exclusively (Gnome Shell most recently) but check out KDE when an interesting release occurs, and the problems occurs on all desktops. Specifically, slow pixbuff creation for window menus along with associated artifacts, extremely slow window transformations/translations, lots of tearing (except when running Gnome Shell but continues to occur in videos regardless), and just general lag. When I moved from Ubuntu to Fedora during the most recent cycle you are given Nouveau by default and it had noticably faster 2D (for instance, scrolling in Firefox was vastly improved) but it also had many artifacts, and no official 3D.
So what I'd like is a card with excellent 2D performance, good 3D and eventual video acceleration (even help through Gallium would be fine). I don't game much but 3D support should be sufficient to play something like L4D2 but not at highest settings obviously. However, even that level of 3D support isn't as important as very strong 2D as long as it can run Clutter's GLSL for Gnome Shell.
I'd prefer AMD simply b/c of their OSS support, but the performance in the above areas is paramount.

Thanks!

Liam

[kbios]

Hi all.

I'm currently using an 8400GS (260.19.21) and a Q6600 with 4GB @ 1066. I've had problems over the last couple of distro cycles (including current Fedora) so I tend to think I can discount X. I run Gnome almost exclusively (Gnome Shell most recently) but check out KDE when an interesting release occurs, and the problems occurs on all desktops. Specifically, slow pixbuff creation for window menus along with associated artifacts, extremely slow window transformations/translations, lots of tearing (except when running Gnome Shell but continues to occur in videos regardless), and just general lag. When I moved from Ubuntu to Fedora during the most recent cycle you are given Nouveau by default and it had noticably faster 2D (for instance, scrolling in Firefox was vastly improved) but it also had many artifacts, and no official 3D.
So what I'd like is a card with excellent 2D performance, good 3D and eventual video acceleration (even help through Gallium would be fine). I don't game much but 3D support should be sufficient to play something like L4D2 but not at highest settings obviously. However, even that level of 3D support isn't as important as very strong 2D as long as it can run Clutter's GLSL for Gnome Shell.
I'd prefer AMD simply b/c of their OSS support, but the performance in the above areas is paramount.

Thanks!

Liam

Hi Liam, good question. First, it's strange that the NVIDIA blob performs so badly (even with such a low end card), but I imagine you have already tried solutions for that.
You haven't said anything about the budget, so I will make a few proposals.
On AMD side, if you want stable OSS support (fast 2D and reasonable 3D) r700 is the most recent well supported generation. A 4670 costs about 65? and should be enough for your 3D needs. Also r600g is the driver that will more likely get shader-based video acceleration soon.
On NVIDIA side, you could get a GT 220 for about the same price, and you'll get faster 3D and video acceleration (using the blob).
If you want to spend more, you can take an ATI 5770 (about 120?), but you will need fglrx to get stable 3d (and possibly video acceleraton). On NVIDIA side, there is the GTS 450 for about the same price.

I hope this is helpful

[kbios]

no just 2.6.36 or 2.6.37 kernel and the 3D is stable

As shown (among others) by the latest phoronix tests (done under 2.6.37), 3d still fails with quite a few games, which run perfectly instead with an r700. "Working" is a bit different from "stable".

[Panix]

Hi all.

I'm currently using an 8400GS (260.19.21) and a Q6600 with 4GB @ 1066. I've had problems over the last couple of distro cycles (including current Fedora) so I tend to think I can discount X. I run Gnome almost exclusively (Gnome Shell most recently) but check out KDE when an interesting release occurs, and the problems occurs on all desktops. Specifically, slow pixbuff creation for window menus along with associated artifacts, extremely slow window transformations/translations, lots of tearing (except when running Gnome Shell but continues to occur in videos regardless), and just general lag. When I moved from Ubuntu to Fedora during the most recent cycle you are given Nouveau by default and it had noticably faster 2D (for instance, scrolling in Firefox was vastly improved) but it also had many artifacts, and no official 3D.
So what I'd like is a card with excellent 2D performance, good 3D and eventual video acceleration (even help through Gallium would be fine). I don't game much but 3D support should be sufficient to play something like L4D2 but not at highest settings obviously. However, even that level of 3D support isn't as important as very strong 2D as long as it can run Clutter's GLSL for Gnome Shell.
I'd prefer AMD simply b/c of their OSS support, but the performance in the above areas is paramount.

Thanks!

Liam

Recent or newer HD Radeon cards, so HD 6xxx cards. or Northern Islands gen., are not officially supported yet. So, you either have to sit in the dark twiddling your thumbs until drivers are released or inquire for the magic formula site

AMD/ATI Linux driver devs are waiting for the big release party the Windows devs have which lasts months so far to end before they can release a driver?

So, boot up that Windows partition and rock on!

[evolution]

Personally, although I really prefer AMD/ATI (I'm an ATI user for more than 13 years), if you're using Linux, your best bet is to stick with nVidia, because of the following facts:

Their kernel / xorg support is better, their drivers are more user-friendly, and some features, such as HW video-decoding (via vdpau) or GPGPU (via CUDA) are currently more developed than in ATI counterpart (although you can get HW video-decoding via xvba-video/vaapi and GPGPU support via OpenCL (with Catalyst)).

Furthermore, Open-Source ATI support still has a lot of catch up until it has the same features / performance of proprietary Catalyst driver; Except maybe for 2D support, where OS support seems better than in Catalyst. (unless you're lucky enough and you can use xvba-video with Catalyst. That way, you'll use much less CPU to decode videos than using Xv with OS ATI driver).

Cheers

[liam]

Hi Liam, good question. First, it's strange that the NVIDIA blob performs so badly (even with such a low end card), but I imagine you have already tried solutions for that.
You haven't said anything about the budget, so I will make a few proposals.
On AMD side, if you want stable OSS support (fast 2D and reasonable 3D) r700 is the most recent well supported generation. A 4670 costs about 65? and should be enough for your 3D needs. Also r600g is the driver that will more likely get shader-based video acceleration soon.
On NVIDIA side, you could get a GT 220 for about the same price, and you'll get faster 3D and video acceleration (using the blob).
If you want to spend more, you can take an ATI 5770 (about 120?), but you will need fglrx to get stable 3d (and possibly video acceleraton). On NVIDIA side, there is the GTS 450 for about the same price.

I hope this is helpful

Thanks for the response, kbios. I didn't specify price on purpose b/c I would consider a FireGL/Quadro(though not the several thousand dollar ones) but I haven't seen anyone mention what kind of performance they get other than fps for professional rendering apps (my gf will occasionally use the Blender, but not enough that it is a priority).
I've been using X's Radeon page to get a relative measure of each cards support but I'm pretty certain that it is at least somewhat out of date since, IIRC, a patch was offered that provided HDMI audio.Also, since Mesa even now offers some OGL 4 I probably wouldn't want to go less than Evergreen but, from what has been said, it seems like it will be awhile before we see stable 3d and while I can make do until after the holidays, I want to be able to move quickly afterwards. So that seems to suggest r700/nvidia. Now, while my limited experience with OS drivers has been positive (considering they are completely reverse engineered, so I expect more from the radeon drivers) I really will need solid OGL 2+ support. Also, in your opinion, how bad is fglrx? I've heard horrors stories but tend to doubt what seem like emotional testimonies.
Lastly, I'm not sure what you mean by "I imagine you have already tried solutions for that". Since the driver is a blob, I haven't noticed anything to do other than adjust the settings via nvidia-settings. There are huge numbers of changes you can make to xorg.conf but from my reading of it's man page, nothing that seems applicable for my problems.

Thanks so much,
Liam

[liam]

Recent or newer HD Radeon cards, so HD 6xxx cards. or Northern Islands gen., are not officially supported yet. So, you either have to sit in the dark twiddling your thumbs until drivers are released or inquire for the magic formula site

AMD/ATI Linux driver devs are waiting for the big release party the Windows devs have which lasts months so far to end before they can release a driver?

So, boot up that Windows partition and rock on!

I've heard as much, but I trust Bridgeman when he says that subsequent cards will get support more quickly, and r700 lagged only by, what, 7 months?

[liam]

Personally, although I really prefer AMD/ATI (I'm an ATI user for more than 13 years), if you're using Linux, your best bet is to stick with nVidia, because of the following facts:

Their kernel / xorg support is better, their drivers are more user-friendly, and some features, such as HW video-decoding (via vdpau) or GPGPU (via CUDA) are currently more developed than in ATI counterpart (although you can get HW video-decoding via xvba-video/vaapi and GPGPU support via OpenCL (with Catalyst)).

Furthermore, Open-Source ATI support still has a lot of catch up until it has the same features / performance of proprietary Catalyst driver; Except maybe for 2D support, where OS support seems better than in Catalyst. (unless you're lucky enough and you can use xvba-video with Catalyst. That way, you'll use much less CPU to decode videos than using Xv with OS ATI driver).

Cheers

I'm guessing you didn't read my post
If you can tell me why nvidia isn't the cause of these issues I am certainly willing to listen.
BTW, I've noticed that even lowly Intel's 945 runs gnome-shell far more smoothly than my 8400gs with the blob. Bizarre!

Best/Liam

[kbios]

Thanks for the response, kbios. I didn't specify price on purpose b/c I would consider a FireGL/Quadro(though not the several thousand dollar ones) but I haven't seen anyone mention what kind of performance they get other than fps for professional rendering apps (my gf will occasionally use the Blender, but not enough that it is a priority).
I've been using X's Radeon page to get a relative measure of each cards support but I'm pretty certain that it is at least somewhat out of date since, IIRC, a patch was offered that provided HDMI audio.Also, since Mesa even now offers some OGL 4 I probably wouldn't want to go less than Evergreen but, from what has been said, it seems like it will be awhile before we see stable 3d and while I can make do until after the holidays, I want to be able to move quickly afterwards. So that seems to suggest r700/nvidia. Now, while my limited experience with OS drivers has been positive (considering they are completely reverse engineered, so I expect more from the radeon drivers) I really will need solid OGL 2+ support. Also, in your opinion, how bad is fglrx? I've heard horrors stories but tend to doubt what seem like emotional testimonies.
Lastly, I'm not sure what you mean by "I imagine you have already tried solutions for that". Since the driver is a blob, I haven't noticed anything to do other than adjust the settings via nvidia-settings. There are huge numbers of changes you can make to xorg.conf but from my reading of it's man page, nothing that seems applicable for my problems.

Thanks so much,
Liam

Well, for the blob problem you're right, there isn't much one can do except tweaking xorg.conf and nvidia-settings, except if there is something wrong in the BIOS. I've never used fglrx so I really can't comment on that side, but on the other side I've been using r600c and then r600g for several months and I've never experienced a crash or a lockup. That said, if you prefer a modern (OGL4) card, the impression I gathered in several years of news and forum posts is that the nvida blob tends to be more stable than fglrx. But don't take my word for it. :-)

[evolution]

I'm guessing you didn't read my post
If you can tell me why nvidia isn't the cause of these issues I am certainly willing to listen.
BTW, I've noticed that even lowly Intel's 945 runs gnome-shell far more smoothly than my 8400gs with the blob. Bizarre!

Best/Liam

I can't help you very much with that, because I don't use Gnome (and I don't like it). I'd recommend you to replace Gnome for Xfce. (just a personal opinion)

From what I've been hearing, current gnome-shell support is working better with mesa drivers than proprietary blobs (either nVidia or fglrx).

Cheers