What is the best nvidia gpu for gaming?

[brosis]

AMD drivers suck! Latest update and my boot time doubled which by itself is pretty annoying but even worse is i'm getting my GUI broken in half every time i left my computer unattended for more than a couple of hours....the performance by itself was actually not bad! and the crossfire actually scaled nicely it was never broken.

Wither crossfire is broken or not can be easily measured by PTS, using Unigine or Xonotic profiles; they should have profile for crossfire.
Also, you claimed performance was bad, now you claim performance was not bad.. I don't understand you Every driver has bugs.

Right now none of the source games work with even git master and serious sam doesn't either so I'm not sure this is good advice.

Well, I said "soon", not "now". It looks to me like same case with Evergreen, now the later being the most stable choice for R600g.
So the purchase is sure futureproof.

But if one wants all features now, on modern hardware, then the best choice probably would be closed source nvidia driver with one of nvidia GPUs I recommended.


@Kano: Radeon VDPAU implementation is how many days old? xD Why do you expect it to be free of bugs, especially with Adobe Flash, that has Blue People bug with nvidia even now?

[Kano]

@RussianNeuroMancer

I mainly noticed instabilities using flash 11.2 with vdpau on some cards. You can try this hack (adjust path to the libflashplayer.so if needed):

sed -i s/libvdpau/libvdpax/g $HOME/.mozilla/plugins/libflashplayer.so

Even if it does not always work it is better than fglrx as you dont have got vdpau there. Radeon vdpau crashes flash 11.2 as well.

[ChrisXY]

The opensource driver for 787x+ should stabilize pretty soon.

Right now none of the source games work with even git master and serious sam doesn't either so I'm not sure this is good advice.

[RussianNeuroMancer]

A gl2benchmark rendering issue that showed up in flight gear as well needed about 1y fix for fglrx as well. I think there was a 2nd issue which needed a similar timeframe but dont remember it now. When you look at source engine based games fglrx is really bad compared to nvidia.

You actually compare critical issue (xserver crash) with rendering issue - you are serious? btw, I may remember more examples (broken 3D on 7300/7400 Go since 270 build of the driver - "long" hardware support in nVidia driver is nothing but joke) but this one (GTS 250, GTS 560) just fresh.

[Kano]

A gl2benchmark rendering issue that showed up in flight gear as well needed about 1y fix for fglrx as well. I think there was a 2nd issue which needed a similar timeframe but dont remember it now. When you look at source engine based games fglrx is really bad compared to nvidia.

[RussianNeuroMancer]

AMD drivers suck! Latest update and my boot time doubled which by itself is pretty annoying but even worse is i'm getting my GUI broken in half every time i left my computer unattended for more than a couple of hours....

Then rollback to previous version and report this issue to AMD. Regressions may happen with any drivers, you know. With GeForce you may get much more serious troubles (xorg crash) and wait for fix for eight months without any answer from nVidia https://devtalk.nvidia.com/default/t...3-2-0-4-amd64/ (at least GTS 250 and GTX 560 is affected by this bug) and almost without open source option (because nouveau run on Fermi and Kepler on default lowest power profile so that will be not enough for games). That, you know, just example. You may buy new shiny GeForce and be happy for some time, but if you face with such critical issue be ready to be ignored by nVidia for months and be ready wait fix for up to 1.5 years (that from my experience of using GeForce GPU's).

[marco26]

AMD drivers suck! Latest update and my boot time doubled which by itself is pretty annoying but even worse is i'm getting my GUI broken in half every time i left my computer unattended for more than a couple of hours....the performance by itself was actually not bad! and the crossfire actually scaled nicely it was never broken. But seriously its time for me to move on...for nvidia.

Recommending the titan for playing serious sam and team fortress @ 1080p it is pretty lousy advice to say the least. At this point I'm just looking for a decent solution without wasting money, because there are no AAA games just old stuff that got ported by valve which i could play on my P4 So my dilemma is just if paying for a gtx 660 is not throwing money out as I probably will never use it at full potential. What is confusing me is the way nvidia gpu's are priced locally let's say


gtx 650 it starts @ arround 100$ and up to 150$ depending on the brand , memory, cooler, etc..
gtx 650TI from 140$ up to 170$
gtx 650ti boost 170$ to 185$

ASUS GTX660 DCII top 2 gb is 215$ which seems the most attractive deal to me, really nice and quiet cooler and by far the most powerful GPU, but it will probably got wasted for playing on linux...

[brosis]

Hi guys, what is the best gpu for gaming at this moment in Linux? I was thinking to buy a GTX 660, but is it overkill at this point? Right know i have a couple of HD6670 in crossfire and they get the job done easily...but i'm fed up with AMD drivers!
I play @1080P, mostly SS3, TF2 still waiting for some decent FPS.

Lol.

I got HD5850 for 50$ used... And I use it with opensource driver. And it shows some really good performance!

You can't be serious awaiting for 6670 to perform any good, especially that crossfire/sli never work right in Linux drivers! It is either completely broken (nvidia/fglrx) or nobody bothered to implement it (radeon).

So sell your two slowpoke cards that work in broken linkage and buy a single good GPU.
Either HD58xx, 69xx or 7870+. The opensource driver for 787x+ should stabilize pretty soon.
Or buy nvidia 460+, 560+, 660+, but forget about opensource drivers.

[chithanh]

The best GPU for gaming right now is the GK110. It's used in the NVidia GTX Titan. It's very expensive, but you clearly asked what the best GPU is right now, and that's the answer.

Only if you think that best=fastest.

I think that the OP is well aware that the GTX 660 is not the fastest GPU.

[RealNC]

The best GPU for gaming right now is the GK110. It's used in the NVidia GTX Titan. It's very expensive, but you clearly asked what the best GPU is right now, and that's the answer.

As to whether it's overkill, under Linux probably yes. Under Windows, maybe a bit, depending on the games you play. It's not overkill if you have a 120Hz monitor and expect to get 120FPS from every game you play with maxed out settings. For that, you might even have to run two Titans in SLI even.