"David Evennou (Data Masters)" de@data-masters.com wrote:
Thanks Bryan! I have a few identical machines, to keep installs, etc. easier. I plan to use one or two of the machines for CAD work, so I will want to get better video cards. What video card(s) do you recommend for high performance?
Depends on what you define as "high performance?" This will differ between consumer and engineering applications. (i.e., what applications?)
For consumer, general and _some_ engineering, nVidia's Standardware (Open Standard, Proprietary Source) "nvidia" GLX drivers are the most stable and highest performing. nVidia's Quadro series are geared more towards engineering, typically with additional memory and other options. But even the GeForce 6800GT or latest 7800GTX does fairly well. And nVidia is the best when it comes to broad support for their cards under Linux.
ATI is quickly improving their Standardware driver line for newer cards, but they still seem to lag in broad support and stability versus nVidia. The limited Freedomware (Open Source, Open Standard) drivers developed by Precision Insight under contract from the Weather Channel (I believe?) are based on older R1x0/2x0 series cards, and clearly not engineering-quality. While some people have gotten the DRI GLX support to work with some newer RV2x0 series, and even a few R/RV3x0 series cards, the features are limited because ATI closed up all their 3D specs as of the R3x0 series. So ATI has now joined nVidia and Matrox in creating a proprietary source-only driver for 3D/GLX support.
nVidia actually opened its "unified driver" 3D specs back in the XFree 3.3.x days and NV0x (TNT2/early GeForce), but because of IP ownership by Intel, Microsoft and others, they found themselves in litigation. Although some UtahGLX and DRI work exists on these, the features are old and typically don't work past NV10/11/15/17 (GeForce2 to GeForce4 MX). Sadly enough, the catch-22 is that the best way to stable and performing OpenGL is to unify the driver code across Windows, Linux, MacOS X, etc... At the same time, that's an IP mindfield, hence why they are proprietary source. The former "clean room" endeavors by DRI are noble, but the performance and feature support (especially for engineering applications) leave much to be desired, hence why ATI joined nVidia and Matrox when it started to officially support Linux 3D/GLX.
Now more for engineering, 3DLabs has Linux GLX support as well with their drivers. Their newer Wildcat products have exception performance for engineering (not so good for general/consumer), although you'll typically pay for it (2-3x what nVidia GeForce/Quadros will get you). 3DLabs also adheres to strict OpenGL, and follows the Architectural Review Board (ARB) process to the letter. ATI and nVidia introducing various extensions, and it's up to you to figure out if they are supported by various applications. [ NOTE: OpenGL/ARB is still not as bad as "DirectX is a wrapper to vendor-specific APIs," but it's not as "clean" as OpenGL should be, and I agree with 3DLabs' viewpoint. ]
[ Professional Note: I know there is the cry for open source in Linux, but OpenGL is an IP mindfield -- especially on the "leading edge." But at least OpenGL over X11 (GLX) _is_ an "open standard," and had it not been for nVidia back in the 2000-2001 timeframe, many CAM and EDA vendors would have just ported their codebases to Win32/DirectX, instead of sticking with POSIX/GLX (doing ports from Irix/Solaris to Linux) thanx to nVidia at least having a quality Linux 3D/GLX implementation that was usable for engineering. When there is no viable "open source" option, I'll take "open standard, proprietary source" on Linux versus "proprietary standard, proprietary source" on Windows that would make it extremely difficult for the code to _ever_ return to POSIX/GLX (and making the applications Windows only). ]