[olug] FC4 and Matrox Drivers

[Phil Brutsche]

Jesse Regier wrote:
> It looks like FC4 has major issues with the matrox video drivers and 
> it gets pretty ugly with my G550.  So It looks like I'm in the market
> for a new video card.  It wouldn't drive my Samsung 910t LCD monitor
> at the full resolution in digital mode anyway.
> 
> So what are people out there using?  I don't need high end 3D 
> acceleration for games and such.  I just need a decently fast card 
> that can do DVI out at 1280x1024.  I've always stayed away from the 
> Nvidia cards because of the whole binary driver issue.
> 
> Any suggestions?

You mean... suggestions other than nVidia?

Give up Linux as a desktop OS.

Extereme and not what you want to hear, I know.

If you have problems with with Matrox and nVidia, your only other real
option is ATI... and the driver problems with modern ATI cards and Linux
distributions make any concerns with binary drivers pale in comparison.
For any "non-mainstream" OS (aka anything that's not Windows or Mac OS
X) current nVidia-based cards are generally better supported than ATI
cards are.

So... Unless you want to get an older ATI card, such as an ATI RADEON
9000, I would suck it up and get an nVidia GeForce FX5200 or FX5600 (for
PCI or AGP systems) or an nNvidia GeForce 6200 or 6600 (PCI Express).

Since you mention that you don't necessarily need 3D acceleration there
is the open-source "nv" X.org driver that (in my experience) provides
more than adequate 2D acceleration for nVidia-based cards.

Are their alternatives to the Matrox-nVidia-ATI trio? Yes. Google "XGI
Volari".

Will their performance and Linux support be up to par? Good question.

Personally, I would go for the known quanity: nVidia.

-- 

Phil Brutsche
phil at brutsche.us