OT: nVidia driver [was: Wish list] -- understanding the GPU market

[Bryan J. Smith <b.j.smith@ieee.org>]

Little Davie Jones wrote:  
> FWIW, I picked up a PCI-E Radeon X300 for not-many-beans recently.
> It works out of the box with FC4, with no need for proprietory drivers.
> The 3d isn't supported yet ... <BIG TIME CUT>

Please replace "PCI-E Radeon X300" with "PCI-E GeForce 6800" and
retype that and it will be the _exact_same_ logic.

nVidia _does_ put people on the MIT "nv" driver, and 2D _does_ work
with their newest NV4x series of cards -- typically in about the same 
development time as the ATI "radeon" and other drivers.

Also note that the X300 is a prior series R300, and not the latest
R400.  It's like comparing to a GeForce FX5700LE.

I think people forget that nVidia gives you the option of using the MIT
drivers for 2D only, and the proprietary drivers with 2D+GLX.  The 2D
drivers work very good _if_ your GPU logic is supported, just like the
MIT ATI drivers as well.

And there is some UtahGLX and other support for nVidia as well.
I think people tend to demonize nVidia when they give you just the
_option_ to go 3D/GLX.

And ATI is definitely _not_ a good poster child against nVidia.
3DLabs would be a better consideration as they push are for full
OpenGL compliance with no extensions or after-the-fact ARB
extensions.





--
Bryan J. Smith   mailto:b.j.smith at ieee.org