Greg, On Monday 16 October 2006 17:31, Greg Wallace wrote:
... From years of reading on this list, I get the impression that Radeon (ATI) is not looked upon as being of the same quality as NVIDIA. ... All recommendations greatly appreciated.
I now have one system with an ATI (Radeon 9600) and one with nVidia (GeForce 7300). (Plus I have a fallback Matrox card with no DVI that I used up until I got my first flat-panel display and the ATI card). I've had the ATI card for over a year. The nVidia I've had only a week. I have to say the nVidia experience, while shorter by far, has been less problematic, at least as far as using the proprietary, 3D- / OpenGL-supporting drivers goes. If the 3D stuff mattered to me, then I'd be pretty frustrated with ATI (though I'm sure I could have made it work). But by comparison, the nVidia driver installation was pretty simple and straightforward based on the instructions on the openSUSE Wiki. The fact that you have to go through part of that installation procedure with the system in non-graphics mode whenever a new kernel is installed isn't ideal, but I already deal with a similar situation for VMware (though that can be done in graphics mode). I consider it to be just one of those fact-of-life things, at least for now. I originally got the ATI card because of a Tom's Hardware review stating that it had better DVI signal quality than nVidia. But I can now say based on A-B comparison that you cannot tell the difference in sharpness or clarity (text is what matters most for me, since these are software development systems and I go for the smallest fonts that are legible at arm's length). From that standpoint, they're both outstanding and I'd never voluntarily go back to use a CRT or VGA. But if the ultra-fancy 3D blizz matters to you (as it does to gamers, primarily), then you'll need to consider these other issues of driver installation. Since there seems to be no consensus of experience hereabouts, it seems like you're going to have to roll the dice... That, or do more research. Ain't the 'Net great?
Greg Wallace
Randall Schulz