Choosing a GFX card for new Linux Desktop

[Kano]

Well i have got that card in my fastest system. Unigine engine with tesselation is no fun:

http://openbenchmarking.org/result/1...KANO-I78809421

I need that card for testing fglrx, otherwise i would not use it. 15 fps @ 1280x1024 is just poor.

[Qaridarium]

the core i5-2500 is a quad core processor. According to wikipedia the Llano systems won't be out until Q3 or Q4 2011. The Zacate is just becoming available now. I'd prefer to get this built sooner than that.
I can't really see anything wrong with using the sandybridge with a dedicated gfx card, they sell boards just for that with the P67 chipset.
Thanks,
Lyle

my point is you can save a lot of money if you don't buy an extra gpu card means buy an amd fusion system and save the money.

the quatcore llano is maybe not as fast as the quatcore sandy but the gpu is very fast and in the future you can use the gpu over openCL in cpu tasks to.

intel cpu+extra gpu card is just extensive and Power hungry.

[PsynoKhi0]

15 fps @ 1280x1024 is just poor.

At what level of tesselation and compared to what?
Is tesselation performance alone really a good indicator (and I mean, for anyone else beyond nvidia's PR dept)?

[PsynoKhi0]

@s0rce
If you can hold on for a few months, Llano could be very appealing, as Qaridarium suggested.
I find the A8-3550 particularly sweet.

Then again price is an unkown. At least even if you stick to your i5 plan you should benefit from price cuts. The Japanese earthquake could impact the market too though.

[s0rce]

So how about an nvidia option, maybe a 9500?
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16814130395

Does that work alright?

The older ATI (4830, etc) cards seem to get good results in the games (urban terror) I want to play. I can't find too many benchmarks of the NVidia cards (except really expensive ones.

If I didn't want to wait for the Llano and the SB integrated graphics won't cut it I just need something a bit better not a 580 GTX.

Thanks!

[s0rce]

Ok, that nvidia card was really old, how about a GT 4xx?

[skeetre]

Have you ran the test in Windows... I know, you probably don't use windows, but I'd be interested to see how the same benchmark compares in windows.

[crazycheese]

Nvidia cards perform almost same under linux, as under windows. Sometime they are up to 20% slower, but not more. SLI and "multimonitor 3D" are not supported, overclocking for 4xx and 5xx is not supported too(you will have to reflash vga bios with own values). Everything else should work, at least it was my experience with 9800gt 1,5 years ago. The real downside is that nvidia does not provide official opensource, but AMD does not do that either - only hardware documentation so that basic functionality works. Who buys 300$ card for linux to have basic functionality?

Neither AMD nor nvidia develop their linux driver for private households, but nvidia drivers tended (for me) to be reliable.

Nvidia 4xx is outdated. I strongly recommend using 560 and up.

[bridgman]

The real downside is that nvidia does not provide official opensource, but AMD does not do that either - only hardware documentation so that basic functionality works.

Crazycheese, I'm not going to respond to all of your posts but I do need to point out periodically that this is simply not true. AMD supplies documentation *and* funds developers working full time on the open source graphics drivers.

[crazycheese]

intel cpu+extra gpu card is just extensive and Power hungry.

Power hungry cards are 100$+ range (100 watts upon load and up).
They also provide GDDR5 memory over 192bit+ buses.

Im strongly unsure how llano system is gonna compensate that. It would just have to use 3-4 memory controllers and up, using 3-4 slots minimal (or more) of DDR3@2000+mhz memory (which you will have to purchase as well).

Add drivers on top of it(e-350 still required DRM drivers) and you have a deal. Video acceleration? OpenGL3+ support? In far future, if any.

Also, the system will just require to drain power. Based on how efficient Sandy is, there is small chance llano will match it, even if you add similar discrete card and turn sandy "on-cpu" off.