Modern Video Cards with Open Specs? 63
JessLeah asks: "I've been having trouble finding decent, 3D-accelerated drivers for video cards (of late-90s/early-2000s vintage) under Linux. I'd just get a newer card, but it seems like the situation for newer cards is even worse. The market at present seems to be little more than an nVidia/ATI duopoly, and neither nVidia nor ATI have open specifications available for their chipsets. As a result, both of them presently have binary-only, x86-only, Linux-only XFree86 drivers as their sole alternative to Windows. Are there any modern chipsets (with a reasonable cost) that actually have open specifications available online -- or, at a minimum, open-source drivers that can actually compile on things other than Linux/x86" What was the last video card with open specifications that you can remember?
nVidia is not exclusively Linux (Score:5, Informative)
They're even in ports.
Really, the problem is that they're IA64/IA32/AMD64 specific (they aren't just x86, they're available for those three archs).
ATI Radeon series (Score:5, Informative)
The 3D accel isn't supposed to be nearly as fast as ATI's closed drivers, but its supposed to be functional.
Details about specific cards and chipsets are on the XFree86 Radeon driver page [xfree86.org]
Hope this helps.
-molo
Successful use and installation report (Score:4, Informative)
I use an ATI Radeon 9000 and I have yet to have problems or difficulties with the card. It was plug and play for Fedora Core 1 and 2 and this card performs well for the 3D games I occasionally play (bzflag [bzflag.org], armagetron [sourceforge.net], neverball [icculus.org], and the miniature golf game based on neverball code the name of which I have forgotten because I don't have it installed yet).
The Radeon 9000 AGP card is fairly inexpensive too ($30-$40).
I don't get it. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:I don't get it. (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:I don't get it. (Score:5, Insightful)
They don't have to open source their drivers. They just have to release the register information so we can write our own drivers.
Anybody who thinks the register information would give the competition an unfair advantage is nuts. We *know* what the cards do. You can work that out from the existing information. It's just the stupid numbers and bytecodes (of which they are umpty zillion to work out) that aren't known. There is no competitive disadvantage in releasing the numbers.
And anybody who think there are patents and/or trade secrets associated with register information is even more nuts. ATI/nVidia simply don't care about Linux or open source. They care about selling cards. So long as they can convince 90% of Linux users that closed-source binary-only x86-only drivers are "good enough" they will continue to screw us like this.
Re:I don't get it. (Score:1)
Re:I don't get it. (Score:2)
> our own drivers.
But remember the poster above your's point that the 'value' lies mostly in the drivers. Give us the specs on the cards and we stop using their drivers. The relative value of the cards is then determined by the quality of OUR drivers and neither could bring themselves to see that. Especially since most are currently happy enough to grumble and then use their closed driver.
If even 25% of the Linux userbase adopted
Re:I don't get it. (Score:3, Interesting)
fact that all the binary drivers from nVidia and ATI
suck ass, while the open source 3d drivers written
by the user community actually work, and don't crash
your system.
So, the end result is that instead of buying $450
video cards, I buy $30 cards which actually work.
I buy them for myself, for my employer, for my
family members, and especially for my friends (who
would otherwise frag me far too easily).
Re:I don't get it. (Score:2)
Re:I don't get it. (Score:5, Insightful)
The problem is that manufacturers like ATI or NVidia feel safer legally if they release no source code and do not publish specifications for their hardware. By not doing so, a nosy competitor can't possibly notice anything in NV's hardware design or their source code that infringes on a patent owned by the competitor. If such a nosy competitor did notice something, NV would end up in court over it at significant expense, and would probably have to end up cross-licensing their own patents just for a protection deal rather than for royalties.
It's simply easier legally to keep the source closed and the specs secret. The bonus is that adopting such a policy doesn't hurt sales one bit, because consumers have shown with their wallets that they really just don't want things like driver source code or programming manuals. It's a win-win for the companies involved.
Also, remember when Matrox and 3Dfx were all about open source and NV/ATI were the nasty closed source folks? All it takes is to do a "where are they now" to see what policy a conservative company would take. Nobody got rich open sourcing their drivers and publishing their specs, and at least two companies sank or nearly sank as a correlative effect (not necessarily caused by their openness). The strategic approach is to do whatever the companies that sank didn't do, so as a result NV and ATI are as closed as can be, with the exception of ATI providing some documentation under strict NDA.
The only way to change this is to hit opencores.org and start hacking on your FPGAs. Open, extensible, capable video hardware would go a long way towards humbling the secretive industry players. Once it's designed and mockups are working, real ASIC hardware can be fabbed in quantity. The FPGA gate configuration can be made freely available with the caveat that anyone who manufactures hardware using it and distributes the hardware must pass along the "source code" for the hardware, in the form of the gate configuration as well as the host-visible registers. This wouldn't exactly fit under software licenses, but maybe some contract can be drawn up to handle it.
Re:I don't get it. (Score:2)
NV and ATI, otoh, are still innovating and each product cycle is better than the last in some easily measurable way. I don't see things coming to the point that they di
They may not open the code (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:They may not open the code (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:They may not open the code (Score:5, Interesting)
I still have the manual for my Epson LX-800 printer. In the back is a detailed programming guide, which explains exactly how to print different densities, how to control the firing of the pins, etc... All open, all available.
I still have the reference manual for my Apple II plus. Inside is a complete schematic of the system, along with assembler code for the entire ROM.
I really hate this new trend of "everything's a secret". Gahh, what a greedy, messed up world we live in.
-Z
Re:I don't get it. (Score:3, Insightful)
There are many reasons. General paranoia over possible trade secrets and concerns over support costs are the top of most lists I've seen. If you document it, you have to support it.
If they support Windows they already support such a huge customer base that the incremental gain from supporting the tiny population of non-Windows users just isn't worth it.
...laura, who wishes th
Re:I don't get it. (Score:2)
market for windows customers, the first company
that snatches up the 10% remaining non-windows
customers will crush its competition.
Matrox (Score:5, Informative)
The big deal with Matrox is that they don't do tricks in their drivers. Everything is hardware accelerated (and that's why Matrox cards are so expensive).
BTW, I still have a Matrox Millenium (about four years) laying in a Pentium II and still kicking ass.
Re:Matrox (Score:2)
Anyway, I think I'll still buy it: I haven't seen any other dual-DVI card out
Re:Matrox (Score:3, Informative)
There's a few about..
Asus V9520VS GeForce FX 5200 VideoSuite 128MB (GX-015-AS) - Dual DVI [overclockers.co.uk]
Leadtek WinFast A400TDH GeForce FX 6800 Ultra 256MB DDR3 MyVIVO (GX-031-LT) - Dual DVI [overclockers.co.uk]
XFX GeForce FX 6800 128MB DDR Dual DVI/TV-Out (GX-018-XF) [overclockers.co.uk]
XFX GeForce FX 6800 GT 256MB DDR3 Dual DVI/TV-Out (GX-017-XF) [overclockers.co.uk]
XFX GeForce FX 6800 Ultra 256MB DDR3 Dual DVI/TV-Out (GX-016-XF [overclockers.co.uk])
Re:Matrox (Score:2)
This is not an anti-Matrox spiel btw. I used a G200, a G400 and a G550 and I've been happy with all of them. I just happened to not have good luck w/ the P650. The G550 is still in the closet (along w/ other
Re:Matrox (Score:2)
I've got 2 millenium II's in my mame box. Great for multiplaying.
I don't know about current matrox involvement, but a couple of years ago, the matrox cards were the bests cards to get to run X, because the drivers were best, and specs were open.
I've heard good things about Matrox cards. (Score:3, Interesting)
Recommendation (Score:5, Informative)
Now regarding a recommendation, if you only want drivers that have good 3d accel and are open source, your only option is to go with matrox. The only problem is that matrox cards are comparatively more expensive for the speed they provide. Instead, I would recommend getting an nvidia based card. Although nvidia's driver is binary only, it's quite good and simply looking at their readme, you can tell that they put a lot of time into it. I personally have used two different nvidia cards in linux for a number of years and have never run into any trouble.
That said, whatever you do, don't get an ATI card. I stupidly bought a radeon 9700 and i've tried every single linux driver that they've released. I can't run any 3d program for more than about 5 minutes without the whole machine locking up. In windows, the card works perfectly. So, if don't want to deal with the hassle of ATI's half-hearted support for linux, don't get one of their cards.
Re:Recommendation (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Recommendation (Score:1)
9700==suck
Re:Recommendation (Score:2)
Re:Recommendation (Score:3, Interesting)
I was going to buy Matrox for my upgrade on the premise that nvidia and ati's binary-only behaviour was annoying, but now I see that Matrox is joining the binary-only club too.
Recommendation-Let freedom sting. (Score:1, Informative)
Now, what's keeping 3COM, Intel, Adaptec, Matrox, VIA, or any of the mired of other companies from going binary? They obviously will not lose customers judging by the responses we've seen so far. The die-hards (RMS Zelots?) will stick with what they already have/reverse-engineer (Be-Fan says we can't do it with the Nvidia driver
Re:Recommendation (Score:1)
I am quite happy with nvidia's support of Linux, i have no crashes and do a lot of 3d gaming on Debian. I've used a 4200ti, a 4600 a 5200 and a 5700. the 5200 was slower than the 4200 in some respects so I returned it, and couldn't be happier with my 5700. I do realize it's half of what the latest ATI is (raw power wise). but I have to have nvidia becaus
VESA-VBE (Score:2, Informative)
During the wild days of post-VGA graphics cards, there were many manufacturers and no standard. At that time, VESA VBE was born and most hardware manufacturers tried to comply with it. Applications finally had a common interface to video hardware, and the future looked bright.
Then came Windows 95, with its DirectX, and most graphically-intensive programs moved to this hot new "standard". (why is beyond me...) VESA VLB 2.0 arrived at about the same time, b
UGGGH!!! God no! (Score:3, Informative)
No modern operating system worth it's salt would stoop to mapping the VGA ROM and emulating real-mode function calls to twiddle a few registers.
It works in Linux (sort of) because all the heavy lifting is done in real mode before protected mode starts, which means you can't change any settings after initial boot. Useless.
That was relevant for DOS, and that's about it.
Re:UGGGH!!! God no! (Score:1)
Unfortunately the industry does not see a need anymore for a standardized API since compatibility is handled in the OS layer now.
-Aaron
Of course! (Score:3, Informative)
Sure. Last month I got tired of the crash-fest known as NVidia, and went out and bought a Radeon 9200. It's an older chipset, but you can still find it new on the shelves if you look around. It's like trying to find a 1.5GHz Pentium. They're still being made, but you can't find them at the mass market outlets.
Anyway, my system is FreeBSD, so you don't have to worry about Linux-only. It's an Open Source 3D accelerated DRI kernel driver. It should build on non-x86 archs. It supports all radeons up to the 9200.
A similar DRI driver for Linux is also available. As for Open Source drivers for Solaris or IRIX, I couldn't say. But I doubt it...
Re:Of course! (Score:2)
The moral of the story is whenever there's a problem
Re:Of course! (Score:1)
Whether this is NVidia's fault for not tracking a "technology preview" release, or my fault for being an "early adopter", is completely irrelevant. It's causing me considerable problems so I switched to ATI and
Re:Of course! (Score:2)
The ATI Radeon 9200 the best card for BSD/Linux (Score:4, Informative)
Here is the current state of affairs:
NVidia provides only binary drivers. Their Linux drivers are supposed to be of comparable quality to their Windows drivers -- you just have to deal with the fact that the Linux world has zero tradition of binary kernel module compatibility. You will always be fighting an uphill battle to continue using these.
ATI provides binary drivers for their cards. There are *also* 3d open source drivers in DRI, of which the Radeon 9200 is the newest well-supported card. The Radeon 9200 is currently the best choice for a 3d card for a Linux/BSD user. I have heard claims that the Linux drivers are slightly slower than the Windows drivers. Also, keep in mind that the 9200 is *not* the latest-and-greatest from ATI.
Matrox (a) has fallen behind in 3d performance and (b) used to have *excellent* open source support for their cards in the G200 through G450 era. I bought both a G200 and a G450, and the support at the time was better than for any other manufacturers. John Carmack was involved with some of their driver work (John, if you read this, you work was much appreciated). Their Parhelia line has binary-only drivers, supports only Red Hat, and seriously lags kernel releases.
The bottom line is that if you want to get a 3d card for Linux use, the Radeon 9200 with DRI drivers is the way to go. It's not the fastest card ATI makes, but it can currently run all existing 3d software for Linux without speed problems -- Linux may lag Windows in open source 3d support, but also in games, and NWN and Tribes 2 easily run smoothly on the card.
Re:The ATI Radeon 9200 the best card for BSD/Linux (Score:2)
Actually, there are better cards. The 9200 is just a 9000 with AGP 8x support but with a card of this level, the
Re:The ATI Radeon 9200 the best card for BSD/Linux (Score:1)
Is the dri status page [sourceforge.net] the best place to discover what cards are fully supported by open source drivers or is there more to it than that?
Re:Of course! (Score:2)
Re:Of course! (Score:2)
Which is why I didn't actually blame them. On the other hand I'm not going to sit around for six months with a broken driver. If there weren't an full functional open source radeon driver, I would have stuck with nvidia and used the lackluster XFree86 nv driver instead.
But wait a minute! I paid for that NVidia card! And at the time I bought it NVidia claimed their driver worked for FreeBSD 5.x! And they still do! S
Re:Of course! (Score:2)
If I had to guess I'd say nvidia only supports 'stable' versions and not test versions with their drivers. I wouldn't expect a bugfix for something in Fedora Core 3 RC1, but I would expect one for the FC2 stable release (although the term stable is applied loosely in that case). Problems creep up that are specific to a bug in a test version that may be fixed by the time
Re:Of course! (Score:2)
Let me give you an analogy, okay? Everyone knows that a Linux x.y.0 release is going to be buggy. You might have to wait as long as x.y.5 or x.y.10 for something stable enough for mission critical production use. So imagine NVidia saying "we support Linux 2.6, but we won't fix this bug until they
Re:Of course! (Score:2)
Re:Of course! (Score:1)
curious (Score:1, Troll)
-E
Re:curious (Score:2)
I know it doesn't seem new enough... (Score:2)
Re:I know it doesn't seem new enough... (Score:2)
Re:I know it doesn't seem new enough... (Score:2)
Unfortunately, this is still a low-end part and significantly slower than an ATI 9100 or 9200. On the other hand, Intel is shipping a jillion of these, so I'd figure they'll be reasonably well-supported and many games will run tolerably well on them for a few years.
If you want new open-source 3D, this may be the way to go. Worst case, if it's too slow, you can probably add a video card later...
Re:I know it doesn't seem new enough... (Score:2)