Ati vs nvidia graphics cards linux drivers
I'm currently building a pc in which I plan to install windows and Linux on. I plan on using the linux version mostly to code. I've been recently hearing that ATI has been improving their drivers for Linux. I should also add that I plan on using two monitors. I was hoping you guys could provide me with some insight on whether I should take into account drivers when deciding on a graphics card for this system.
Posted Jun 30, 2012, 7:31 AM UTC
11
The short answer is... if you don't plan on doing anything special, either card will generally work OK using the open source drivers, in fact you could just use a cheap intel GMA card that is on-board many motherboards. If you plan on doing anything that requires the proprietary drivers, nVidia's drivers are still a safer bet than anything from ATI/AMD.
If you just use the open source drivers the ATI Radeon driver seem to be considerably better then the nVidia Nouveau driver. The reverse seems to be true (in my testing) once you switch to the proprietary drivers, and nVidia's proprietary driver is a lot better than the ATI Catalyst driver.
My experience with two monitors is that I've personally found it less painful to use nVidia cards and the proprietary driver. nVidia recently released the 330 version of their driver which nicely supports xrandr 1.3. This means that setup of mutli-monitor got even easier.... and you don't have to muck about with TwinView anymore.