OT: Accelerated 3D GFX cards with Free drivers (was Re: [linux-audio-user] Re: The best distro for music creation)

[Dave Robillard]

On Wed, 2005-14-12 at 17:23 -0800, Fernando Lopez-Lezcano wrote:
> On Wed, 2005-12-14 at 22:47 +0100, Christian Ohm wrote:
> > On Wednesday, 14 December 2005 at 18:54, Rob Fell wrote:
> > > Lee Revell wrote:
> > > >... It would be understandable if
> > > >there was no 3D hardware available with open drivers but that's not the
> > > >case.
> > > 
> > > Given that I'm considering building a new machine, can you point to 
> > > references please?  I wasn't aware any 3D GFX manufacturer had released 
> > > any significant specs/code...
> > 
> > As far as I know the fastest 3D card with open drivers is the Radeon
> > 8500/9100 (developed from specs ATI released at the time) - and I've
> > heard even those are noticeably faster with the closed source drivers.
> 
> Actually AFAIK the Radeon 9250 is the latest that has 3d accel with open
> source drivers. 

Not to mention that people still work on the Radeon driver, whereas the
Matrox stuff has been all but dead for years.

Also, Matrox's new (PCI-E) releases of the Millenium series has gone
proprietary as well.  What a world...

-DR-