[linux-audio-user] Re: which graphics card?

[Rob]

On Wed June 21 2006 07:51, Thomas Ilnseher wrote:
> Or would anyone of you really spent € 280 for a 7800GT and use
> (imaginatory) open source drivers
> instead of just get the same performance from a €180 7600GT
> with closed source drivers ?

I have certainly paid more for hardware that I knew would work 
without having to install proprietary software on my computer, 
let alone into the kernel.  Choosing Gravis over Creative Labs 
back in the day, ATI (pre-Radeon) over Diamond and then Nvidia, 
and just about any other wifi card over one that uses a Broadcom 
chipset are all examples of this behavior.

> but i have to confess that 3D gfx drivers (with decent
> performance) are such a complex thing that
> you can not demand them to be opensource.

Nvidia and ATI aren't keeping their graphics drivers proprietary 
because they're "such a complex thing", they're keeping them 
proprietary because they're in an arms race and don't want to 
hand their competition a roadmap to their advanced features.  

At any rate, yours is a straw man argument because the free 
software community isn't asking to be handed a working free 
software driver, we just want enough information on the card to 
write our own driver like we do for all the other video cards on 
the market who aren't competing with Nvidia and ATI on the high 
end.

Rob