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

[Dave Robillard]

On Wed, 2006-06-21 at 12:44 -0500, Gian Paolo Mureddu wrote:
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> Frank Barknecht escribió:
> > Hallo,
> > Gian Paolo Mureddu hat gesagt: // Gian Paolo Mureddu wrote:
> >
> >> I'm not sure if you've noticed, but the video card market is one heck
> >> of a vicious business, with not only rapid development cycles, but
> >> also a lot (and I mean a *LOT*) of cross licensed technology not to
> >> mention a billion-dollar industry.
> >
> > Note that NVidia is also not releasing specs (AFIAK) for their
> > mainboard chipsets. Onboard ethernet is not exactly superhightech.
> >
> > Ciao
> Actually, the nvnet driver is not present in the Linux "ForceWare"
> drivers for their mainboards. The reverse-entgineered forcedeth driver
> is much more efficient than that of Nvidia (which had to be built from
> source, by the way) consumes far less CPU and (in my case, anyway)
> reaches higher transfer rates. First hand experience with an nForce2
> motherboard, revealed that I could reach full 100Mbps (and virtual no
> CPU usage) when transferring stuff to my file server where as I was
> able to go as high as 55-60Mbps with the nvnet driver (and over 30%
> CPU usage), so yeah, I'm 100% confident that the OpenSource drivers
> here at least are 200% better than the proprietary ones, to the point
> that the nvnet driver no longer is part of the "ForceWare", which is
> actually excellent!
> 
> However for the video drivers, as was said in another post to this
> thread by Rob, nVidia and ATi are not releasing specs for their
> hardware for Open Source drivers due to incarnate battle over
> features, price and performance... I would have to assume that an Open
> Source driver initiative on at least the kernel end would be
> tremendously helpful to prevent lockups and ease debugging, not to
> mention that installing their binary X drivers would be much easier,
> after all the kernel module pretty much is only a bridge between the X
> driver and the hardware, the magic is done in the X driver, not the
> kernel gateway (or am I terribly wrong here?)
> 
> Alas, I think that if either of the giant companies did fully open
> their drivers and specs, not only would they be doing the right
> thing?, but I believe it would be much easier to implement new
> capabilities to the cards.

There's absolutely no question that keeping specs and drivers
proprietary has a negative effect on the quality of the drivers (and by
extension the hardware, in user's eyes).  Obvious, really.

It's an interesting phenomenon when you get people cheering on the
companies that are screwing them over, and defending the very practices
they do it by :/

Teh gamar fanboys will be fanboys I guess.

-DR-