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alex6
Apprentice
Joined: 18 Jul 2011
Posts: 176
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 Posted: Fri Mar 22, 2013 2:09 pm Post subject: Graphic cards drivers/performances |
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Hi,
Does someone know where I can find benchmarks for graphic cards under linux (I mean test results, not applications for benchmarking) ? I guess watching benchmarks under windows can't give any idea of performances under linux because of difference of quality beetweem proprietary drivers...
I remember when AMD was still ATI, proprietary drivers of nvidia cards had really better performances and less problems....What about it now ?
About proprietary drivers again : is there a difference about the duration a card is supported by proprietary drivers beetweem nvidia and AMD ?
I'd like to buy a new graphic card but I'm scared that in 1 year I see a message in my xorg.log saying my graphic card is too old to be supported by proprietary drivers.Buying a cheap graphic card (like 45$) can lead to that problem faster than with a more expensive graphic card, right ? Buying a nvidia card is "safer" ?
I bought a motherboard less then 2 years ago with an integreted AMD graphic card which is now not supported by proprietary drivers.(radeon HD 3000)
I can really tell that switching to free drivers gives really higher performances on 2D games/desktop usage.But any application using anything 3D is really laggy or doesn't work at all...
Any idea of how to configure xorg/something else to have better performances using free drivers ? |
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depontius
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Joined: 05 May 2004
Posts: 3530
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| Posted: Fri Mar 22, 2013 7:49 pm Post subject: |
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They do benchmarking at phoronix.com - and I believe that some of the phoronix benchmarks are available in portage. The source(s) there can be a bit dramatic, and the forums can be full of fanbois, but there's information there, too.
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Mad Merlin
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Joined: 09 May 2005
Posts: 1155
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| Posted: Fri Mar 22, 2013 8:01 pm Post subject: |
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If you care about 3D acceleration with any sort of decent speed, you'll have to use the Nvidia proprietary drivers. As of today, they still support all the way back to the TNT2 (a late 90s era card), so it's fairly safe to say that your hardware will die before the software stops supporting it.
I wouldn't suggest using the proprietary Radeon drivers, they're buggy at best and will drop support for your card within a year or two.
The open source Radeon drivers are in better shape than the open source Nvidia drivers, but both are slower than their proprietary counterparts (sometimes by large margins).
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aCOSwt
Bodhisattva
Joined: 19 Oct 2007
Posts: 2537
Location: Hilbert space
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creaker
l33t
Joined: 14 Jul 2012
Posts: 651
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| Posted: Fri Mar 22, 2013 8:42 pm Post subject: Re: Graphic cards drivers/performances |
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| alex6 wrote: | Hi,
Any idea of how to configure xorg/something else to have better performances using free drivers ? |
if you need a better performance - foget about free drivers.
No one knows chips better, than manufacturer. |
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depontius
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Joined: 05 May 2004
Posts: 3530
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| Posted: Fri Mar 22, 2013 9:56 pm Post subject: |
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Ya know, sometimes there isn't a good choice, and you do the best you can. I wonder where RMS' anti-nVidia sign is at? I actually sympathize with RMS some (maybe even much, just not nearly as avidly) of the time, and think that it is very important that someone like him is taking these stands. I would count him as a real and legitimate activist, not a fanboy.
But as for "real fanbois," I was thinking more of the guy who called me a "'tard" because I though X11 network transparency was important. I guess the fact that I work in silicon development and need to do extensive X redirection daily (You go wherever you need to, to get the horsepower that isn't at your own desk, and I've gotten really used to GUI editors.) doesn't count as useful and makes me a fossil.
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alex6
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Joined: 18 Jul 2011
Posts: 176
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| Posted: Fri Mar 22, 2013 10:28 pm Post subject: |
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| Mad Merlin wrote: | If you care about 3D acceleration with any sort of decent speed, you'll have to use the Nvidia proprietary drivers. As of today, they still support all the way back to the TNT2 (a late 90s era card), so it's fairly safe to say that your hardware will die before the software stops supporting it.
I wouldn't suggest using the proprietary Radeon drivers, they're buggy at best and will drop support for your card within a year or two.
The open source Radeon drivers are in better shape than the open source Nvidia drivers, but both are slower than their proprietary counterparts (sometimes by large margins). |
Thanks, that's all what I needed to know.
I really hate AMD for this, I was able to run games like WOW with all max details/resolution since they stopped supporting my card...(forced to use old xorg + old kernel to keep my old proprietary driver...- ok could be worse with a debian stable  )
Anyway, maybe there will be nice radeon free drivers supporting 3D in a few years.(I hope for AMD card users)
Now after reading all gentoo documentation about xorg, radeon, kernel...UT-2004 Demo gives me 10 FPS with max details and 25FPS with lower details...
=>I'm really gonna buy a Nvidia GPU card |
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alex6
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Joined: 18 Jul 2011
Posts: 176
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| Posted: Fri Mar 22, 2013 10:29 pm Post subject: |
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| depontius wrote: | | They do benchmarking at phoronix.com - and I believe that some of the phoronix benchmarks are available in portage. The source(s) there can be a bit dramatic, and the forums can be full of fanbois, but there's information there, too. |
Thanks, this link is really usefull.I spent so much time googling without finding this ! |
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krinn
Watchman
Joined: 02 May 2003
Posts: 7471
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| Posted: Sat Mar 23, 2013 1:15 am Post subject: |
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I had once brought and own an ATI card for 3 days before sending it back. I brought it the day it went out, full prize, one top card, for ~500$ (yep, that was the one and only time i spent that much money on a 3D card).
The drivers wasn't handling it on linux, only windows ones. While by this time, my currently install nvidia drivers was already handling the newest nvidia cards.
So that kick ass top ATI card was running in vesa (!), and after getting (grrrr, cost me money) the latest nvidia card (but it was running slower than the ATI, well, on paper, as you can imagine how the ATI was running in vesa), i didn't even need to update the drivers and it was working.
Today, i do honestly think ATI hardware still looks better than nvidia, card are smaller, taking less space and slot, less power eaten, and less heat. But their drivers are something any computer related company should be ashame of.
Never brought another ATI since, and seeing all ATI users in the forum, i'm not ready to retry it.
https://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic-t-200800-highlight-x800.html
lol, look at the date, hating ATI since 2004  |
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Ant P.
Watchman
Joined: 18 Apr 2009
Posts: 6920
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| Posted: Sat Mar 23, 2013 2:58 pm Post subject: |
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| alex6 wrote: | Now after reading all gentoo documentation about xorg, radeon, kernel...UT-2004 Demo gives me 10 FPS with max details and 25FPS with lower details...
=>I'm really gonna buy a Nvidia GPU card :D |
The demo hasn't been updated since before GCC 4.0 was released. The full game runs great on my 5450. |
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koopdi
Tux's lil' helper
Joined: 07 Feb 2011
Posts: 100
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| Posted: Sat Mar 23, 2013 5:08 pm Post subject: |
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| krinn wrote: | | ...Today, i do honestly think ATI hardware still looks better than nvidia, card are smaller, taking less space and slot, less power eaten, and less heat... |
I'm pretty sure the latest Geforce 600 series is more energy efficient than the competing Radeon 7900 series. At least that's what all the reviews claim. |
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alex6
Apprentice
Joined: 18 Jul 2011
Posts: 176
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| Posted: Mon Mar 25, 2013 12:09 am Post subject: |
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Well I was thinking about getting a GT610 or GT630.
I know my motherboard can accept PCI Express 16x.(like both of these cards)
The only question I can't answer is about the bus size...
The GT630 I found is supposed to be 64bits and the GT 610 32 bits.
No way to know if my PCI-express slot can accept a 64 bits card...Looked in my motherboard manual, on the Asus website too...Can't find that answer...
How can I get this info ?
(My motherboard is an Asus M4A78LT-M LE) |
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koopdi
Tux's lil' helper
Joined: 07 Feb 2011
Posts: 100
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| Posted: Mon Mar 25, 2013 12:17 am Post subject: |
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| I never heard of that being a concern before. It looks like you have pcie 2.0 x16. The gtx 630 supports that. When I mentioned efficiency, I was talking nvidia kepler cards. I haven't done any comparison research on pre kepler cards. |
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alex6
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Joined: 18 Jul 2011
Posts: 176
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| Posted: Mon Mar 25, 2013 12:25 am Post subject: |
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Ok thanks.
Well it's a specification in the memory section.(I mean the memory of the graphic card).
They say "64 bits bus size" just near the memory size for the gt630 (32 bits for the gt610)
I guess both would work, but maybe due a limitation of my motherboard, only 32 of the 64 bits would be used ? Or related to my 32 bits system XD ?
Or it has no relationship and all memory will be used in all case ? |
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koopdi
Tux's lil' helper
Joined: 07 Feb 2011
Posts: 100
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| Posted: Mon Mar 25, 2013 12:37 am Post subject: |
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Memory Specs:
3.2 or 1.8 GbpsMemory Clock
1024 MBStandard Memory Config
DDR3\GDDR5Memory Interface
128-bitMemory Interface Width
51.2\28.8Memory Bandwidth (GB/sec)
http://www.geforce.com/hardware/desktop/geforce-gt-630/specifications
The card has on board memory. I didn't see any reference to pcie bus size and I don't know that matching bus size to bus size is even a thing beyond matching pcie 4x/8x/16x 2.0/3.0, etc. Where are you getting your info? |
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alex6
Apprentice
Joined: 18 Jul 2011
Posts: 176
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| Posted: Mon Mar 25, 2013 1:14 am Post subject: |
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Sorry it was about 64 bits and 128 bits (not 32 and 64)
It seems they call "bus size" the Memory interface width.
From this website (buts it's in French Language) :
http://www.materiel.net/carte-graphique/asus-geforce-gt-630-2-go-gt630-2gd3-78865.html
Looks like they used a bad translation of the specifications which leads to a misunderstanding.
But you're right, instead of looking for that on Asus website, I should have better go to Nvidia website.
And they even tell the minimum power requirement ! I was scared for my 350W power not to be enough...
(but the good thing for this website is the fact it's cheapier than most from my country and it sends faster the stuff)
Well, let's roll for the GT630 |
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