[vtkusers] nvidia GeForce/GeForce2 cards with RedHat 6.2 and vtk

[Prabhu Ramachandran]

hi,

On Mon, 26 Jun 2000, Dave Reed wrote:

> I've seen nvidia cards mentioned on this list before when people ask
> about graphics cards, but I've never seen anyone say they had one
> working with Linux and vtk.  
> I'm thinking about getting a 3D video card and it appears that
> nvidia's GeForce and GeForce2 are clearly the top performers.
> According to the XFree86.org web site, the GeForce card works with
> XFree86 3.3.6.  

	Well, I do have a cheap nvidia card - a TNT2 M64 w/ 32MB RAM
running under linux (GNU/Linux Debian 2.2) with a manually installed X4.0.
The card certainly accelerates.  At first nVidia released drivers for X
3.3.5 but they said that these were not designed for high performance. 
Now, they do have support for X4.0 and strongly recommend using X4.0
insted of 3.3.5.  Unfortunately, I did not run any benchmark comparing the
older and new drivers.  I still need to play around with the drivers.

	Keep in mind that the current X4.0 is under heavy development and
is supposed to be fairly buggy.  So much so that the debian developer in
charge of packaging X has decided not to package it untill the next
release of X.  Personally I had (and still have) severe problems with the
fonts.  Apart from the font things are fine.  Things do crash occasionally
but it is certainly bearable (in the worst case I can always ssh in to the
box and restart it...) I also have some wierd font related problems while
running X4.0 with nvidia's latest drivers.  

	nVidia is apparently using sharing the same code base for their
windows and linux drivers (I dont know how they do that!).  nVidia is also
release new versions of their drivers fairly often.

	There are some positive reviews of some of the latest 3d accel
cards under X4.0 under linux tested with quake3 arena. 

http://www.linuxgames.com/articles/linux3dcards/

and for a newer article
http://www.linuxgames.com/articles/nvidia_first_look/

Apparently under a quake3arena (which uses OpenGL I believe) test the
nvidia Geforce performance is about 90 to 95% that of the windows cards
which is very good considering that the drivers are still new.

	The one problem with nVidia cards is that the drivers are not open
sourced.  Unlike this the Matrox cards and maybe the ATI cards have open
sourced their drivers.  The Matrox g400 seems to be a good card, but I
have no real details.

> >From what I've read, it appears that you need to download GL libraries
> from nvidia's web site to take advantage of the card (not
> surprisingly).  

	Yes, you do have to get the drivers (the kernel module and the GLX
libraries) from their site. 

> Can anyone confirm or deny that vtk works well (i.e., compiles and
> takes advantage of the hardware acceleration) with these cards,
> nvidia's GL library and RedHat 6.2/XFree86 3.3.6?
> 
> I understand that performance will be improved with XFree86 4.0 but I
> will probably wait for a distribution to come with 4.0.  If I'd get
> some benefit from the hardware with XFree86 3.3.6, I'd like to buy the
> card now, but if I'm still stuck with software rendering until driver
> issues get worked out, I'll wait (and let the prices drop too).

	Well, if you are going to use Redhat why not install the X4.0
rpms.  I have heard from friends with other 3d cards that it is painless.
nvidia also ships with rpms of its drivers etc. making it even more
painless to install the drivers etc.  So I really dont think there is much
point in waiting.

> If they do work, any recommendations on a specific manufacturer/card?

	If you are looking for open sourced drivers then nvidia is out.
But if all you want is fastest drivers with blazing acceleration Id think
that the GeForce is the one to go for.  

prabhu