Geoff Jacobs wrote:
No nvidia for me unless they open up driver specs. Open drivers have a history of being very, very stable if not as fast. Nvidia does have good drivers, but I have definitely seen them experience problems.
Silicon Image SATA drivers are great examples of open drivers that have been (in the past) terrible. The tg3 drivers have been very bad (start sending lots of packets and watch your CSW climb and climb and climb). Forcedeth are still terrible, and are open. The nv driver in X often breaks on newer hardware (the laptop I type this on is a testament to this problem).
No, open-ness doesn't equate to good-ness. Open-ness equates to portability, ability to hunt for problems on your own and correct them if need be.
For the platforms I have used them on the nVidia drivers (the closed source ones) have been *fantastic* in performance, compatibility, and so forth. I have not (ever) had a good experience with ATI graphics drivers ... so much so that I conciously avoid buying their products (which is hard in the laptop space, as nVidia doesn't have as many design wins).
This said, one area we would have liked to have seen open nVidia drivers is on our Itanium2 box. Yeah, it is a relic in the making, and no, I don't blame nVidia for dropping support for it. It would be nice to be able to see graphics on it though ... well ... accelerated graphics (there is a nice Quadro FX 1100 in there now). Oh well (move that card somewhere else).
Just my $0.01 (used to be $0.02, but the dollar is dropping in value). -- Joseph Landman, Ph.D Founder and CEO Scalable Informatics LLC, email: [EMAIL PROTECTED] web : http://www.scalableinformatics.com http://jackrabbit.scalableinformatics.com phone: +1 734 786 8423 fax : +1 866 888 3112 cell : +1 734 612 4615 _______________________________________________ Beowulf mailing list, Beowulf@beowulf.org To change your subscription (digest mode or unsubscribe) visit http://www.beowulf.org/mailman/listinfo/beowulf
