The Cube Efffect [was: Yanking the Window Shade]

[Luke -Jr]

On Thursday 24 January 2008, Steven Hildreth wrote:
> On Jan 24, 2008 12:03 PM, Luke -Jr <luke at dashjr.org> wrote:
> > > > At work where I have a few more tricked-out machines, I unfortunately
> > > > have only ati cards, so no compiz for me.  boo!
> >
> > If you use a Free operating system, ATi is a far better bet than nVidia.
> >
> Can you elaborated on this? I don't follow your meaning.

Free as in http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html

With a Free operating system, the best you can get a nVidia card to do is 2D 
acceleration. 3D is left to software rendering (quite slow).
The only 3D acceleration for nVidia cards on a Free OS is for BeOS, and some 
highly experimental long-term project to reverse engineer 3D acceleration 
(Noveau) that works "for a few lucky developers".

On the other hand, ATi cards up to the Radeon X850 have decent 3D acceleration 
support by the latest X.org and Linux/DRI code, including AIGLX support 
needed for Compiz. This situation is improving rapidly, with AMD having 
released specs for their newer GPUs.