Nvidia card for Linux that performs around the same as 6870?

[PingSpike]

I've heard that AMD still has weaker linux drivers, although its getting better. Is that true? I haven't been in the nvidia camp since I got frustrated with fixed aspect ratio scaling not working for months on my 8800GT and abandoned them. I assume that was resolved a long time ago though. I have no real frame of reference though, what are some affordable cards that do as good or better than the 6870 in games?

 

[SunburstLP]

I mentioned it in another thread, but AMD is in the middle of open-sourcing their driver. The kernel module will be OS and the choices that the user make are in userland. FGLRX will be closed or you can choose to use the open radeon stack. Phoronix has some really good information on it. And there are AMD driver devs in his forums who have been discussing it.

To answer the question you asked, I'll link to two reviews over there. These are long articles, but worth looking at. First up is a 60-way comparison using open-source drivers:

http://www.phoronix.com/vr.php?view=20509

Second is proprietary drivers:

http://www.phoronix.com/vr.php?view=20554

 

[PingSpike]

Thanks for those links, that was actually pretty useful information.

 

[dragantoe]

560 ti

 

[NonInflamitory]

Here's my two cents: I've used linux since 2007. I used to be a die-hard Radeon fan (and for Windows-only users, I might still lean that way). But for linux, I cannot recommend _ANY_ Radeon card. AMD, for whatever reason, does not support their even slightly older cards with the proprietary drivers. Whereas Nvidia does. AMD actually goes out of their way to turn off driver support for older cards. I first experienced this with a Radeon 4850 that worked beautifully, but AMD decided to not include the 48xx series in its drivers anymore. There are tweaks and ways around this, and I put up with it for a while. But decided no more; for linux I only recommend nvidia.

I just sold a 6870 on eBay -- no kidding -- because I was sick of dealing with AMD driver stupidity. My replacement (soon - holding out for a while for possible holiday deals) will be a Zotac GeForce 750 Zone -- great card, and passive cooling. Nvidia's new cards focus on power efficiency and low temps, which I totally agree with.

 

[Hitman928]

I actually have a 6870 in my linux box now as gaming on linux has become something you can actually do. I will confirm that the closed source drivers for AMD on linux have improved dramatically over the last 18 months or so. I haven't had any issues with the 6870 on Ubuntu (first 12.04 but recently upgraded to 14.04). I haven't tried any of the open source ones for gaming purposes. The big thing with installing AMD drivers is you need to make sure the system is clear of all AMD driver bits before installing new ones.

I've actually benchmarked in Ubuntu and Win7 and results are mixed. Pretty much source games have worked the best by far. Performance in linux is below Windows by 5-20% depending on the settings in source games. All of the games that aren't very graphically intensive that I've tried (mostly indy games) have worked perfectly. There are games though that are unplayable due to crappy performance (natural selection 2, but this one is getting better), games that still have trouble loading (Sanctum 2), and games that you have to turn settings way down to make playable (Serious Sam 3). So, not sure what you're looking for, but that's been my experience.

If you go nVidia, a 560Ti as mentioned before would be a good choice and would actually be a little faster than a 6870. A more modern card would be a 750Ti.

 

[Headfoot]

Gaming in linux is getting better but it still is vastly inferior to gaming on Windows. If you want to avoid driver problems, spend $100 and get an OEM windows license. That being said, the 750 ti would probably have similar or better performance accounting for the weakness of Radeon drivers. I wouldn't go lower than a GTX 760 though, and I've seen some pretty good deals lately for GTX 770s.