What video card to get for Linux? (OpenCL, NOT Gaming)

[phaxmohdem]

My home linux box is currently running Ubuntu 8.10 with the following specs:
Athlon X2 4400+ (2.3gHz)
2GB DDDR2 667
nVidia 7600GS 256MB PCIe Video Card (Latest nVidia 177.82 driver)
*edit* 430W Thermaltake TR2 Power Supply

I'm thinking about upgrading it so that I can do a little jacking around with OpenCL on Linux in the near future, once things get rolling. Nothing fancy, I just want a card that will be supported by OpenCL, and preferably have good, future-looking driver support.

Candidate cards I'm looking at:
nVidia 9500GT/9600GT
ATI 4650/4670

I've read that ATI has open sourced part of their drivers recently, which should mean better driver support in Linux in the near future... However nVidia currently has a track record of having more mature closed source Linux drivers it seems.

Any recommendations/advice from the audience?

 

[Sylvanas]

Both vendors have committed to OpenCL, so you will be seeing it on Linux sometime in the future the question is how long. ATI have recently Open sourced R600/700 3D code and things are picking up pace rapidly, Nvidia are still sticking to closed source releases. If it were me, I'd be going the Open Source vendor all the way, a midrange 4650/70 would be a solid choice.

 

[SickBeast]

I dunno about that Sylanas. NV has a much better track record than AMD when it comes to Linux drivers, plus there's the fact that they've produced much more of substance compared to AMD when it comes to general-purpose computing on the GPU.

I personally would get anything G80 or greater to suit your budget, OP, and I would make sure to get an NV card in this circumstance.

If you're programming for the OpenCL standard, having open source drivers isn't going to help you at all.

 

[phaxmohdem]

haha, yes this is the problem I'm having. So far, I've always rocked an nVidia card in my linux boxes, due to seemingly better drivers. I'm wondering though if nVidia's attachment/investment in its CUDA technology would cause them to try and blackball OpenCL using their proprietary drivers.

 

[SickBeast]

Originally posted by: phaxmohdem
haha, yes this is the problem I'm having. So far, I've always rocked an nVidia card in my linux boxes, due to seemingly better drivers. I'm wondering though if nVidia's attachment/investment in its CUDA technology would cause them to try and blackball OpenCL using their proprietary drivers.

That's a good point, but there are a few things to consider:

- as a CPU manufacturer, by working on OpenCL, AMD is in a sense competing against itself, and this may eventually kill their CPU margins on the high-end

- AMD has always promised a great deal when it comes to GPGPU stuff, but has never delivered

- AMD's Linux drivers are still not as good as NV's

You could always wait it out as well. DX11 should settle things somewhat.

 

[Wreckage]

Originally posted by: phaxmohdem
I'm wondering though if nVidia's attachment/investment in its CUDA technology would cause them to try and blackball OpenCL using their proprietary drivers.

Nah. CUDA will run better because of it's close association to the hardware, so I doubt NVIDIA has anything to worry about from OpenCL. I seriously doubt they will try and block it in any way.

I say go for the 9600GT or even a 9800GT.

Ubuntu has pretty good support for NVIDIA cards built right in. I've been running it for a long time now (Kubuntu actually).

 

[taltamir]

AMD has brooks+ just like nvidia has CUDA... openCL runs on both and both companies will support it seriously. they have no reason NOT to.

 

[phaxmohdem]

Originally posted by: SickBeast

- as a CPU manufacturer, by working on OpenCL, AMD is in a sense competing against itself, and this may eventually kill their CPU margins on the high-end

From what I understand OpenCL is designed to be a somewhat hardware agnostic standard, meaning that it would utilize both multicore CPU's as well as GPU's (and possibly other DSP's in the system) in "unison". To me that would put AMD in a relatively unique position to optimize their multicore CPU's, GPU's and chipsets to work together. (Perhaps OpenCL is the sort of thing they've been waiting on to gain traction to push out their "Fusion" technology... or whatever codename they are calling it now days.)

But I digress from the OP a bit there.

So I think I've narrowed down my card choices to the following:

1. Sapphire Radeon 4670 1GB Card ($89.99) Newegg Link
2. Sapphire Radeon 4670 512MB Card ($79.99) Newegg Link
3. MSI 9600GT 512MB ($99.99) Newegg Link
4. Zotac 9600GSO 512MB ($79.99) Newegg Link

Didn't realize that 9600GT's were still a hundred bucks... The GSO is more in the price range I'm wanting to spend, but has 16 less stream processors to play with...

 

[BlueAcolyte]

That 9600gso is one of the neutered ones... Don't get it.

 

[Fox5]

Go with an nvidia card. Nvidia essentially defines Linux 3d.

The current active standard for Linux 3d dates back decades and is horribly broken. ATI drivers will never be good as long as they stick to the standards.
Nvidia broke with the standards from day 1, and it's been for the best. Anything worthwhile in Linux 3d has developed around nvidia's non-standards, so they are basically the de facto standard.

Nvidia also already has programmable graphics cards with CUDA, so you can get started right away. They'll probably get OpenCL support first as well by building it on top of their CUDA framework. ATI has nothing comparable to CUDA at the moment (everything they have is a joke so far), so they'll have a lot more work to do to get full programability going.

 

[Sylvanas]

CUDA and CAL have no affect on how OpenCL turns out, its a clean slate so to speak. I don't know if you have been living under a rock for a year but ATI's Linux drivers have come leaps and bounds from what it once was see here. Both companies are going to be supporting the instruction set so really it doesn't matter who you choose, but as I said before, I would much rather support an Open Source vendor (ATI) than closed (Nv).