Re: HARDWARE: Open-Source-Friendly Graphics Cards -- Viable?

[Rene Herman <rene.herman@keyaccess.nl>]

Timothy Miller wrote:

Reading this rather late and I see you've already gotten many replies. I 
would like to emphasize the "onboard" reply you got though.

> (1) Would the sales volumes of this product be enough to make it worth 
> producing (ie. profitable)?

If you'd be producing "a videocard", unlikely. To a gamer, openness will 
not offset non-stellar performance and stellar performance would very 
likely propel the cost of this card very quickly far past the cost of a 
comparable nVidia or ATI card.

Your users then, would likely need to be non-gamers such as myself. For 
reference, my current videocard is an ATI Rage128 with 16MB and a TV-OUT 
with which I'm still very pleased. For me, you would be competing with 
onboard solutions, and especially Intel's onboard solutions since as far 
as I'm aware those _are_ actually openly documented, at least upto the 
level that I consider it important. That is, I can go read a datasheet, 
go "cool stuff this" and then compile a completely opensource driver 
into any kernel I please.

My first computer was AMD based, my current computer is almost entirely 
AMD (CPU and chipset, that is) and my next computer seems likely to be 
an AMD64 machine. However, I should really say "EM64T machine", since it 
is probably going to be an Intel one, completely due to the chipsets.

I'd actually prefer AMD, but the AMD market isn't offfering a solution 
comparable to Intel's integrated video. That means AMD and VIA and the 
like are loosing (some, mine at least :-) money since they don't have a 
graphics solution comparable to Intel, in terms of openness and 
basicness. I believe really only nForce and (to a degree; I hardly see 
it) ATI IGP are available in the AMD motherboard market. If you could 
produce something as good or better as Intel's, you might want to go 
talk to VIA, or AMD directly, and have them license it from you and 
massproduce it into their chipsets.

> (2) How much would you be willing to pay for it?

Nothing. I want it on my motherboard.

> (3) How do you feel about the choice of neglecting 3D performance as a 
> priority?  How important is 3D performance?  In what cases is it not?

It's okay, and especially when board makers have the option to also 
offer a "slotted" videocard in addition (or instead of) your onboard chip.

> (4) How much extra would you be willing to pay for excellent 3D 
> performance?

Nothing.

> (5) What's most important to you, performance, price, or stability?

Stability, no fan, (very) good 2d picture quality/stability, price, 
gadgets (tv-out), performance.

Rene.