   OpenGL graphics cards.
  Hey guys. I have been doing a lot of OpenGL programming and I was wondering if someone could recommend a graphics card for OpenGL 3.0. I want a card that will be sufficient for all my graphics programming for a while and I admittedly dont know much about hardware so if you have any recommendations about that as well it will be much appreciated! Thanks!   
  Anything that supports directX 10 supports opengl 3 and 3.1Since they are relatively fast and cheap, the lowest you should go is an Geforce 8800.However, any of the newer nvidia cards will do well (NOT ATI);  An Ati graphics card supports OpenGL 3.0 as well (and soon OpenGL 3.1 once they release the appropriate drivers). For ati you'd be fine having an Radeon 2xxx, 3xxx or 4xxx card. Hardware wise the Ati HD4850 (or the newer HD4770) are really great cards which provide extremely good value for their money.For a discussion on the driver part for Ati check this topic on gamedev.Personally I think the Ati drivers are fine, however I agree nVidia is better with their drivers. A lot of people have a different opinion though (I guess Steve132 is one of them), so I think its only fair to point you to the topic I mentioned above.   ;Quote:Original post by Steve132Anything that supports directX 10 supports opengl 3 and 3.1Since they are relatively fast and cheap, the lowest you should go is an Geforce 8800.However, any of the newer NVIDIA cards will do well (NOT ATI)why not ATI? my last 2 cards have both been ATI, I extensively use OpenGL for my own programming works as well as using OpenGL for rendering in 3ds Max and similar apps, I cant say I have ever come across any driver issues.In addition to this both of my ATI cards have significantly outstripped the NVIDIA counterpart for performance / cost.  People just seem to bash ATI cards all the time....NVIDIA is not the only "way its meant to be played" ;Quote:Original post by BlackSeedsQuote:Original post by Steve132Anything that supports directX 10 supports opengl 3 and 3.1Since they are relatively fast and cheap, the lowest you should go is an Geforce 8800.However, any of the newer NVIDIA cards will do well (NOT ATI)why not ATI? my last 2 cards have both been ATI, I extensively use OpenGL for my own programming works as well as using OpenGL for rendering in 3ds Max and similar apps, I cant say I have ever come across any driver issues.In addition to this both of my ATI cards have significantly outstripped the NVIDIA counterpart for performance / cost.  People just seem to bash ATI cards all the time....NVIDIA is not the only "way its meant to be played"ATI still got alot of bad rep from the pre Doom3 days when their OpenGL performance was pure shit. They went from around 30-40% of the performance of equally priced nvidia hardware to 105-110% of the performance with just a few driver upgrades in the weeks/months following the release of Doom3, before that they simply didn't give a shit. AMD/ATI still doesn't give a shit about OpenGL on Windows/Linux, their extension support is abmyssal (virtually no SM4 support in their OpenGL driver despite the fact that their hardware has the necessary features and there are EXT_ extensions for it(some of these extensions are supported by the OS X drivers for the same hardware), They seem to update their driver purely based on what the current AAA game of the month is using, I wouldn't expect them to update their OpenGL driver until idTech5 is out (Unless id switched to D3D in which case we'll probably never see an updated OGL driver from AMD/ATI)If you are going to develop or even use OpenGL AMD/ATI graphics chipsets are about as useful as Intels.   ;Quote:Original post by SimonForsmanAMD/ATI still doesn't give a shit about OpenGL on Windows/Linux, their extension support is abmyssal (virtually no SM4 support in their OpenGL driver despite the fact that their hardware has the necessary features and there are EXT_ extensions for it(some of these extensions are supported by the OS X drivers for the same hardware), They seem to update their driver purely based on what the current AAA game of the month is using, I wouldn't expect them to update their OpenGL driver until idTech5 is out (Unless id switched to D3D in which case we'll probably never see an updated OGL driver from AMD/ATI)It's not a matter of 'not giving a shit' it's a matter of having a smaller driver team than NV and less resources.In that situation you put your resources where it matters and, as much as everyone loves to cry about it, that is Windows and D3D. Even when it comes to that EXT_ extensions it's not a matter of 'slap the code in to let the features work' either; the OpenGL spec is just a mishmash of interactivity that writing an extension and making sure it works when it interacts with anything else is a non-trival task which takes a great deal of time. (The reason things turn up on Apple hardware is simply down to Apple doing more work for them on the driver side of things, something MS won't do).Their GL driver is being updated all the time, current support is at 3.0 with (iirc) 3/5 3.1 support in place as well, but simply due to team size, cost AND the lack of things using OpenGL they aren't going to dedicate huge amounts of time and resources into it. So, if by 'dont give a shit' you mean 'dont want to spend money where it isn't good business sense to spend money' then you are right. (Most people buy graphics cards on the strenght of being able to play games and from a price:performace point of view; games don't use OpenGL so your average consumer doesn't give a damn what it can and can't do).Quote:If you are going to develop or even use OpenGL AMD/ATI graphics chipsets are about as useful as Intels.No, they really aren't... and if you knew ANYTHING about Intel's drivers you wouldn't even think about thinking that.True, they aren't as good as NV in many respects, however as bad as Intel... please...   ;Quote:Original post by phantomQuote:Original post by SimonForsmanAMD/ATI still doesn't give a shit about OpenGL on Windows/Linux, their extension support is abmyssal (virtually no SM4 support in their OpenGL driver despite the fact that their hardware has the necessary features and there are EXT_ extensions for it(some of these extensions are supported by the OS X drivers for the same hardware), They seem to update their driver purely based on what the current AAA game of the month is using, I wouldn't expect them to update their OpenGL driver until idTech5 is out (Unless id switched to D3D in which case we'll probably never see an updated OGL driver from AMD/ATI)It's not a matter of 'not giving a shit' it's a matter of having a smaller driver team than NV and less resources.In that situation you put your resources where it matters and, as much as everyone loves to cry about it, that is Windows and D3D. Even when it comes to that EXT_ extensions it's not a matter of 'slap the code in to let the features work' either; the OpenGL spec is just a mishmash of interactivity that writing an extension and making sure it works when it interacts with anything else is a non-trival task which takes a great deal of time. (The reason things turn up on Apple hardware is simply down to Apple doing more work for them on the driver side of things, something MS won't do).Their GL driver is being updated all the time, current support is at 3.0 with (iirc) 3/5 3.1 support in place as well, but simply due to team size, cost AND the lack of things using OpenGL they aren't going to dedicate huge amounts of time and resources into it. So, if by 'dont give a shit' you mean 'dont want to spend money where it isn't good business sense to spend money' then you are right. (Most people buy graphics cards on the strenght of being able to play games and from a price:performace point of view; games don't use OpenGL so your average consumer doesn't give a damn what it can and can't do).Quote:If you are going to develop or even use OpenGL AMD/ATI graphics chipsets are about as useful as Intels.No, they really aren't... and if you knew ANYTHING about Intel's drivers you wouldn't even think about thinking that.True, they aren't as good as NV in many respects, however as bad as Intel... please...This is an OpenGL topic, the OP is asking about a graphics card for OpenGL 3.0 development, it really doesn't matter what reasons AMD/ATI have for not providing proper OpenGL drivers, the fact remains, their OpenGL drivers are crap, if you intend to primarily use OpenGL you shouldn't buy AMD/ATI graphics hardware. (I did (x1800), its crap (still), i won't do it again and i won't recommend it to anyone who needs/wants OpenGL support because doing so is extremely unhelpful)   ;Quote:Original post by SimonForsmanThis is an OpenGL topic, the OP is asking about a graphics card for OpenGL 3.0 development, it really doesn't matter what reasons AMD/ATI have for not providing proper OpenGL drivers, the fact remains, their OpenGL drivers are crap, if you intend to primarily use OpenGL you shouldn't buy AMD/ATI graphics hardware. (I did (x1800), its crap (still), i won't do it again and i won't recommend it to anyone who needs/wants OpenGL support because doing so is extremely unhelpful)Then you join the vaunted ranks of graphics programmers whose programs can only ever run on NVidia hardware... Very rarely have I seen an ATI demo that doesn't run on NVidia (apart from some R2VB stuff). [wink]And let's not forget that a fair number of the 'problems' found with ATI are due to programmers expecting (broken) NVidia behaviour to work on ATI cards. Also, if you ever distribute software cross platform, you will encounter a variety of considerably worse driver situations, such as NVidia/Mac or Intel/Linux.   ;Quote:Original post by SimonForsmanThis is an OpenGL topic, the OP is asking about a graphics card for OpenGL 3.0 development, it really doesn't matter what reasons AMD/ATI have for not providing proper OpenGL drivers, the fact remains, their OpenGL drivers are crap, if you intend to primarily use OpenGL you shouldn't buy AMD/ATI graphics hardware. (I did (x1800), its crap (still), i won't do it again and i won't recommend it to anyone who needs/wants OpenGL support because doing so is extremely unhelpful)Yes, well, conversations evolve and I was providing a counter point to your 'they are crap'; which they aren't. Not as good as NV in some respects but more than workable in most instances and far from 'crap' or indeed Intel's level of quality.And for the record; I developed on ATI/AMD hardware for YEARS using Opengl with no major problems, indeed my final year project which was written with OpenGL and GLSL had more issues on NV hardware (specifically with their GLSL implimentation) then it did on my ATI card of the time. (infact, in my experiance I've had more trouble with NV drivers than ATI ones and that was from using an NV card for around a year and ATI cards from the 9700Pro to the X1900XT).   ;Quote:Original post by SimonForsmanThis is an OpenGL topic, the OP is asking about a graphics card for OpenGL 3.0 development, it really doesn't matter what reasons AMD/ATI have for not providing proper OpenGL drivers, the fact remains, their OpenGL drivers are crap, if you intend to primarily use OpenGL you shouldn't buy AMD/ATI graphics hardware. (I did (x1800), its crap (still), i won't do it again and i won't recommend it to anyone who needs/wants OpenGL support because doing so is extremely unhelpful)I do all my hobby graphics programming using the Horde3D OpenGL engine - all of the functionality of this engine works perfectly using current ATI drivers.Occasionally when new features are added there have been bugs with ATI in the past, but ATI have always fixed any bugs that we reported to them in the next driver update.Also, as I said in another GL post recently, NVidia are not very strict with their GLSL implementation (to the point where it will accept HLSL syntax/intrinsics as correct!), so it is extremely important to test all of your shaders on a stricter ATI chipset as well.Personally I use a top-of-the-line NVidia for primary development and a low-end ATI laptop for testing and couch-dev.   