Decent Graphics card / 64 bit system / imaging

[Arc Riley]

> So Arc, what video card (ATI or other) would you recommend for 3D 64 bit
> linux?  I'm attempting to use vtk, are there better tools available for
> plotting/rendering/visualization?  I'm trying to visualize a 1K x 1K 3D
> plot.
>
I'm guessing around 1M quads with realtime rendering, so you'd need around
50M polygons/second for 30fps (considering the software likely isn't
completely optimized)

No problem.  Even the low end PCI 16x Radeons are going to handle 400M
polygons/second, more than sufficient.  Even the "puny" Radeon 9250 in this
system can clock over 150M/second.  This one is considered mid-range and is
fully supported:

http://www.partspc.com/ProductDetails.asp?CatID=588&ProdID=9873

2 DVI ports, PCIe 16x, and more than enough rendering speed.

I'm slightly concerned over how much trouble a dual-screen card will give
you in X configuration vs two separate cards, and since it's less common you
may run into bugs.  If you have two PCIe 16x slots it'd be better to go with
two of these instead which together add up to the same cost and boast almost
double the speed:

http://www.gearxs.com/gearxs/product_info.php?products_id=8730

Both cards are supported in current stock Linux+Xorg without any "special
drivers" needed.  YMMV depending on how up to date your distro's kernel and
Xserver packages are, but that's the case with any card.
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