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Most long term Linux OS users will be all too familiar with the pain of using either of the two main makes of cards. For years I've had to put up with drivers crashing, features seemingly being enabled and disabled at the whim of the propriety driver vendors and turning your computer back on after an update to find your OS is as good as bricked.

Now I have a new laptop with a dual Nvidia / Intel graphics chipset. Enabling the Nvidia 3D support is a real pain, but I'm not fussed. The Intel graphics chipset is amazing!! A real breath of fresh air! 2D is fast and smooth an I've never had a glitch. It puts my £390 graphics card to shame.

So. I want to shake off ATI and Nvidia altogether. My faith has been slowly drained out of body. So back to my question. What cards are available (preferably Intel chipsets) for my Desktop machine? I can't find any. I need Dual DVI support at the least.

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Well.. there isn't really much choice besides those two unfortunately. Intel is master in the open source front with excellent open source drivers. But they don't really have graphics solutions for desktop PC's other than build-in graphics in their processors..

Nvidia does have great proprietary drivers though. I never really had any problems with them and 3D performance is just great. Steam games run flawlessly and so is the desktop performance.

AMD on the other hand.. it depends on your card. If you have a card older than the HD 4000 series than you are left in the dark when it comes to proprietary support. Their legacy drivers don't really work well on new Ubuntu releases. Their open source drivers are really good though, especially with the newest Linux Kernel where they finally added dynamic power management! If you use a new card (HD 5000 or higher) than it's the other way around: great proprietary drivers, but the open source drivers aren't really there yet..

So that is basically my experience with video cards on Linux.. :P

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I have been in the hardware business and am OEM for over 27 years, and I haven't seen any add on cards that have the Intel graphics chip-set, at least not yet. And the only way to get them, is buying an Intel main board. The high-end boards have descent graphics controllers. But with the higher end boards, you still have to add a graphics adapter.

I guess it all depends on what is it that you want to use the graphics card for, decides what you can get. that being said, you maybe stuck with either ATI or Nvidia.

Other Graphics card manufacturers:

Intel HD Graphics is a series of Intel integrated graphics processors that are manufactured on the same die as the processor, together forming an accelerated processing unit.

SIS Silicon Integrated Systems

VIA S3 Graphics Embedded Cards Deliver Superior Video Playback S3 Graphics’ leading edge embedded graphics technology maximizes computing effi¬ciency and visual performance.

Matrox Graphics, manufacturer's of the premier line of workstation 2D and multi-display graphics cards.

I haven't visited the website of the others besides Intel, ATI, and Nvidia, and I don't know if they have a better support for Linux.

Let me know if this answers your question.

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