Choosing a Graphics Card for Linux Gaming

Posted on November 29, 2009 at 5:15 am

Gaming in Linux has picked up since the advancement of WINE and Cedega that emulates Windows in Linux. Still hardware is a deciding factor if you want to play games in Linux. In general, you need more RAM, a stronger processor, and a bit more disk space for gaming than you need for most Linux applications.

Some of the most demanding commercial PC games will run best with at least 1GB of RAM and a 2GHz processor. However, the video card is usually the most important piece of hardware.

Make sure that you have native Linux drivers from the manufacturer – open source display drivers are usually not good enough to run games (i.e. no hardware acceleration support). In Nvidia for example there is a page dedicated for Unix based drivers http://www.nvidia.com/object/unix.html:

So to summarize, if you are planning to gear up your Linux machine, make sure to checkout the manufacturer’s web site if they have the binary driver for your chosen card. You would not want to end up buying a 300$ card that you use only for X-windows and lightweight Gnome or KDE games.

A bit of reality check would not hurt too. Although the state of Linux gaming has improved a great deal in the last few years, Linux is still emerging as a gaming platform. Linux has some of the technology needed to support advanced games, but the technology and developer support have not yet really come together yet. Most serious gamers still maintain a Windows machine to support their gaming habits.