What's the best graphic card to us for second life

[Moxen Voom]

Whats the best graphic card to use in second life?

[Nalates Urriah]

That is a difficult question and is based mostly in personal preference and what one can afford.

NVIDIA is a better choice than ATI/AMD. The reason is that nVidia has done a better job supporting OpenGL, the graphics language used in the SL Viewer.

The new nVidia 600 series cards are coming on the market. Those are the best available (IMO) but they are expensive.

SL Viewers work well with nVidia 8000 series cards and newer. With nVidia the later digits indicate the power or ability of the card. A 260 is better than a 240. A 260 can be better than a 440, but check the published benchmarks.

I expect 500 series cards to start appearing on eBay as people upgrade to 600 series cards. There will be some deals to be had.

IMPORTANT - The CPU is as important as the GPU for those of us running SL. The later Core2 are good but lack the improved task switching that SL Viewers need. The core i3, i5, and i7's are way better. For SL the i5 and i7 seem to give better performance.

The operating system is important too. Win7 - 64 bit has better OpenGL support and provides about the best performance figures I've seen. Linux is for the geeks but they get amazing performance with it. Apple has dropped the ball with OpenGL and 3D in general. Rumors are that they are getting better... but, I think that is something we'll only see "some day."

[Knowl Paine]

I would say that the performance is reflective in the cost.

Low: $25-$75

Mid: $75- $150

High: $150-$300

 

Anything over $300 is extreme performance and will very likely increase the overall operating temperature (and noise level) of the machine, possibly reducing the lifespan of the computer.

 

[Ansariel Hiller]

nvidia GTX 690 - two of them in SLI mode

[Zev Titanium]

ok no. don't buy 2 for SLI mode...  because SL can't recognize SLI. And yes 690 GTX is the best card on the market right now.