Hi,
I can not comment using Blender on Trisquel running Noveau. In general I
would not go for the "double medium price" solution (2x 9500GT). A GF 9800GT
or even better a 9800GTX will provide a much better performance than a
doubled 9500GT plus the fact that open source drivers most likely will not
support SLI (double card). I have used a 9800GT myself for a long time and it
has enough power to run the most older demanding games in 1080p. I played
Metro 2033, Crysis 2 and Rage with my G9800GT (of course under Windows). By
choosing a double 9500GT running in SLI mode you could support the business
of Chris (who supports Trisquel). But speaking from a plain budget /
performance perspective I would buy the fastest 9X00 based NVidia card I can
get used from e-bay and add a silent cooling solution to it (also low-budget
from e-bay). Currently you should stay away from any newer card since they
play not nicely with Noveau. My new 450GTS for example currently has no 3D
acceleration under Trisquel. If you search a bit in the mailing list / forum
you can find some "posting" of me where I show some benchmark values.
To make a long story short: Go for a powerful GT9800 card and use dual boot
for gaming / working.
Those are examples from German E-Bay what I would look out for:
http://www.ebay.de/itm/NVIDIA-GeForce-9800-GT-/261180602293?pt=DE_Elektronik_Computer_Computer_Graphikkarten&hash=item3ccf93b7b5
plus such a cooler:
http://www.arctic.ac/en/p/cooling/vga/425/accelero-l2-plus.html?c=2182
You might even have a good chance to get a 9800GT which already has such or a
similar VGA cooler installed.
Not fully Trisquel Free Software compliant but way more pragmatic.
Regards,
H.
