The 'Radeon' name has been around for quite some time, but the earlier Radeon cards (7xxx series) are nothing like the the newer Radeon 9xxx series. I believe also, that Linux does not suppor the card properly because it is that new.
As for nVIDIA video cards, I will not touch one again - why? Back in 1998 I got a 400mhz Pentium II, 128mb ram and an SiS 6326 AGP Card with a 3dfx Voodoo 2 addon card - a top of the line machine at the time. That was fine, then in late 1999 I got a nVIDIA TNT card for my other machine, which was also fine. But then in 2000 3dfx was acquired by nVIDIA - and they never released a single driver update to any of the Voodoo cards. A friend had, at the time, bought a Voodoo 5 5500 64mb card (comparable with a high-end GeForce2 card) - only three months old and he couldn't get anymore driver updates for the card because of nVIDIA! I also enjoyed the updated drivers for my Voodoo 2 by 3dfx, but then I couldn't because of nVIDIA. I could understand not releasing drivers for the older 3dfx cards, but not supporting 3 month old 3dfx products is pretty dodgy IMHO!
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