Which brand for Linux:ATI or Nvidia

[sonnet]

I'm going to buy a new vga for my new pc.
I'm inclined to buy the upcoming radeon 5770 for all the features wll come with, the low power usage and the fact that I'm currently using an integrated vga by ati and that will ease up the installation,and I may end up using userful desktop multiplier to setup 2 user with the same pc.
The only cons is that reading on the forum it seems that some people ishaving problemi with ati+wine.
What do you suggest?
The alternative is a nvidia gtx 260.

[rohcQaH]

If you were happy with ATI until now, why don't you stick with it?

I'd actually recommend the 4770. It's a bit older, but the drivers are more mature and you can basically stick it in and it works. The 5770 isn't even out yet and will probably take a few weeks until fglrx officially supports it, maybe months until the OS-drivers do 3D.



oh yeah, prepare for some contradicting recommendations. Whenever ati vs. nvidia is the question, fanboys of both sides offer "advice". [1]

Both can work, nvidia's closed drivers are a bit better than ATIs (depending on your usage), but ATI has the better hardware and their OS efforts look very promising.


[1] Disclaimer: I'm an ex-nvidia-fanboy who ultimately converted to ati after the bumpgate scandal.

[Kano]

vdpau on nvidia works really well, so watching videos is much more fun with it. ati has vaapi in the works, but the current vaapi players do not support all features compared to vdpau. also wine support with nvidia drivers is much better. the new ati card is much faster for win games however and supports dx11.

[Ant P.]

If you're intending to do multiseat, better to go with something that behaves with the rest of the X stack (ATI).

[sonnet]

If you were happy with ATI until now, why don't you stick with it?

I'd actually recommend the 4770. It's a bit older, but the drivers are more mature and you can basically stick it in and it works. The 5770 isn't even out yet and will probably take a few weeks until fglrx officially supports it, maybe months until the OS-drivers do 3D.



oh yeah, prepare for some contradicting recommendations. Whenever ati vs. nvidia is the question, fanboys of both sides offer "advice". [1]

Both can work, nvidia's closed drivers are a bit better than ATIs (depending on your usage), but ATI has the better hardware and their OS efforts look very promising.


[1] Disclaimer: I'm an ex-nvidia-fanboy who ultimately converted to ati after the bumpgate scandal.

The radeon 5770 ati card will be officially introduced tomorrow. I thought about buying the 4770, but as the new card will feature 1GB of memory more horsepower and better filters I was thinking it would be a smarter choice. Usually ATI provide since 1 year linux driver form the first day-launch and moreover the new architecture was introduced with the 58xx series,so I didn't think there will be much problem with support for the upcoming cards.
The only problemis that I never tested the ATI with wine, but now I want try to eliminate the Windows partition I kept for games..

[Kano]

I highly doubt that you can get rid of win when you intend to use wine. The speed penalty is pretty huge, even if it runs and lots of (new) games have got issues. Nv performs a bit better but of course not as fast as native with D3D apps. OpenGL based apps are more or less the same speed using wine.

[rohcQaH]

You've read this? Seems like first-day linux support didn't work out this time. If you can wait a little for the cards to actually be available and the drivers to work, go for the 5770. If you want to buy right now, it's the 4770.

The only problemis that I never tested the ATI with wine, but now I want try to eliminate the Windows partition I kept for games..

Now that depends on the games you're playing. DX10/11-games don't work, copy-protection mechanisms are huge trouble and there are still quite a few windows subsystems that aren't emulated properly.

now, there's http://appdb.winehq.org/ - click "Browse Apps" and search for the games you like to see if they even work. Then check the comments to see if there is reported breakage with ATI.

My experience is that newer games (games that'd benefit from a 57xx) don't work yet, with older games there's 90% chance of failing the copy protection, and if that's been.. evaded.. there's still a good chance it has bugs.

I'm successfully running diablo 2, guild wars, GTA: VC and GTA: SA on wine - I think all of them will run on ATI, too. For everything else, I still need to dual-boot. I'm afraid you'll keep your windows-partition, too.

[Chad Page]

A few years ago, I would have said nVidia, but AMD's support is improving on both free and non-free sides and in the long run a 5xxx is the best current card to have. If you're happy with the driver features of your current IGP, definitely stay with Radeon.

If you want good video acceleration today, get an nVidia, though. Although in six months AMD might very well catch up.

[Panix]

It doesn't matter about the brand name so much? In the case of ATI, it can be Sapphire or?

One other question: I always get mixed up and forget the differences in performance issues regarding the open source driver and the fglrx driver. So, applicable to 2D and 3D, you get?

For e.g., open source - 2D - ? 3D - ?
fglrx - 2D - ? 3D - ?

I watch movies on my computer and need good video from all types of video files. I also watch streaming video from time to time (YouTube etc.). That needs to be smooth too. Can one get that with an ATI Radeon 4850?

I think that would be sufficient for me as I doubt I'd be heavy into gaming but I am interested in purchasing/acquiring the odd game perhaps. I just want the option. However, the video playing capabilities need to be issue-free or close as possible.

I like that a lot of the ATI cards are shorter, fit in almost all cases even mid-tower and are generally cheaper. But, the number of issues reported scare me away for now. I think these threads are great since the experiences of others helps a lot. Right now, I still have a Nvidia 7950 GT in my current computer but I am building a budget system for someone so I might buy a video card for it or upgrade mine (and pass the old one on).

[bugmenot]

If you are an opensource enthusiast take an ati, they support officially free drivers. KMS for example is only possible on the free drivers. And open drivers become better and better every day.

If you *really* need 100% the best 3d performance you have to take the closed drivers. In that case take ati or nvidia, the latter have still better drivers. And they have already a well working video decode extension vdpau. But with ati you support also free drivers and probably they will also have a video decode extension soon (but noone knows the date really).

It's up to you.

I will buy an ati card in the next weeks.

Just tell us exactly what your card needs to do for you with which priorities.