ATI and Linux compatibility

[mugginz]

nvidia drivers are better, but fglrx arn't as bad.

If you want to play wine with AMD, dont wait amd improve their drivers. Please speak to wine 3d devs, this is important! AMD can not clone opengl nvidia implementation.

And this is appropriate advise for someone who's willing to do that. Not everyone is though. If he's interested in some short term pain for long term gain then that could work for him. If he's after out of the box ready to go, then perhaps not.

If you want video accel, yes nvidia wins. But i play my hd videos using cpu, so not a real big deal, or application stopper.

Native opengl both are good, but ati hardware is better. So in general you have less power consuption at idle at in load.

For HTPC applications GPU decode can be very advantageous, but thankfully for AMD, not everyone needs this.

[Jimbo]

For HTPC applications GPU decode can be very advantageous, but thankfully for AMD, not everyone needs this.

My E2100 core 2 duo CPU, fanless, 40W, can decode 1080p at 80% load. So an HTPC can rely on cpu without problems.

[mugginz]

My E2100 core 2 duo CPU, fanless, 40W, can decode 1080p at 80% load. So an HTPC can rely on cpu without problems.

There are some considerations to take into account when dealing with 1080p content. Various profile/bit rates can devastate quite hefty CPUs. Even with modest 1080p content running on a MythTV box that is also recording four concurrent programs you are also more prone to problems than you'd otherwise be if GPU decode was available.

[Jimbo]

My E2100 core 2 duo CPU, fanless, 40W, can decode 1080p at 80% load. So an HTPC can rely on cpu without problems.

And this is an "old cpu" a corei3 can outperform that easily.

[Panix]

Yes we get the message. nvidia is awesome, nvidia is god, yawn. So after all this nvidia is better than ATI why are you even considering buying an ATI card? Really you and Panix should just buy nvidia cards and get it over with. Leave the ATI bashing to actual owners of ATI cards, we are perfectly capable of doing that ourselves.

I never praised Nvidia like that. I only gave my perspective that it seems ATI/AMD isn't able to or won't invest enough resources in their drivers. Nvidia have their own problems but generally, the driver (well, binary blob to be specific) is half decent. That doesn't mean I support how they do it.

Btw, how come Distrowatch lists the Nvidia driver (ver.) but no update listed for ATI fglrx?

I have said that I prefer ATI for both the hardware and decision to have some FOSS support. But, I was apprehensive because I have enough trouble with other stuff let alone a driver that may 'not work' when the kernel or xorg is updated. The other issue is a feature set that may or may not be fully optimized. I'm not sure what is wrong with being concerned with that.

I still *want* to get either a HD 5770 or HD 4770. But, I need/want features and quality for video so if that's there (when I want to buy), that's great. If not, I'll be disappointed but that's life.

Okay, carry on...

[Jimbo]

There are some considerations to take into account when dealing with 1080p content. Various profile/bit rates can devastate quite hefty CPUs. Even with modest 1080p content running on a MythTV box that is also recording four concurrent programs you are also more prone to problems than you'd otherwise be if GPU decode was available.

I was speaking of h264 avc, the most demanding. On the other cpu load is inferior at 80%

[mugginz]

I was speaking of h264 avc, the most demanding. On the other cpu load is inferior at 80%

I believe Kano has some information on how "big" bit rate 1080p can drain even a hefty CPU.

[mugginz]

How do you find CPU decode of blueray bit rate (40mb/s)

[Jimbo]

Obviously if cpu is on load there is less room to encode video while watching. So nvidia wins here. Yes in geenral HTPC are more suited to video accel. But it is possible to play HD content on cpu too.

[mugginz]

I have a friend who has an overclocked i7 920 (4GHz on water) and that machine has issues with single threaded CPU decode of really high bit rate video. For software that does mutli-threaded decode that's OK on that machine. (and so it should be)