[plug] ATI Radeon & Linux

[Leon Blackwell]

On Fri, Nov 21, 2003 at 02:29:00PM +0800, Trevor Phillips wrote:
> I know ATI have less than stellar Linux support. I'm looking at one
> (9600 Pro) as a possible solution for a dual-boot machine
> goals are:

While you did ask for ATI knowledge, I thought I'd provide a little
Nvidia detail for conparison.

You might like to note that Nvidia cards are much better supported under
linux.  A FX5600 keeps up quite well with the 9600 (plenty of benchmark
comparisons out there), and seems to price a little cheaper.


>   *Be able to play Half-Life 2 when it comes out (ergo, budget ATI)

Valve's obvious partnership with ATI gives them a little bit of bias
towards their hardware, but Nvidia's newer cards and more recent drivers
apparently handle Half-Life 2's technologies quite well.


>   *Be able to support TV Out under Linux

Nvidia's drivers support this under Linux/XWindows (easy config too).


>   *Be able to support features useful for smooth and decent quality video 
> play-back (hardware scaling, filtering, etc...) (ie; Freevo-type usage)

Given any reasonably modern PC, playback isn't much of an issue.  You'll
find the compression to be the most important consideration, and (unless
you are getting an MPEG stream) is usually a CPU-only job.


-- 
 Leon Blackwell                | A nice thing about not planning is
 http://www.lostrealm.com/     | that failure comes as a complete
 jabber:lionfire at lostrealm.com | surprise and is not preceded by long
                               | periods of worry and depression.
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