[plug] ATI Radeon & Linux

[Trevor Phillips]

On Friday 21 November 2003 14:56, Leon Blackwell wrote:
>
> 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.

I know. My old card is a GeForce 2MX. ^_^
But frankly, looking at the benchmarks, I'd be better off getting a GF4Ti4600 
over a FX5600. The FX5900s are decent performance, but a) rather expensive, 
and b) won't cram into the SFF case this is destined for, due to attached 
"Hoover". ^_^

I've set up a system with a FX5600 and was very underwhelmed by the 
performance of it.

> >   *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.

id have said pretty much the same thing tho: For "DX9" type features, the ATI 
is easier to code for, to get better performance.

> >   *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.