Hello,
I've been "lurking", for lack of a better word, this site for a long time, and even popped into IRC for some advice a while back...
I'm looking to build a new computer soon enough, and have been waiting for the ideal point in time to buy (right now it's only waiting on better flgrx drivers, cheaper phenoms, and/or a price drop on the 780G). My budget is too low for Intel parts, especially since I'm not an overclocker. So it's likely AMD. And I've never liked nVidia's chipsets, finding they run way too hot for too little features.
So that left me with two choices really, the AMD 690V or 780G (and yeah I know they're worlds apart but they're the only Gigabytes with AMD chipsets). Reading Phoronix you get the impression ATI is great, it gets stellar performance, beats the crap out of nVidia, etc. But then I come to the forums and IRC and it's worlds apart, people are still constantly griping about flgrx (isn't it deprecated in favour of catalyst? or is catalyst just a control panel?)...
So really, how bad is Catalyst? If I were to build that 780G based computer, with Debian Lenny or maybe Ubuntu, how many problems would I run into? How bad would it really be? I'm sure the OSS ATI driver supports this already, so focus on ATI's. I know XvMC support is non-existant. I'm willing to accept it at this point because only VIA isn't useless on delivering for features. I wish ATI would at least let us use AVIVO or whatever as part of their blob... but like what's 3D and 2D perfomance like? Is there a way to fix the wine problems? And what does that entail, exactly? Like would it degrade something else or is it a case of apps butting heads over a config file? Is it better under windows?
I also want to try and put together an HTPC. My TV is just 720p/1080i though. Almost all of the TV viewing would be analog TV (although I have a cablebox, I don't know if I can receive digital channels without it, and I'd rather do without) and upscaling of DVD rips. And that's another thing. How do you do that? Are programs like MythTV able to use XvMC and I guess xv at the same time? Or does XvMC output at whatever resolution? I figure I'm going VIA and miniITX, maybe a C3 if only because it's just 88$ for a 800MHz fanless Eden (damn your retailers' boutique pricing VIA!) But the thing is, since I already have a cable box, it lets me flag shows, and I've got a pair of DVD players, so it's not terribly justifiable. Which is why I thought to myself, what about emulators? Would I be able to play SNES, GBA, and maybe even N64 games on a machine like that? Or games like Vice City? Would I need an extra video card? Because then I'd need to get a mATX board. That's even cheaper with a C7, but it's fanned and mATX (but yeah even then the cases might be bigger but they're cheaper).
But then that C7 just has two PCI slots, and it's just a C7. Do you think Nanos would be available that cheap? Or would you even be able to remove the C7 and upgrade it to a Nano? With the Nano I could do a lot more, like actual gaming. But then the price goes up (hell I've seen normal C7 boards go for 150$-250$+, which is ridiculous for some little piece of motherboard). Of course they're almost all got a PCIE slot, but still, now you're starting to dwaddle to the price range of my other PC... And what are you going to combine it with? The newer nVidia cards are mostly craptastic compared to the ATI ones...
So, hopefully somebody will get down here, and be able to help me straighten this tangle...
EDIT: Seems only the CN400 in that C3 board does XvMC at 720p... at least with openchrome... It doesn't look like the CN700 in the C7 board would do that... And if not, I really doubt it could do 720p h.264 in software, or 480p xvid/whatever-I-decide-on upscaled to 720p...
I've been "lurking", for lack of a better word, this site for a long time, and even popped into IRC for some advice a while back...
I'm looking to build a new computer soon enough, and have been waiting for the ideal point in time to buy (right now it's only waiting on better flgrx drivers, cheaper phenoms, and/or a price drop on the 780G). My budget is too low for Intel parts, especially since I'm not an overclocker. So it's likely AMD. And I've never liked nVidia's chipsets, finding they run way too hot for too little features.
So that left me with two choices really, the AMD 690V or 780G (and yeah I know they're worlds apart but they're the only Gigabytes with AMD chipsets). Reading Phoronix you get the impression ATI is great, it gets stellar performance, beats the crap out of nVidia, etc. But then I come to the forums and IRC and it's worlds apart, people are still constantly griping about flgrx (isn't it deprecated in favour of catalyst? or is catalyst just a control panel?)...
So really, how bad is Catalyst? If I were to build that 780G based computer, with Debian Lenny or maybe Ubuntu, how many problems would I run into? How bad would it really be? I'm sure the OSS ATI driver supports this already, so focus on ATI's. I know XvMC support is non-existant. I'm willing to accept it at this point because only VIA isn't useless on delivering for features. I wish ATI would at least let us use AVIVO or whatever as part of their blob... but like what's 3D and 2D perfomance like? Is there a way to fix the wine problems? And what does that entail, exactly? Like would it degrade something else or is it a case of apps butting heads over a config file? Is it better under windows?
I also want to try and put together an HTPC. My TV is just 720p/1080i though. Almost all of the TV viewing would be analog TV (although I have a cablebox, I don't know if I can receive digital channels without it, and I'd rather do without) and upscaling of DVD rips. And that's another thing. How do you do that? Are programs like MythTV able to use XvMC and I guess xv at the same time? Or does XvMC output at whatever resolution? I figure I'm going VIA and miniITX, maybe a C3 if only because it's just 88$ for a 800MHz fanless Eden (damn your retailers' boutique pricing VIA!) But the thing is, since I already have a cable box, it lets me flag shows, and I've got a pair of DVD players, so it's not terribly justifiable. Which is why I thought to myself, what about emulators? Would I be able to play SNES, GBA, and maybe even N64 games on a machine like that? Or games like Vice City? Would I need an extra video card? Because then I'd need to get a mATX board. That's even cheaper with a C7, but it's fanned and mATX (but yeah even then the cases might be bigger but they're cheaper).
But then that C7 just has two PCI slots, and it's just a C7. Do you think Nanos would be available that cheap? Or would you even be able to remove the C7 and upgrade it to a Nano? With the Nano I could do a lot more, like actual gaming. But then the price goes up (hell I've seen normal C7 boards go for 150$-250$+, which is ridiculous for some little piece of motherboard). Of course they're almost all got a PCIE slot, but still, now you're starting to dwaddle to the price range of my other PC... And what are you going to combine it with? The newer nVidia cards are mostly craptastic compared to the ATI ones...
So, hopefully somebody will get down here, and be able to help me straighten this tangle...
EDIT: Seems only the CN400 in that C3 board does XvMC at 720p... at least with openchrome... It doesn't look like the CN700 in the C7 board would do that... And if not, I really doubt it could do 720p h.264 in software, or 480p xvid/whatever-I-decide-on upscaled to 720p...
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