Nvidia vs ATI

[rudl]

HI

I want to by a new graphics card to replace my current 8500gt. And I need a card with a rather low power consumption, because my Power supply only has a maximum of 350W output (300 continous v1 12= 10w v2 12= 15w). The ATI 4670 just seems to be perfect for this.
So here is my question: How good is the Ati Linux driver right now. Does this card work with linux? dist is Ubuntu 8.10. Or are the nvidia cards still less problematik?

Or is a 9600gt the better choice? But I'm not sure wether a 9600gt is too much for my power supply or not.

The rest of my system is:
AMD6000+X2 @1.33 maximum vcore with cnq
500Gb HD
ASUS M2NPV-VM
Duallayer DVD
2GB DDR2@667

[sc3252]

Do you know the exact amount of amps you can draw from your 12v? if its really low I would consider going with the 4670, unless you decide to also upgrade your powersupply.

300 continous v1 12= 10w v2 12= 15w

Not really sure what this means, are you talking about the two different rails on the power supply? you can pull 10amps off the first 12v rail and 15amps off the second?

[rudl]

Yeas I meant amps

Here is a picture

http://img354.imageshack.us/my.php?image=dsc00014jd4.jpg

[Duo Maxwell]

AMD/ATI to support the little guy and due to hopefully seeing some open source drivers. I'd go with this card in particular http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16814161252 it comes with a dual slot, rear exhausting cooler, is factory overclocked and comes with 128-bit GDDR3.

Either one you get make sure you are getting the GDDR3 128-bit version of the card, most of your low end cards have lower end models that are memory bandwith bound due to one of those two or sometimes both crippling performance, overclockng the ram will help some, but the difference between the same ram on 64 and 128 bit is night and day, as is the difference between GDDR2 and GDDR3 seeing as 2 can't handle much more then 900Mhz, while 3 can be pushed up past 2Ghz. GDDR4 can be pushed even further, but it doesn't offer as big an improvement do to it's higher latency. But GDDr5 s quad pumped, so cards like the AMD HD4870 are often mmislabled as 1.8Ghz, instead of its actual speed of 3.6Ghz. GDDR5 has also been pushed as high as 4.8Ghz, expect it to be on all of the next gen high end cards.

Why not upgrade the psu as well? Would let you go with any gpu to go with anything in the 400-450 watt range but 500=650 is better as to give you more buffer, since the PSUs max output will lower over time. Better to run the system at no more then 60% max load.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817163109

Is a good PSU that covers pretty much all modern features, even has modular cables so you can just connect what lines you need to allow for better airflow in the case instead of having a rat's nest of unused wires wadded up in the corner.

[rudl]

WELL i can buy PSU for 80 bucks and buy a gtx 260 for 200
or i don't change my Psu buy a 4670 for 70. or a 9600gt for 85. A 4670 won't draw that much more as a 8500gt. Moreover I play @1280x1024 that shouldn't be too much for this card.
I think almost every 4670comes with GDDR3, the 4650 is the slower one.
And yes a 128bit card scales very good with higher memory clock.

And the driver works without problems, in 3d apps too? Like quake1-4, Doom3 and openarena Compiz?

[Duo Maxwell]

I've had no real trouble with the HD3650 after initial some on these forums though report that they have issues when gaming with wine or while ganing with compiz. I don't use either so I don't really care since everything else I tried worked at an acceptable framerate.

I recommended the better PSU as it's a good thing to have for the system as a whole, especially since you seem so concerned as to weither or not your skimpy little 300 watt will handle a more powerful GPU. While 300 watts may more then meet your max ower draw, our average load percentage is still pretty high, shortening the life of the PSU, which when it fails could take out pretty much everything else in your comp.

I just hope you aren't one of the newbs that think a 1Kw PSU means thas how much it draws, because it by no means doesn't. The rating is the max amount of watts in DC current it can make out of what you're getting from the wall, be it 120v us or 220, 230, 240 even depending on where you live. If you where to put unconverted wall power into just about any consumer device it wouldn't take more then a few secconds for it to be turned into a nice faming pile of boiling ooze.

Besides, as you say, you can got gor a better GPU when you get a PSU, you may upgrade your screen, want to play newer games that may be released for linux, such as the Steam games or maybe Doom 4 when it's out with everything maxed including AA and AF, skys the limit.

Either way it's your money, do what you like.

[mlalkaka]

I've been trying to find the answer to this same question: does NVidia or ATI provide a better driver for its cards under Linux?

some on these forums though report that they have issues when gaming with wine

The results shown in the article "AMD Linux 2008 Year in Review" seem to support that claim.

I haven't decided for myself yet. I would take a look at the "AMD Linux 2008 Year in Review" article and the "NVIDIA Linux 2008 Year in Review".

[NeoBrain]

I've had no real trouble with the HD3650 after initial some on these forums though report that they have issues when gaming with wine or while ganing with compiz.

My problems with fglrx and Wine were 1) that windows got corrupted very badly when running Wine and Compiz at the same time and 2) that fglrx ran out of virtual memory and thus fell back to software rendering when running Wine.
Number one got fixed apparently around 8.11 or 8.12
Number two will get fixed sometime in the future (it's something that must be fixed in Wine, so not fglrx's fault), but there exist some workarounds, which work as well. Also, I upgraded to 4GB RAM recently, so I'm experiencing this problem less than before.
Apart from these two things, Wine+fglrx works great for me.

[alexv]

I've recently moved away from windows and now i'm standing on the same crossroad... I have to choose between 9800GTX+ and HD4850. The way i see it i have to weight between nvidia's better (for the time being) proprietary driver, or the possibility that eventually, because AMD/ATI releases documentation for their GPUs, there will be a better, faster, more feature-rich open driver. Right now however nvidia releases updates more frequently, has more features (OpenGL 3 and VDPAU, i'm not sure if fglrx has OpenGL 3) and better looking GUI for configuring the driver (on the other hand catalyst seems to have more options for configuring, and i prefer functionality before looks ). Another important thing to note is that right now i'm using jaunty + nvidia's 180.18 driver using a workaround i've found on the forums, while AFAIK ATI users are stuck with the open driver because fglrx doesn't work with the new xserver - intrepid all over again (i might be misinformed). As i can't quite give up on gaming yet (i have all the newer native titles) if i had to choose right now, i'd go for nvidia because of this. If AMD starts releasing drivers that offer on-time support for distributions in their developing phase (where graphics breakages due to incompatibility are almost sure to happen) and maybe new features (i have fast cpu so i'm not in dire need for video acceleration, however i'd welcome it if i buy ATI GPU ^^) they'll make my decision easy - i'd buy their product because of their open source community support .

[EagleDM]

Don't forget the basics:

WORKING VOLTAGE AND CLOCK THROTLE (with powermizer).

My 4870X2 is currently idling at 65 degrees in Vista and 85 degrees in Linux just becasue ATI didn't implement downclock and voltage control in their drivers, I just can't use this card on linux seeing how it converts my PC into a hot burner...


As of right now, I just bought a GTX260 for cheap, just to use Ubuntu and I'm installing as we speak, no other alternative to me, the 4870X2 will stay only for a second machine for Gaming in Vista.