ATI support poor or just slow?

[Kano]

Most likely a new GTX 460 will be available soon too, that should be an interesting card even when it is not that fast as a GTX 470/480 but much cheaper. Maybe for a Linux power gamer then first choice.

[gbeauche]

Most likely a new GTX 460 will be available soon too, that should be an interesting card even when it is not that fast as a GTX 470/480 but much cheaper. Maybe for a Linux power gamer then first choice.

Well, would it really have a Fermi core or is it a "renamed" one? For a first choice, a G210 is just fine too. This would depend on his actual needs. And I believe a previous generation NVIDIA card can still outperform an ATI one in some to many cases on Linux. So, sticking to a non Fermi card could still be interesting.

[mugginz]

Well, would it really have a Fermi core or is it a "renamed" one?

I'm led to believe that it's certainly a Fermi based card.

For a first choice, a G210 is just fine too. This would depend on his actual needs. And I believe a previous generation NVIDIA card can still outperform an ATI one in some to many cases on Linux. So, sticking to a non Fermi card could still be interesting.

True. Only need one or two screen support and need a card to perform properly today, buy an nVidia card for sure.

If you can wait a bit and see what happens with the new versions of fglrx then ATI's hardware is pretty good. It doesn't scale as well as nVidia's when talking about Crossfire vs SLI but otherwise is pretty price/performance competitive.

I'm wondering how much the introduction of the GTX 460 will effect the pricing on other cards in the market. I'd assume there'd have to be some price droppage.

[gbeauche]

I'm wondering how much the introduction of the GTX 460 will effect the pricing on other cards in the market. I'd assume there'd have to be some price droppage.

Hmm, I just came by a news mentioning a GTX 460 available by July, 12th at approx 200 EUR for 150W consumption. I think we are still far from price droppage and acceptable power.

[curaga]

On the Fermi cards, Charlie's math adds up quite well. 10% disadvantage stays a 10% disadvantage when both cards are cut in half (5850 -> 5750, gtx480 -> 470).

[mugginz]

Hmm, I just came by a news mentioning a GTX 460 available by July, 12th at approx 200 EUR for 150W consumption. I think we are still far from price droppage and acceptable power.

If that's full load power draw then I'd say it's pretty good. If what's been said is true the 460 has an optimised version of the GF100 used on the 470 and 480.

The price looks pretty good too if that's right.

200.00 EUR = 297.046 AUD and for the expected performance that compares favourable to the 5870 I bought.

[mugginz]

??? sure? i think a gtx280 can't beat a 5870 in OpenGL4 apps

How much GL4 software for Linux is there?

and a gtx280 can't beat a 5870 in openCL apps...

I think a GTX 460 will though. Also a GTX 285 will as well I'm told.

what kind of linux use do you mean ? outdated quake3engine games ?

If that's what he uses then its performance is relevant but what about the performance of fglrx vs nVidia blob?

[mugginz]

i only care about the future and for me nvidia is the past ;-)

This probably explains a lot. Unfortunately some of us live in the real world. The here and now.

if you are happy in 400fps in Quake3-engine based games yes sure nvidia is the right way for you ;-)

for my personal use i only need 60fps!

But Qaridarium, what software can you run on Linux either natively or via Wine that will both run on an ATI card and wont run of an nVidia card? I'm not aware of any myself but I guess that doesn't mean there isn't any. Just curious.

do you think 768mb (460) 86,4 GByte/s and only 700 GFLOPs (5870 3,7 TFLOPs). vram is the right for an openCL app?

A 5850 2GB vram (320?) 2088 GFLOPs will beat that card in openCL very hard!

Where are you getting your figures for the GTX-460 from? Should be an enlightening read for me.

What I've read is that the ATI cards have excellent raw floating point but in practice it doesn't necessarily flow on into every implementation of an OpenCL project.

Also, do you have any benches for CUDA throughput on the GTX-460?

i don't care about 400+fps in quake3engine based games ;-)

and unigine for example turn from version 1.0 (max 1 triangel per 32pixels )general benchark into an nvidia only (nvidia only extansion 1 triangel per 1 pixel) benchmark version 2.0

in that point of view i do not believe unigine anymore because they use nvidia only feature-set's call it a nvidia PR running gag.

Given that the 460 is likely to have better tessellation performance than the 5870 it would be a good example of why to buy an nVidia card so going forward perhaps nVidia is a better bet than is ATI. It'd be a good example of your "who needs 400+ fps".

[gbeauche]

and a gtx280 can't beat a 5870 in openCL apps...

The problem is you think a lot with no practical experience. So, your conclusions are generally meaningless and useless. You never used OpenCL for real, did you? OpenCL implementations are far from being optimal that is on NVIDIA side or on the ATI side. The ATI side is the worst performing implementation beyond the fact of being incomplete. NVIDIA also has troubles as making it as good as CUDA would render the latter useless in some way... But still, their implementation outperforms ATI's.

[Kano]

@Qaridarium

You should not compare a 200 € card against something for 300+ €. The card that competes against a GTX 460 is basically a HD 5830. I would guess that Win benchmarks will show the HD 5830 in certain games a bit faster, but of course without PhysX - not needed when your favorite games does not support it howerver. You dislike CUDA because ATI only supports OpenCL thats clear, not that would be a requirement for a gamer. Your triangle dreams have got absolutlely no practical use. When compareing Linux support there is no doubt that you get more for the money when you buy Nvidia. Maybe not raw speed but better timed driver updates or working video accelleration. I really dislike monthly driver updates that show zero progress... Maybe you see small progress but definitely not in the areas i care about. There ATI is now even behind Intel - it's hard to beleave that a pure OSS driver stack work can do better than a huge binary blob, but thats definitely the case. As ATI will not support UVD2 in the OSS drivers your dreams about WebM is just a joke. You will definitely not gain much when you only use shaders. Even if there would be such a solution it would be very power hungry and would not work on a lowend card - but look even a 30 € nv card can handle full hd h264 l5.1, vc1, divx, mpeg2. When you buy ATI you need definitely a powerfull cpu to decode everything there, that's no doubt. Dream of your shader accelleration as long as you like, it will not do anything usefull.