Which way to go: NVidia or Ati?

[zeealpal]

If your looking for an opinion, I would say go with the 5850. I have one and find it works beautifully for gaming in Windows, over clocks great 725mhz/1125mhz to 900mhz/1200mhz stock voltages.

I use the Binary Driver in Linux (Ubuntu) atm, but i recently switched from a 4840 with OSS drivers, which was good, and the Evergreen OSS Drivers are quite close to there apparently.

Anyway Good Luck

[deanjo]

Currently, the OSS ATi drivers are as good, or better than the binary Nvidia driver has ever been for me in 2d and video performance. When it comes to 3d, they can't compete, though.

Better in video performance on ATi? Are you kidding me? Video playback has been a sore thumb in the eye for ATi for quite some time now and nVidia blows them away in this respect.

[pingufunkybeat]

When has video playback been a sore thumb in the eye on ATi using the OSS driver?

Are you sure you aren't confusing it with the binary driver here? That's the one with the video issues.

[deanjo]

When has video playback been a sore thumb in the eye on ATi using the OSS driver?

Are you sure you aren't confusing it with the binary driver here? That's the one with the video issues.

Very much an issue with the opensource driver as well. vsync still remains an issue and it has no real acceleration to speak of. It is still light years behind nvidia's solutions.

[deanjo]

Hell even S3 has better video playback options then any of the AMD cards in linux.

[Panix]

How easy is it to swap back and forth between drivers? I wonder if that is a pain in itself? I read it's fairly easy but still? The Catalyst driver looks very complicated to install and configure considering the number of posts about installing it or needing to tweak settings in order to deal with bugs or issues.

Also, I have the impression that open source drivers tend to work 'good enough' but this is mostly applicable to older cards but not real old. I guess that translates to cards a few years old or so. But, Evergreen cards are said to need considerable improvements with the FOSS drivers so take that how you will.

It would be ideal to go with ATI but the problem is the binary blob driver is not up to par with Nvidia's binary blob. If you only need FOSS drivers, you might get by but going with Evergreen right now, it's possible even the open source driver is unacceptable to you. I think there's a problem there since the Evergreen cards were released several months ago. Both drivers are not in an optimal state if you get an Evergreen card. Real shame.

[Kano]

When you do it right it is very easy to switch drivers. When you do it wrong your system will not be able to switch back. Which distro to you want to use? I prefer my own

[Mereo]

Very much an issue with the opensource driver as well. vsync still remains an issue and it has no real acceleration to speak of. It is still light years behind nvidia's solutions.

Man, and I thought it will be fine with the OSS drivers... in this case... I have no choice but to go the Nvidia way.

[Mereo]

I use the Binary Driver in Linux (Ubuntu) atm, but i recently switched from a 4840 with OSS drivers, which was good, and the Evergreen OSS Drivers are quite close to there apparently.

Anyway Good Luck

How's the video playback? Do you experience Vsync problems with videos?

[pingufunkybeat]

Very much an issue with the opensource driver as well. vsync still remains an issue and it has no real acceleration to speak of. It is still light years behind nvidia's solutions.

No, you are clearly confused.

The video playback is blazing fast and fully accelerated.

Not video DECODING, but the playback (Xv, scaling, colour conversion, etc.) is awesome.

I think that it's still not properly vsynced (though I think it is if you use fullscreen GL), but I never notice any tearing in practice.