considering going from a nvidia 260M to a 5850 mobile card

[neuron]

I got an alienware m15x, with a 260M card. The card works now (I had horrible stability and performance almost 6 months) with the latest driver. However, it stays at powersaving mode, meaning anything 3d is dog slow. I've pretty much given up on nvidia fixing this in a reasonable timeframe, and now I'm considering ati.

What can I expect from this card now/in the near future on the open source/fglrx driver? The only thing I absolutely can not live without stability when working, and good s2ram. Other than that I'd love compiz and stuff like wine.

I tried starcraft2 in wine on my 260M, and it crawls. We're talking 15fps with everything on low. I got friends with hardware years old running it fine (in linux). Can I expect that to work with the fglrx driver for example?

[Pfanne]

usually your experience with wine and fglrx will be worse compared to nvidia.

[neuron]

i test starcraft 2 on my 4670 with catalyst+wine and it runs much faster than on my frends nvidia card.

Out of curiosity, how much fps do you get on that card?

With everything on low, at 1280x960 ish resolution I get max 20 fps with a 260M...