Movie Watching- How are the Nvidia drivers for this?

[deanjo]

Similar question, how will an 8600 gt be for watching movies on Linux (Just using a typical 1680x1050 lcd panel)?

All depends on your system config (processor is the keyfactor as nobody supports hardware acceleration's of it in linux yet) for x264. There are patches out there that will allow mplayer to use CoreAVC which drops the CPU usage dramatically as well there has been alot of work in ffmpeg to get it running HiDef content (1080P for example) running smoothly on lower system requirements.

Any other codec should be trouble free with a much less demanding system requirements.