ati 5770 or still a nvidia

[bridgman]

That's probably fair. You might be surprised how many people don't see tearing though...

I ran maybe 20 people past my desk in the early days of 5xx video render accel looking at video quality and only one person noticed a bit of tearing. The good news, I guess, is that they were on the multimedia driver team.

[LinuxID10T]

Personally, video tearing bothers me a lot. However, even with an ATI card all you have to do is enable v-sync and run the video player in OpenGL mode. I still would rather have an ATI card for superior performance in games.

[Panix]

Personally, video tearing bothers me a lot. However, even with an ATI card all you have to do is enable v-sync and run the video player in OpenGL mode. I still would rather have an ATI card for superior performance in games.

Same here.

So, does the fglrx driver allow you to use HD 5xxx cards except for minor issues? If so, can someone clarify and be specific with regards to these issues?

I can be specific to what I want to use:
*Ubuntu 9.10 (until 10.04 is released, then I'll install 10.04 in the same partition)
*I want to use video players such as MPlayer and Kaffeine
*Google Earth needs to run smoothly
*GIMP, Inkscape, KDELive, Kino, Cinelerra
*Youtube and other similar players

Of course, I want to use those apps with minimal trouble but I would probably accept it working with some minor fixes as I read patches are often needed...

I think I would need the fglrx driver until support catches up with FOSS drivers...

But, I would like to know the specific issues and whether there's workarounds or fixes. I thought Ubuntu 9.10 and later would allow the best chance of this and I am familiar with the *buntus anyway.

I'm debating whether to go with a HD 5xxx card or a HD 4770 which is my 2nd pick out of the ATI cards. If there's a comparable HD 5xxx card to that one in the same price range, I'd consider that as well.

Anyway, I hope it's okay hijacking the thread to ask these questions.

[rohcQaH]

panix, still paranoid about something possibly not working?


my 5770 worked stable with fglrx since 9.10 or 9.11 (I think). The only real trouble I had was instability in certain wine games and unfinished support for eyefinity, the latter being fixed now.

fglrx 10.4 is supposed to work with ubuntu 10.04; we'll see about that when both are released.

mplayer works, with the mentioned caveats about fglrx and xv.

haven't used google earth.

The other apps you mentioned don't even use much in the way of 3d acceleration and will probably work without problems (but I've only used gimp for very short tasks, none of the other tools).

[Kano]

@bridgman

1 out of 20 is very few, maybe the test was too short or under pressure. With trained eyes you see those errors directly. I also notice skipped (b) frames when i can compare 2 videos... Best watch a full dvd at home with fglrx (not only a few seconds) and then the result will be most likely different. You see it especially in scenes with lots of movement, so action movie preferred

[mugginz]

panix, still paranoid about something possibly not working?


my 5770 worked stable with fglrx since 9.10 or 9.11 (I think). The only real trouble I had was instability in certain wine games and unfinished support for eyefinity, the latter being fixed now.

fglrx 10.4 is supposed to work with ubuntu 10.04; we'll see about that when both are released.

mplayer works, with the mentioned caveats about fglrx and xv.

haven't used google earth.

The other apps you mentioned don't even use much in the way of 3d acceleration and will probably work without problems (but I've only used gimp for very short tasks, none of the other tools).

Just wondering if you can you test some 3D apps in a composited environment? Also, have you tried KDE 4.4 with it?

[rohcQaH]

With trained eyes you see those errors directly.

duh.. if you want to enjoy movies, why did you train your eyes to spot the errors?

It should be noted that tearing seems to look different depending on the circumstances. A compositor can change the looks and amount of the tears, because it changes the memory access patterns and may add it's own synchronizing issues.

Just wondering if you can you test some 3D apps in a composited environment? Also, have you tried KDE 4.4 with it?

only light 3d apps, I spawn a separate X server for most games (habit from nvidia days, where I didn't want a driver crash to take down my main X server). But glxgears, neverball and snes9x on wine with openGL output work as expected. Using kompmgr from kde 3.

I had tried kde 4.4 for a few days, but it's still too slow and unusable for my tastes. kde 3.5 has to suffice for a while longer
There were a couple of gfx bugs, general slowness and a few program crashes - roughly the same amount of uglyness as I had with kde 4.3 on nvidia, so it's probably kde.

[Kano]

@rohcQaH

Mabye it's a side offect, i used to view lots of magic pictures several years ago in the 90s, to do that you have learn to focus on details. Normally you focus on repeating textures but tearing is extremely visable too. Basically you always scan for "errors" then...

[Panix]

panix, still paranoid about something possibly not working?

Yeah, but paranoia comes easy with ATI cards, doesn't it?

I have read mixed reviews on the Evergreen cards. Some are saying some things work and while others insist the opposite. I guess the newer versions of the kernel, Xorg and whatever related packages are another story so maybe one has to use an older version of a supported distro?

I am not proficient enough to be a purist so I'd probably be using Ubuntu. Maybe 9.10 until 10.04 Lucid is ready for release. I'll have OpenSuse and Fedora in VirtualBox but I don't expect much 'driver support' working with that but anything that works will be a bonus. I'll have one other partition as a 'tester' for installing whatever distro I want to try out.

I read the Xorg Wiki today to see what's there and it seems like a mixed bag of things working and not working.... for R700! Evergreen support, I am wondering how much it will progress and how fast. These cards are popular right now and do have good hardware specs and features. For high performance cards, they have decent power and low heat stats. I will consider a R700 card if I decide the Evergreens are a bit pricey but I know going in with R800 cards, I'll have a long wait until I can really use the card. That just bugs me, 'can't help it. I suppose I can boot up Windoze when some 'application' isn't working or I experience problems. I would provide bug reports if the process isn't too exhausting or if it's conveniently set up.

Thanks for your feedback, input and info about the Evergreen cards and your experience with them! It helps since I think first-hand experiences can give a good idea of what to expect.

[monraaf]

I'll have a long wait until I can really use the card

How long have you been waiting to buy a new video card? Seems to me you have been asking the same questions over and over again for some time now. So you can wait to buy a new video card until the drivers are good enough for you, or you can buy a new video card now and wait till the drivers get better. Either way you wait

Thanks for your feedback, input and info about the Evergreen cards and your experience with them! It helps since I think first-hand experiences can give a good idea of what to expect.

FWIW I also have an Evergreen card, but I put it back in the cardboard box. Hope that makes you doubt a little longer