Any Arch users advice on choosing a graphics card..?

[IsawSparks]

Heh, I've watched 1080P movies in SMPlayer, on open drivers. 70% of one of my 4 cores is really not an argument.

But if you're into BluRay movies, then you have other problems, namely, BluRay discs do not work under Linux unless you download closed software to rip them to your harddrive, optionally shove them into an mkv, and then play them 45 minutes later.

Which brings the question -- why should you spend 45 minutes ripping a disc when Windows can play it more smoothly, and will accelerate the playback too? Using BluRay discs as an argument when discussing LINUX drivers is very weird.

The fact is -- 3d performance, powersaving and OpenGL compliance are important issues. Movie decoding is not.

Your obsession with Bluray is not the issue here, though you're trying so very desperately to make it as such (remember, you brought it up for discussion, I did not - editing your own memory is actually pretty wierd).

There are many other uses of HD video (including checking rendered output for distribution which was made in FOSS apps like Blender or PiViTi) which can be hardware decoded by VDPAU/VAAPI compliant GPUs and drivers none of which can be hardware decoded by ATI drivers FOSS or closed source so really the only people who are seeing CPU driven decoding of HD content as 'just fine' are ATI apologists like yourself. The rest of us who are not waiting for something to happen are using VDPAU/VAAPI compliant GPU and drivers and enjoying modern media playback capabilities without sacrificing CPU clock cycles.

Honestly, your excuses are so nebulous it's almost offensive to have to read them. Telling people who use Linux on a Linux forum to go to use Windows (because ATI has managed FINALLY to get their shit together on that platform in the DX games arena and media playback, their OpenGL support is still pretty spotty in Windows) because you center your argument on one Media Type which Linux doesn't fully handle, Bluray, which happens to use HD encoding schemes (MPEG2 & AVC) which ATI doesn't handle in hardware in Linux is actually really even more insulting.

We're not here to discuss Windows, nor are we here to pander to fanboy apologists. Try that game somewhere else please.

Moreoever if 3D is so important to you then I would argue that fglrx is a pretty messy and poor implementation when compared with Nvidia-glx, let alone the FOSS drivers which offer no acceleration for ATI 5XXX series card at all. I wonder how Tessellation benchmarks like Heaven 2.1 run on those cards via fglrx in comparison to their Windows drivers. Pretty poorly is my guess.

I'd even hazard the argument that nvidia's driver is more OpenGL compliant that ATI's due to Nvidia-glx 265.xx support of 4.0 though I'm sure that point is debatable.

ATI has more work to do on fglrx to bring it up to spec. That's all there is to the matter and no amount of misdirection or negative insinuation by one-eyed apologists like yourself will detract from that.

When either fglrx or the ATI FOSS driver become fully featured then it's a real choice between Nvidia or ATI on Linux in terms of a discrete GPU solution. Until that time comes, it's still the smarter choice to get an Nvidia card if you want a fully featured driver in Linux.

[pingufunkybeat]

Your obsession with Bluray is not the issue here, though you're trying so very desperately to make it as such (remember, you brought it up for discussion, I did not - editing your own memory is actually pretty wierd).

Actually, you mentioned BluRay first.

It's hard to argue with a guy who not only doesn't understand what /I/ am saying, but doesn't even know what HE is saying.

Honestly, your excuses are so nebulous it's almost offensive to have to read them.

What excuses? Are you drunk?

When there are specs and open drivers for nVidia hardware, I might consider it.

Until then, I will use open hardware and open source drivers.

You are suggesting that everybody must use nVidia and support closed hardware and closed drivers because of a few CPU cycles? Really?

[pingufunkybeat]

That's all there is to the matter and no amount of misdirection or negative insinuation by one-eyed apologists like yourself will detract from that.

I bought an ATi card back when there was no viable acceleration in the open drivers. I did it because I care about open drivers. I've used them for more than a year now, from the time when they were barely able to render a triangle without crashing.

Sorry, kiddie, but I'm used to much worse stuff than bitching about 30% or 70% of a processor core doing decoding here or there. It is simply not important, unless you have a laptop without a socket.

Some of us care about open, reliable drivers. More than we care about "Men in Blak on BluRej". You can cry all you want, but seriously, it's not a huge factor today, with modern processors.

Like I said, 3D performance and powersaving need some improvement, and having followed the rate of development over the last year, I'm positive that they will arrive sooner rather than later. You can stick your CPU clock cycles up your ass and go run your WINE games on your proprietary DRM kernel and feel all mighty.

I don't run Linux because I want to save 5 Watts while watching "Men in Blek". I run Linux because it's free. You don't need to understand.

[kazetsukai]

I bought an ATi card back when there was no viable acceleration in the open drivers. I did it because I care about open drivers. I've used them for more than a year now, from the time when they were barely able to render a triangle without crashing.

For a long time ATI's proprietary drivers were in the same state.

Sorry, kiddie, but I'm used to much worse stuff than bitching about 30% or 70% of a processor core doing decoding here or there. It is simply not important, unless you have a laptop without a socket.

I have a dual 1366 Xeon rig with 8 cores/16 threads. Sometimes, it doesn't matter -at all- that I have a high thread count, eventually the one thread hits 100% and then I get video jack-chop. High bitrate h264 can easily thrash a CPU (or two ) when playing taxing effects like digital noise. When I push the responsibility to my GPU, I never see a hiccup.

Some of us care about open, reliable drivers. More than we care about "Men in Blak on BluRej". You can cry all you want, but seriously, it's not a huge factor today, with modern processors.

People should go with the solution that works the best- that is how competition drives the market in a positive direction. Why would I buy a $400 video card and be forced to only have 1/20th of the functionality available? Because Open Drivers are good? Where did you connect those dots? I definitely support open driver initiatives, and believe that hardware vendors should always open their spec, but I'm not going to sacrifice my experience when there is a better alternative available without cost.

Like I said, 3D performance and powersaving need some improvement, and having followed the rate of development over the last year, I'm positive that they will arrive sooner rather than later.

That kinda sounds like Sony and in-game-XMB. For 2 years, I kept thinking "they'll get it soon". Sure, here we are, but this approach doesn't work for normal users!

You can stick your CPU clock cycles up your ass and go run your WINE games on your proprietary DRM kernel and feel all mighty.

No, we run our proprietary drivers because they are more stable, provide more functionality, and deliver more performance on the same hardware and OS than the open alternative. Great display of maturity, by the way.

I can understand running Open Drivers when they deliver 90%+ of what the supported drivers provide, they're rock solid stable, and/or you're contributing to the development of said driver by filing/fixing bugs as you come across them. I can even respect that. But treating open drivers as a religion is a little short of foolishness.

I don't run Linux because I want to save 5 Watts while watching "Men in Blek". I run Linux because it's free. You don't need to understand.

Which is why you're telling people to run Windows.

[pingufunkybeat]

No, we run our proprietary drivers because they are more stable, provide more functionality, and deliver more performance on the same hardware and OS than the open alternative.

Sorry, but that has never been true for me.

Open source drivers have always been more stable than either nVidia blob or fglrx. Even bleeding edge stuff from git.

Odd, I know. I had the same experience with the intel drivers. Never crashed. nVidia hung on me more than once. Plus I never managed to get suspend working with the nVidia drivers on my laptop before it died.

I can understand running Open Drivers when they deliver 90%+ of what the supported drivers provide, they're rock solid stable, and/or you're contributing to the development of said driver by filing/fixing bugs as you come across them. I can even respect that. But treating open drivers as a religion is a little short of foolishness.

What if the open driver provide 100% of what I actually need?

Can you understand that?

Why would I buy a $400 video card and be forced to only have 1/20th of the functionality available?

Can you please name a graphics card where the open source drivers provide 1/20th of the functionality?

To make it more interesting, the hardware should be more than one year old.

nVidia doesn't count, that's too easy.

Which is why you're telling people to run Windows.

I tell them to run Windows when they run Windows games through an emulator. And then blame it on the graphics card manufacturer.

[pingufunkybeat]

For a long time ATI's proprietary drivers were in the same state.

I can understand that you're upset, but that's bullshit and you know it.

[kazetsukai]

Open source drivers have always been more stable than either nVidia blob or fglrx. Even bleeding edge stuff from git.

I'll return your words to you: that has never been true for me.

Odd, I know. I had the same experience with the intel drivers. Never crashed. nVidia hung on me more than once. Plus I never managed to get suspend working with the nVidia drivers on my laptop before it died.

NVIDIA has crashed on me plenty of times, mostly because of my initial ignorance for how Linux drivers work. I never claimed NVIDIA shipped a perfect driver, I'm only claiming they ship the best driver. Intel has crashed many more for me. Depending, the intel driver has proven itself -unusable- for certain applications.

What if the open driver provide 100% of what I actually need?

I did say 90%+, but 100% of what you need != 100% of the card's features. I don't see GPU video decoding solutions in -any- open driver, nor do I see reliable OpenGL support in recent cards. Just because you prioritize it as trivial doesn't make it so for everyone else.

Can you please name a graphics card where the open source drivers provide 1/20th of the functionality?

To make it more interesting, the hardware should be more than one year old.

Since I run NVIDIA cards, any NVIDIA card made in the last three years loses accelerated video support, most of the 3D support, as well as a bunch of other features.

nVidia doesn't count, that's too easy.

NVIDIA hasn't released spec, so the open drivers are all crap. Assuming you're preaching open drivers in general, this doesn't make much sense. I guess you're preaching ATI more.

I tell them to run Windows when they run Windows games through an emulator. And then blame it on the graphics card manufacturer.

WINE != Emulator. Look up the acronym. And the fact is, ATI has legitimate OpenGL support issues in both their open and closed drivers which impact WINE negatively. I think their complains are legitimized when they peek over at the NVIDIA crowd to find they have no problems running the same titles using the same reverse-engineered API.

[kazetsukai]

I can understand that you're upset, but that's bullshit and you know it.

I know first-hand they sucked- thanks to a 9800pro that worked fine under Windows but was crash-happy under fglrx. I'm not upset, you're just spewing BS about how much you think ATI is better than NVIDIA.

[deanjo]

Can you please name a graphics card where the open source drivers provide 1/20th of the functionality?

I don't think you can put an exact fraction of what is and what isn't available on free drivers but I can point you areas where they are still hurting. You don't necessarily need to directly compare vendors as well. Just take the best blob vs the best foss driver and you can plainly see that there are many areas that the free drivers are lacking in. 3d speed, video acceleration, openGL support, gpgpu computing, multi-card rendering etc. In other words features that have been the focus of the graphics industry for quite a few years, not basic functionality that has existed for well over a decade in other OS's.

That functionality for many people is more important then having to deal with a flicker on boot (which is brief and barly noticeable anyways on a lcd where you don't hear the monitor changing it's res and refresh modes). Suspend to ram/disk hasn't really ever given me any issues with the blobs (ymmv) and I have had issues with suspend with open drivers as well so that point is pretty much moot. Power management in linux as a whole bites compared to the competition no matter if your running a blob or free.

Will free ever be as feature rich and optimized as the blob alternatives? In some area's they may catch up but in other areas more then likely not without trashing a bunch of legacy infrastructure and starting from scratch. Even then patents limit what they are able to incorporate and of course you have to find someone willing to do the code.

[pingufunkybeat]

NVIDIA has crashed on me plenty of times, mostly because of my initial ignorance for how Linux drivers work. I never claimed NVIDIA shipped a perfect driver, I'm only claiming they ship the best driver. Intel has crashed many more for me. Depending, the intel driver has proven itself -unusable- for certain applications.

My intel experience is quite a while ago. But again, these are only personal experiences, and you can't generalise your own.

I did say 90%+, but 100% of what you need != 100% of the card's features. I don't see GPU video decoding solutions in -any- open driver, nor do I see reliable OpenGL support in recent cards. Just because you prioritize it as trivial doesn't make it so for everyone else.

It's trivial to me because I have a multi Gigaflop CPU that can do the same thing. I don't lose any functionality on my desktop as a whole because this one particular DRM-infested IP MPEG-LA Hollywood lawsuit bomb is not supported.

The reason it doesn't work is that it's not legally allowed to work. Luckily, my CPU can take over, and I'm not losing any functionality.

When your driver doesn't support randr, THAT is when you're losing functionality.

NVIDIA hasn't released spec, so the open drivers are all crap. Assuming you're preaching open drivers in general, this doesn't make much sense.

This makes a lot of sense when deciding which company to support.

The fact is, you're spreading FUD with your 1/20 of functionality bullshit.

WINE != Emulator.

You're running WINDOWS GAMES.

If you can't find a native program which fails because of poor OpenGL implementation, then just say so.

I have noted GNOME Shell, but this is alpha-quality software, so there's no knowing what exactly is wrong.

I know first-hand they sucked- thanks to a 9800pro that worked fine under Windows but was crash-happy under fglrx.

OK, let me explain to you.

when a driver manages to render a triangle (and nothing else), this is a milestone.

The OS drivers reached that milestone sometime last year. They literally couldn't do anything other than rended a triangle.

FGLRX was never shipped in this state.