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

[pingufunkybeat]

Which is EXACTLY what you just tried to do!!!

No, I didn't. You did, by saying that blobs are more stable than oss drivers.

I gave you my experience, which was clearly marked as such.

Please don't reply if you can't read.

I want XYZ functionality of out my desktop, so I buy a graphics card that does XYZ. If your driver Does.Not.Do. XYZ, then its irrelevant what company it comes from.

I'm perfectly fine with this.

I have my own functionality I want. I want to inspect the source.

This isn't FUD, its facts (perhaps not so exaggerated), PAINFUL facts that most ATI users on Linux have come to terms with over the years. If you're not biased and in the ATI camp, you definitely have complaints. I'm in the NVIDIA camp, and I sure as hell have complaints about NVIDIA, none of which you have touched upon.

1/20 of functionality is totaly and utter bullshit and you are intentionally misleading people.

The FACT is that open drivers are perfectly usable for most things you need to do with your desktop. Including 3d.

They are not perfect and they still have some way to go (especially 3d performance and OpenGL 3 conformance), but it's more like 19/20.

Put your money where your mouth (hands) are. I'll run 4 1080p videos, using VDPAU under Compiz while simultaneously benching Unigine Heaven and beat your Unigine scores under your Open Driver. Your performance cannot compare. If you have a low end card, forget it, and I apologize. That would explain why you're insisting you only need a fraction of workable OpenGL support.

Cool, you run "nouveau", I run "radeon". When do we start?

If you run closed source software, so will I, and I'll whip out my Windows machine from work.

False. FGLRX shipped broken several times, be it in performance, functionality, or both. Their OpenGL implementation until just recently blew chunks compared to the competition, and their release cycle was terrible.

When was FGLRX not capable of rendering a triangle.

Date, please, or shut the fuck up.

[pingufunkybeat]

Your processor alone in your brute force system uses at least that not to mention the chipset, and video card.

The difference between idle and full load consumption for my processor is 80 Watts (it's actually less, but nevermind). That's 20 Watts per core. I could decode every 1080p rip with around 75% load on one core on average.

That's 15 Watts more consumption compared to idle. That's what I would be saving if I offloaded it to the GPU.

I have a lovely, completely 100% open system running now. For the first time in years. It's lovely It's all updated automagically, I never have x server mismatches, and all that.

It will take more than 15 Watts to make me switch to a closed source solution.

[deanjo]

The difference between idle and full load consumption for my processor is 80 Watts (it's actually less, but nevermind). That's 20 Watts per core. I could decode every 1080p rip with around 75% load on one core on average.

That's 15 Watts more consumption compared to idle. That's what I would be saving if I offloaded it to the GPU.

I have a lovely, completely 100% open system running now. For the first time in years. It's lovely It's all updated automagically, I never have x server mismatches, and all that.

It will take more than 15 Watts to make me switch to a closed source solution.

lol, strange math you have there. First of all your comparing the difference of running your processor at idle vs full. The total usage of the entire ION system at max usage is lower then your processor alone. Second of all your making it sound like your other 4 cores shut down completely when not used, again this would be wrong, they are still consuming the watts and you still have not bothered to include the additional power used by your fans / chipset / video card.

There is a HELL of a lot more then 15 watts of power being consumed on your system just idling let alone doing any type of processing.

[deanjo]

Lets put it this way, @ the wall with XBMC on a ION system watching a HD h264 @ 1080p it's pulling 21 watts with a hard drive to boot.

[kazetsukai]

I have my own functionality I want. I want to inspect the source.

Inspect away, on the Open Driver. I can inspect the Open NVIDIA equivalent all I want... even with it not installed. I'm referring to the /hardware/ functionality, which the open driver does not make full use of. This should have been obvious, I'll be more explicit going forward so that you can understand.

1/20 of functionality is totaly and utter bullshit and you are intentionally misleading people.

The FACT is that open drivers are perfectly usable for most things you need to do with your desktop. Including 3d.

They are not perfect and they still have some way to go (especially 3d performance and OpenGL 3 conformance), but it's more like 19/20.

I'm misleading noone- in my last post, I backed down on that number because you were taking what was clearly an exaggeration literally. Again, I'll be more explicit going forward for you. Additionally, your 19/20 is literally an equally extreme exaggeration on the other end of the scale- Open Drivers don't deliver 95% of the functionality in most cases.

No, I didn't. You did, by saying that blobs are more stable than oss drivers.

Yes, you did. You used direct experience as justification for your claims.

Cool, you run "nouveau", I run "radeon". When do we start?

You're intentionally misinterpreting me here. My claim is, with my binary driver, I can do many times the performance of your open driver, even when casually doing other things that would prove taxing in your system simultaneously. You have not once tried to address the performance issues of your Open Driver, you've evaded it by twisting words. I'll be happy to take you on "nvidia" versus "fglrx", though.

If you run closed source software, so will I, and I'll whip out my Windows machine from work.

Sure, go ahead and run your open driver on that platform.

When was FGLRX not capable of rendering a triangle.

Who can't read? Nevermind, I must have phrased it incorrectly(I never said "cannot render a triangle", but you're welcome to interpret it as "barely could" if you'd like). FGLRX shipped several times with broken functionality.

[pingufunkybeat]

No, I think that your math is wrong.

I'm comparing the SAVING that I would have on MY computer if I offloaded HD decoding to the dedicated hardware on the graphics card.

I'm not comparing my working desktop to your ION system. If I switch to fglrx, my working desktop is not going to morph into your ION system. It would still be very much the same, and use the same amount of power, except the difference that I'd save by using UVD/whatever other HD decoding hardware.

First of all your comparing the difference of running your processor at idle vs full.

Yes. If the processor is not decoding, it is idle. If the processor is decoding, it is using more than idle.

The difference is the saving I would get if the processor did not decode. It would still be running, in idle mode.

[deanjo]

No, I think that your math is wrong.

I'm comparing the SAVING that I would have on MY computer if I offloaded HD decoding to the dedicated hardware on the graphics card.

I'm not comparing my working desktop to your ION system. If I switch to fglrx, my working desktop is not going to morph into your ION system. It would still be very much the same, and use the same amount of power, except the difference that I'd save by using UVD/whatever other HD decoding hardware.


Yes. If the processor is not decoding, it is idle. If the processor is decoding, it is using more than idle.

The difference is the saving I would get if the processor did not decode. It would still be running, in idle mode.

And all the uses you list can be done more efficiently on a much cheaper system to run with the same end result.

In the meantime, desktop works, video works, 3d works, World of Goo works, Quake works, Penumbra works, hey I have a working desktop!

[pingufunkybeat]

Inspect away, on the Open Driver. I can inspect the Open NVIDIA equivalent all I want... even with it not installed. I'm referring to the /hardware/ functionality, which the open driver does not make full use of. This should have been obvious, I'll be more explicit going forward so that you can understand.

The fact that the driver is open is an important factor for many people, and it was the pressure from these people that got AMD to open the specs and write open drivers in the first place.

The fact that I can inspect and edit the source code is important functionality, which might be more important to some than more FPS or support for games in WINE.

The binary blobs will always outperform the open drivers, but that's not the point. ZFS will always outperform the Linux filesystems too. MS C compiler will always outperform GCC. Still, people will use these tools.

Surely, as a Linux user, you are aware that these things are important to many? That raw performance is not the only thing that matters?

Surely you know why Linux EXISTS? Why GCC exists? Emacs?

I'm misleading noone- in my last post, I backed down on that number because you were taking what was clearly an exaggeration literally. Again, I'll be more explicit going forward for you. Additionally, your 19/20 is literally an equally extreme exaggeration on the other end of the scale- Open Drivers don't deliver 95% of the functionality in most cases.

If youre talking about general things, I think that Intel drivers do this on lots of hardware.

AMD drivers for modern cards were started a couple of years ago, and went through the biggest changes in the driver stack in the history of Linux. Give them some time. They are already decent.

Talking about 1/20 of functionality is quite disrespectful.

Yes, you did. You used direct experience as justification for your claims.

No, I used it to disprove your general claim that closed drivers are always more stable.

You're intentionally misinterpreting me here. My claim is, with my binary driver, I can do many times the performance of your open driver

I know this.

But I can patch my driver and inspect it.

Can you do that with yours?

You have not once tried to address the performance issues of your Open Driver, you've evaded it by twisting words.

I address them all the time, both here, and on other forums, when talking to honest people who want to know what the status is and which hardware or drivers they should use.

Since I've been running the open drivers for ATi for over a year, I'm perfectly aware of what they are capable of.

But I'm not interested in a dick measuring contest with people who don't give a damn about actual facts and go on about 1/20 of functionality and "my driver can kick your driver's ass".

Who can't read? Nevermind, I must have phrased it incorrectly(I never said "cannot render a triangle", but you're welcome to interpret it as "barely could" if you'd like). FGLRX shipped several times with broken functionality.

You said that FGLRX was shipped in a state where it could only render a single triangle.

If this is not what you wanted to say, then why did you say it

[pingufunkybeat]

And all the uses you list can be done more efficiently on a much cheaper system to run with the same end result.

Other than HD decoding, none of these have any problems running on low-end machines.

But try doing a grid search for optimal parameters for an SVM given several gigabytes of learning data on your ION. Or doing k-means on 2 million 200-dimensional datapoints.

I actually need a computer for work. I don't have it just to watch HD videos. I'd probably get a Mac for that. If running closed-source proprietary software, at least do it properly.

[kazetsukai]

To simplify my viewpoint:

-The NVIDIA Binary Driver allows better use of the hardware functionality than the ATI Equivalent on Linux.
-The NVIDIA Binary is vastly superior to the Open NVIDIA equivalent in terms of performance and functionality.

-The ATI Binary is also superior to the Open equivalent in terms of performance and functionality, but to a lesser degree than the Binary/Open driver on the NVIDIA side.
-The ATI Open driver is vastly superior to the NVIDIA Open equivalent, especially on newer hardware.

By summing all of the above up, you inevitably arrive at the following:

-The NVIDIA Binary driver is vastly superior to the Open ATI equivalent in terms of performance and functionality.

/That/ is my argument. Apologies if I wasn't clear enough up until now.

Your view seems to be the following:

-The ATI Open Driver is vastly superior to the NVIDIA Open driver in terms of performance and functionality (true on many counts)
-As the above is true, ATI in general is superior to NVIDIA (which is not necessarily true)

Also you touched on the controversial issues:
-Closed drivers are evil
This is a pretty extreme view. Companies ABSOUTELY should provide good Open Drivers where possible, and NVIDIA has not delivered on that. However, they have delivered a very functional binary driver which is technically superior to other solutions. while there are clear disadvantages to it, I'd say that's better than nothing.

-Windows is a better alternative to using WINE (???)
I don't think you would be saying this if ATI cards performed better than NVIDIA cards in WINE. People rely on WINE for certain functionality, including to assist a transition to Open Source. By not working as well with WINE as other solutions, the ATI driver falls short on those expectations, and can provide a bumpier transition than necessary.