On Wednesday 29 July 2009 08:29:06 Frank D. wrote:
You might want to consider saving some cash and just using onboard video,
the onboard stuff isn't bad if you're not looking to play games.
Joe has been doing a bunch of 1080p video stuff which requires either a
decent
videocard with built-in HD video decoder or a hefty CPU. Personally I
never
recommend onboard video because I find it typical to change video cards
about
once every 1.5 years, especially for gamers, and I don't like sharing
onboard
RAM with the video. Also Joe just got done being burnt by getting a
motherboard with onboard video that was troublesome to support under
Linux, so
I definitely understand his desire for not going down that route again.
The onboard stuff can still accelerate HD video, depending on the GPU. I
couldn't say off the top of my heads for sure which ones are capable of it.
Onboard video also doesn't stop you from getting another video card. In what
way is an nVidia 8 series GPU "troublesome," to support under Linux? 1080p
decoding doesn't even require a decent video card regardless, a $30 8400GS
will do it with minimal CPU usage just fine. Google VDPAU 8400GS Linux for
some results, I think Phoronix did a write up using a single core AMD in the
2.0GHz range and IIRC around 10-20% CPU usage using that video card.
What qualifies as a hefty CPU? Is an X2 5200+ Brisbane "hefty"? That will do
it with ease and power to spare, and I paid less than $65 for the CPU while
the Phenom I @ 2.3GHz was still the "top dog," of AMD.
If you're looking for good performance under Linux, ATI drivers are
pretty
much garbage anyway.
I can't speak from personal experience but I've read that ATI card
performance
these days is actually higher under Linux than it is under Windows. And
if
the ATI driver is open source, that is a nontrivial consideration.
I don't know where you read that ATI card performance is better under Linux
than Windows, but I've read and experienced the exact opposite. The open
source drivers are utter garbage, and I'm not even sure they support h.264
acceleration regardless. Never mind the open source driver's dismal 2D + 3D
performance. Does it matter if it's open source if it doesn't perform well
and crashes? Would you use the Linux kernel if it was broken? How about any
of the user space tools? Check phoronix for benchmarks of the ATI drivers.
Consider the way that Nvidia drivers currently work -- they're
periodically
split off into separate packages which are then not supported, and the
newer
drivers deprecate older cards. Then what happens is that both the Linux
kernel and X.org are updated such that the old drivers that are no longer
supported require updating before they will function again. :-/ (I'm
currently dealing with this problem with several older Nvidia cards, all
of
which are in different states of brokeness.) Repeat that cycle a few
times and
you can understand why having an open source driver that others can
support is
a big deal. And this also explains why binary blobs can _never_ fully fit
our
needs.
How old are the nVidia cards? I don't have any problem with the 7-series,
185.14 is the newest driver IIRC, I just installed it. I also have 6150SE
onboard video on another computer, no problems there. It's not even worth
the power to run hardware older than that. I retired my GeForce4 and Radeon
9600Pro/9700Pro/9800Pros a long time ago. The Radeons actually retired
themselves, all of them died inside of a year (one 9600Pro lasted two
years).
I think this also explains why ATI went away from the binary-only model --
because it similarly creates forced obsolescence and thus pisses people
off.
ATI didn't go away from the binary-only model, really. It's not like they've
released source code for their binary; they can't due to NDAs. They're just
releasing some helpful information for driver development and I believe
paying another company to write an open source driver. Have the two ATI open
source drivers merged yet?
Don't get me wrong - I love open source, but more than anything I like my
hardware to work and I won't sacrifice that to run junk software for
idealistic reasons. Open source is a plus, but that label doesn't mean
anything if the software is terrible.
-Frank
_______________________________________________
Mid-Hudson Valley Linux Users Group http://mhvlug.org
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Upcoming Meetings (6pm - 8pm) MHVLS Auditorium
Jul 1 - Linux High Performance Computing
Aug 5 - TBD
Sept 2 - Linux and HDTV
