ATI vs. NVIDIA

[zenwhen]

Ah ... a conundrum . Who to support? Non x86 users will be supporting ATI while x86 users will be rooting for nVidia.

What on Earth are you talking about? What does Nvidia not support?

[Ex-Cyber]

So....are you getting that new card to use now....or later when ATI releases the specs...

As I said, I am waiting for AMD64+PCI Express hardware to go down in price a good bit, so I expect to be waiting at least a year. Since I don't want to spend a lot of money, I will likely buy whatever the market equivalent is of the Radeon 9200's position today (i.e. a cost-reduced version of the last-generation architecture), which should be supported by free drivers by that time.

What on Earth are you talking about? What does Nvidia not support?

For starters, PowerPC, as well as any OS other than Linux, Windows, and FreeBSD. The point is not that ATI's drivers do support these systems, but that they open up the possibility of them being supported without having to convince ATI that it is necessary to commit resources to a particular platform. And as daniels said, even on x86 or AMD64, if you find a bug in NVidia's driver you have no option but to complain and wait for NVidia to fix it. With free drivers any interested party can work on a bugfix, put up a bounty for someone else to work on the bugfix, etc.

[jdodson]

What on Earth are you talking about? What does Nvidia not support?

gnu/linux pcc, sparc, alpha, mips, etc.

i think gnu/linux dec is also not supported

[Viro]

gnu/linux pcc, sparc, alpha, mips, etc.

i think gnu/linux dec is also not supported

Yeap . And it's not just limited to GNU/Linux. The ATI(up to Radeon 9200) drivers will work anywhere XFree or xorg will run. That includes Solaris, all the *BSDs, pretty much every UNIX out there.

[ember]

Coming back to the origin of this discussion, I think it has to taken into account what you expect from your graphics card. I'm currently stuck with a Radeon 9600, which I really like expect for it refused to be run with ATI 3D-driver, so I'll always have to reboot when I want to play Warhammer. Yet it's the fastest affordable card (paid about 100 Euro) with passive cooling.
If you only want some 3D acceleration for some older games, try one of those ATI 9250 cards (as many here said before), they're quit good.
However if you like running modern games, I think an Nvidia 6600 GT Board might be an option. The offer a lot of 3D power for a moderate price (~ 200 Euro) and my experiences with Nvidia driver and Linux are far better than with ATI.

My 2 cent,
Ember