Re: ATI Video Cards... a few questions
Originally Posted by
BrokenKingpin
I am looking to get a new video card for my media server and have a few questions about ATI cards. I have exclusively been using Nvidia video cards for the last decade, mainly because they played nicer with Linux, but lately I have been hearing that ATI cards work just fine on Linux. So I would like to have a few things answered before deciding between ATI and NVidia...
1) Are the ATI open source drivers on par with the proprietary drivers? Keep in mind this is for media server (video playback), not gaming. Not having to install the proprietary driver would be a bonus.
2) Are the open source ATI drivers included with Ubuntu out of the box (so I wouldn't have to do anything to get the card working after install)?
3) Would ATI cards be preferable over Nvidia cards for video decoding/playback on Linux? Do ATI cards offer any features over Nvidia for handling video decoding, etc.?
4) Assuming an ATI card would be a good route to go for a media server, what would be a good mid-range card to get (there are just so many models I don't even know where to start)?
Thanks for any info you guys could give me on the subject.
1. No.
2. Yes.
3. No. XVBA/Vaapi does not work as well as vdpau or intel/vaapi right now. Videos play fine with the open ati drivers but you will get no hardware accleration, with catalyst you may get working hardware acceleration but I've found it a bit hit or miss depending on the card. With recent ati cards (UVD2) xvba/vaapi should work after installing libva and xvba-video.
4. 5770/6670 are pretty nice mid-range ati cards
Ati's open drivers are alright/improving rapidly, and amd has been pretty open source friendly lately, but in my experience nvidia/intel are a better linux experience driver-wise right now.
Catalyst has gotten a lot better lately (finally no more video tearing!) but I am not really sure how well video acceleration works. My ati machine has a uvd1 card which is unsupported by xvba/vaapi right now. Its supposed to work with newer cards but I am not sure how well. If video acceleration is a priority for you nvidia may be the route to go as vdpau is the most mature video acceleration api in linux.
Last edited by screaminj3sus; June 16th, 2011 at 09:58 PM.
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