ATI Video Cards... a few questions

[BrokenKingpin]

I just find this card while looking online:
http://www.canadacomputers.com/produ...item_id=038482

It is a nVidia GeForce GT 520 (which has no fan). Does this seem like a good card for a media center? Would this card be enough for high quality HD video (the media center PC is plugged into my LCD TV). I know this is a bit off topic, being that it isn't an ATI question lol).

[beew]

my radeon HD 3650 plays 1080 fine on 1920x1200 display. with compiz. that is with out any tweaking, or installing extra drivers.

phoronic has lots of benchmarks, but mostly for 3D
the opensource drivers are still not as fast as the closed ones
http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?pag..._mai2011&num=1
but they are still improving, and can be tweaked for a bit of a boost
http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?pag...g_june10&num=1

Is it because you have enough cpu power (so the graphic card is pretty irrelevant) or is it because AMD/ATI does hardware decoding in Linux?

How does VAPPI compare to VDPAU?

These are not rhetorical questions, I really want to know.

[screaminj3sus]

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.

[BrokenKingpin]

I ended up getting the nVidia GeForce GT 520 with no fan. It is working great under Xubuntu 11.04 with the proprietary Nvidia drivers.

[mips]

I ended up getting the nVidia GeForce GT 520 with no fan. It is working great under Xubuntu 11.04 with the proprietary Nvidia drivers.

Ok, now setup to use VDPAU

[BrokenKingpin]

Ok, now setup to use VDPAU

What is there to setup... I am pretty sure my last NVidia chip VDPAU worked out of the box with XBMC, so why wouldn't it with this one? Either way things are playing smoother now!

[SunnyRabbiera]

Anymore ATI is becoming sort of a non issue for many but its still got a long way to go.
But within the next year I can see the open source ATI drivers becoming on par or even better then the proprietary drivers.
Currently my ATI works fine under the free drivers, I did not need catalyst

[JonM33]

My Radeon HD 5850 ran Linux without a problem. Of course it's a higher end gaming card that chews up and spits out nearly every game on the market at 1080p so I didn't expect problems.

[wolfen69]

I ended up getting the nVidia GeForce GT 520 with no fan. It is working great under Xubuntu 11.04 with the proprietary Nvidia drivers.

I would have bet money it would work well. Most mainstream nvidia cards work great without fail.