[mythtv-users] Better off with an ATI card?

Marius Schrecker marius at schrecker.org
Fri Dec 16 04:20:02 EST 2005


> Hi again everyone.
>
> After playing with 3 different NVIDIA cards and various driver
> revisions, I am starting to wonder, "Am I better off with an ATI card?"
> I Have my MythTV system attached to a Panasonic HDTV Tube via DVI, and
> also have an AudioAuthority 9A60 VGA->Component adapter available. So
> far, I have had nothing but bad luck with the NVIDIA cards, because of
> the following factors:
>
>     1. My Panasonic HDTV requires HDCP on the HDMI input, which I
> connect to with a
>         DVI->HDMI cable.. This limits the cards that will work to the
> 6xxx and 7xxx product lines.
>
>     2. Version 7667 (at least) and above NVIDIA X11 drivers have an
> issue when used with the
>          9A60 where the screen is wrapped half way around the screen
> (i.e. the
>         left and right edges meet in the middle of the screen). This
> means I can't use the 9A60
>         with the 6200 card.
>
>     3. Version 7XXX and above  drivers also have broken support for
> VBLANK sync. This pretty much
>         precludes using my NV6200 unless I can live with the tearing.
>
>     I've tried installing both an 5200 and 5500 series card in the same
> system with mixed results. While the 5500 worked as expected with the
> 9A60 and 6629 drivers, the video quality so much worse than the 6200
> card with the 7667 or 8174 drivers that I couldn't live with it.  The
> 5200 card was less cooperative, and would just lead to a black display
> when X started. Everything was running as expected, I just couldn't see
> it.
>
> Given all of this, would I be better off getting a cheap ATI card for
> this system? I've seen a few mentions lately of people using ATI, which
> I know has been discouraged historically, but seems to be becoming less
> of an issue.
>
> Anyone have any experience they could share?
>
>
>     Thanks!
>
>         --Matt

I'm using a Radeon X300 with DVI out. Works fine using latest X-org and
ATI proprietary drivers. The only caveats I can think of are to do with
direct access (I've so far only got it to work with xv).

Others have had problems with overscan, but with my lcdtv this hasn't een
a problem. It copes fine with a custom modeline of 1368x768.

The only other problems I've had have to do with the TV not suporting 50Hz
refresh rate (so I can't use bob deinterlacing), and a module build
problem using the latest 2.6.14 kernel (compiled fine on 2.6.13).

There may be issues on X86_64 systems as the proprietary driver has 32 bit
dependencies.

Which distro are you running?


Marius


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