[mythtv-users] ATI video card, which one?

[Jonathan Rogers]

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Andy Burns wrote:
> On 15/10/2007 16:34, Chris Ribe wrote:
> 
>> I'm willing to use the low quality driver for time being, as it should 
>> allow me to at least watch my standard def recordings.  I currently have 
>> NO video coming out of the computer, and I am not going to buy an nvidia 
>> card.
> 
> I have an rv370 based PCIe card running on a dedicated mythtv box, not
> HD though, just VGA->SCART and using the open source r300 driver, the
> specs that have so far been recently released are for the newer
> r500/r600 cards, a functioning 2D driver is expected by the end of the
> year, with 3D to follow.

I've also been using ATI AGP cards (a Radeon 8500 and and a 9600) for a
couple of years with the Free/Open r200 and r300 drivers. I don't know
if you can get PCIe cards with chips that old. They work fine for video
playback (both SD and HD) over DVI with a custom 1368x768 modeline for
my natively 1366x768 LCD TV (its EDID said 1024x768 or something bogus).
The MythTV menus are kind of slow after exiting playback, which I'm
pretty sure is a MythTV bug, but strangely doesn't show up with other
drivers. There's no question in my mind that the overall performance is
fine, since I can watch 1080i and 720p MPEG2 ATSC streams as well as
720p H264 smoothly, all being decoded by the Athlon64 X2 3800+.

I did try an Nvidia 6600 and a 5200 for a while, but I had to use the
proprietary driver to get usable HD playback and I couldn't get my DVI
modeline to work, though I could using VGA with the same TV. So,
overall, I've had a better experience using ATI hardware with the Free
drivers than Nvidia with proprietary drivers, though each has its unique
problems.

If you prefer to use Free drivers as I do, ATI definitely seems better
than Nvidia. I haven't tried Intel or Via, but it sounds like they might
be good choices too, assuming you buy a motherboard with the chip onboard.

Jonathan Rogers
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