On Sun, Nov 8, 2009 at 1:15 PM, Steve Hill <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:steve@nexusuk.org">steve@nexusuk.org</a>></span> wrote:<br><div class="gmail_quote"><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;">
<div class="im">On Sun, 8 Nov 2009, Mark Greenwood wrote:<br>
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Yes, so they're proprietary.. so what? They work, and they work well.<br>
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Admittedly I haven't used any new nVidia hardware (precisely because the drivers were so bad back when I did buy nVidia hardware), but I had lots of problems around the MX440/FX5200 era. Things like it taking them about 2 years to even acknowledge the existence of the interlacing bug that *everyone* who was running Linux nVidia HTPCs seemed to be complaining about, random vSync related breakages which seemed to spontaneously work in one driver release and then break in the next, the fact that it consistently seemed to take them several months to support new releases of Xorg or the kernel after an API change, etc.<br>
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Now, I haven't bought any new nVidia kit for years, so things may have improved, but as you can imagine I am very wary of buying a system that is absolutely dependent on nVidia's drivers, given the numerous problems I've had with them in the past.<br>
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Conversely, I've used Intel hardware quite extensively, and I've been very pleased with the transparency of their bug reporting process. This has nothing to do with whether the driver is open or closed and everything to do with actually interacting with customers who are reporting bugs rather than ignoring them.<br>
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- Steve</font><div class="im"><br>
<a href="mailto:xmpp%3Asteve@nexusuk.org" target="_blank">xmpp:steve@nexusuk.org</a> <a href="mailto:sip%3Asteve@nexusuk.org" target="_blank">sip:steve@nexusuk.org</a> <a href="http://www.nexusuk.org/" target="_blank">http://www.nexusuk.org/</a><br>
<br></div></blockquote></div><br clear="all">I think we can all applaud Intel for its openness and driver support in Linux...however their drivers still do not extract all of the performance possible from their GPU's. In addition the nVidia GPU's with VDPAU support just completely hose the Intel GPU's in performance terms. I would strongly recommend you either purchase a low cost pre-built Atom/ion based machine (Acer Revo Linux model for about £150 UKP), an Atom/nVidia mobo or simply a 9400GT or 9500GT and see for yourself... you will not be disappointed :-)<br>
<br>All the best<br><br>Andrew<br><br>