video cards

[Ben Eisenbraun]

Hey Matt,

> So I'm wondering what the current state of video cards are for linux.  Is
> ATI finally back in the game or not?

No, I think their drivers still suck.

> I'm looking for something that is mid-range (it's replacing a Geforce
> 8600) to play games in windows (nwn2), and also be a mythtv frontend (in
> linux, with full HD playback).

I bought a 9600GT for these same purposes in the spring, but apparently
not all the VDPAU features are supported on this card, so you might need to
target something slightly higher end if your goal is to offload video
decoding to the GPU.

> And, since I've already been burned by this when they did their last
> naming-scheme change, what do the various numbers/card-names mean for ATI
> and Nvidia?

Wikipedia continues to be the best source of information for figuring out
this mess:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_Nvidia_graphics_processing_units

Find the graphics chipsets you want to compare and then look at the base
stats for clock speeds, memory speed, fill rate, etc.  Nvidia's website is
mostly useless in this regard.

-ben

--
the significant problems we face today cannot be solved at the same level 
of thinking we were at when we created them.            <albert einstein>