Hey everyone,

Most previous answers to these questions were not satisfing, maybe the questions were'nt exact enough, so I will try it one more time.

Since I used an ATI RageXL adapter for a first mythtv setup, I have questions concering a new graphics adapter. I want to buy a current, fanless adapter with vga (for crt and tv with a vga to scart-rgb adapter), dvi (for lcd and beamers) and s-video (in case everything else fails). My hardware supplier offers cards with Radeon 7000 & 9200SE or Geforce FX5200.

This is the always number one question: ati or nvidia.

1. Which ones have the higher quality (optical) vga and s-video outputs.

2. Which ones have the better linux/X11 driver support.

3. Do the different nvidia install options mean that those cards are better suited for mythtv or are ati cards just as good (or better) and the hardware support ist part of the default installation.

I'll appreciate any help

Frank
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darmstadt, hessen, germany, europe, world, milky way, cosmos

1. I don't know.
2. nVidia.
3. nVidia is a better option.

Shouldn't that be earth instead of world?

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cesman

When the source is open, the possibilities are endless!

I do not consider myself an expert, but here is my point of view.

1. This is under debate for some time. The fact that ATI doesn't make their own driver for Linux (at least not that I am aware of) complicates ones ability to gauge the two in Linux. -tangent- Plus, this is just my opinion, but I had an ATI video card that worked so much better in Linux with Gator drivers that it ever had in Windows.

2. nVidia, of course! This is mostly based on the fact that you can download drivers directly from nVidia.

3. My impression is that nVidia cards are much easier to deal with (this may be an extreme understatement). That is why the options are there.

Basically, I agree with cesman, although some may disagree with my reasoning. Feel free to elaborate or disagree.

basically if you are going tvout nvidia is your best option in linux. Just a correction to an earlier post ATI does have proprietary drivers that they supply for thier cards. They work much like nvidia drivers, but they are only distributed in rpm format, and they don't enable all of the functionality of thier cards like the nvidia linux drivers do.

This fact really sucks cause ATI makes great hardware, but with them not supplying good drivers, and not giving the open source developers documentation, it is worthless for htpc applications in linux.

Thanks for correcting that (me).