ATI w/ Linux??? (And tv-out)

[Cenalian]

I'm putting together a multimedia box, and have narrowed my choice for a vid card to 2 different ones:

Radeon 7500
Geforce2 Mx400

I don't want to spend a ton, which is why these are my 2 choices.

I'm not sure if I'm going to run Windows or Linux on the machine yet. I know NVidia has better Linux support, but generally the ATI has better s-video output.

Does anyone have any experience getting ATI cards to work and run good/smooth in Linux??? Not 100% sure which distro (I'm still a linux noob, was thinking of the new version of Mandrake though), although I dunno if that matters. All I'm concerned about is if the Radeon card will still perform as efficient and as good looking under Linux as it will Windows. I know I can get xFree86 to run the 7500 in Linux, just not sure of the quality it will achieve

Any suggestions/tips/advice on which card I should get would be GREATLY appreciated.

Thanks in advance!

Cheers!

-Cen

 

[Vadatajs]

Linux isn't very good at ATI (mainly Xfree's fault for being really lazy). As far as I know, they lack any form of texture compression, and tv out support as well. Nvidia is a better choice for linux, but I don't know if they support tv out either.

 

[Spyro]

Originally posted by: Vadatajs
Linux isn't very good at ATI (mainly Xfree's fault for being really lazy). As far as I know, they lack any form of texture compression, and tv out support as well. Nvidia is a better choice for linux, but I don't know if they support tv out either.

Nvidia would work.

 

[Willoughbyva]

I really don't know much about ATI tv-out, but you might do a sourceforge search for GATOS. I use some of this software for my AIW 7500 so I can watch TV. I never tried using the tv out feature.

 

[drag]

I have 2 vid cards and a tv input card on my computer.
Geforce2 gts-v
Geforce4 mx420 with tv-out
and a ati wonder-v tv card

Now in windows the tv card doesn't work worth a damn, even with the newest experimental drivers, or the cd drivers, or the drivers from the website. The best I could get it to work was it'll work once and then the nextime you started it, it would crap out and you'd have to reboot in order to fix it. The drivers just couldn't handle the geforce cards, but in Linux it works flawlessly, go figure.

the tv out works great in linux, my tv is old and kinda sucks so you can't read text on it at all, even though it is a TV and that's gonna be normal, I think it would be better on a higher quality TV. I am kinda interested in computers on HDTV once they become affordable. Be nice to run the computer from a coffee table with a 40'' inch tv instead of from a desk, for games and movies and stuff.

Dual monitors work well, and the 2 monitors and the TV going all at once works well, too. I had twinview going on the 15 inch monitor and the 24 inch TV so that was one desktop, and the 17 inch was on it's own desktop.... I could have them all going on one desktop, but I couldn't figure out how to do it without using xinerama, since the NVIDIA drivers don't support 3-d acceleration in that mode. In XP I could run quake3 in all 3 screens in windowed mode emulating full screen, I had to change the fov for it to make sense, but it kinda sucked because the size differences between 15 mon, 24tv, and the 17 mon was to great and it became more of a annoyance then anything else, plus the eye strain from the tv sucked , too.