Mark’s Thought Overflow Bucket

I suppose my original reasons for buying ATI was somewhat patriotic.  It was never a very good reason since they stopped building their own boards years ago, moved a lot of the high performance stuff to Germany, and offshored everything else to China, like every other pc equipment manufacturer.

So – why would I use them? Occasionally they release a gem that is a great board.  Hot with the gamers for a while.  I’m usually content on a video card a year or three after it’s introduction.  I know what your thinking – why would you bother using an OLD card like that?.  I’m not a gamer, and most stuff I work on is general windows or X.  This is usually on a high resolution screen – sometimes dual head, so I need enough video memory to get the resolution, colour depth, and refresh I am looking for.

Around these parts at least, ATI usually has a bargain priced card, that should easilly be suitable for the work I’m doing – or so I think.  This really the problem with ATI.  I don’t know how many times I’ve bought an ATI card, and it under-performs.  No driver for XP, no driver for linux, drivers that crash and abend the system, drivers that do not do dual-head on a dual-head card, open source drivers that don’t build or support that specific chipset.  And I don’t think it’s a case of me being “cheap”.  In fact – I’m glad I haven’t sunk big money into an ATI card.

So, about a week ago – I’ve been tinkering with a Mythtv frontend on a small form factor Dell P3/1gig system. (mythbuntu 8.04)  I went through my collection of cards with video output on them.  ATI’s all the way – angin I thought foolishly.  I wasted hours and hours and hours, to convince an ATI to do composite video out with NO SUCCESS.  (Yes, I still have lo-def tv – for now).

My only requirement for a NON ATI CARD was – 1 half sized AGP slot, or 1 full sized PCI, and supported SVIDEO/Composite out.

After a quick visit to Nigel Computers, I’m happy to say I bought a PNY GEForce 5200 PCI 256Meg.  Certainly on the trailing edge of technology, but a very capable card none the less.   After installing the hardware, within minutes I had Mythbuntu happy with SVIDEO output.  (Mind you – it’s a binary driver which I’m not so hot about.  I’m wondering what the video card chipset guys are hiding in their code.  Workarounds for chip difficiencies perhaps?)

Back in the car again, this time to Sayal Electonics – and located a SVIDEO to Composite adapter.

I am happy to say, the Mythbuntu solution is quickly on it’s way to success around here.  I’m also happy to say – score ten for NVIDIA (One point for a good card, Four points for having a linux Xorg driver/kernal Module, and Five points for not wasting my time), score minus forty for ATI.