-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 Hi Jean-Sébastien,
Jean-Sébastien Guay wrote: > Hi all, > > This is not directly related to OSG, but as I do most (if not all) of my > graphics development on OSG these days, and I'm trying to make a good > purchasing decision, I thought I'd ask my friends at osg-users :-) > > In the recent past, for anything related to OpenGL, I've steered clear > of ATI/AMD video cards. Same thing concerning their Linux driver > support. They just weren't competitive on the OpenGL front at all. > > Right now I face a hard decision. For my budget (about 300-350$ CAN), I > can get either a GeForce 9800GTX (even for less, about 250$), or a > Radeon HD 4870 (for about 325$). The difference is that according to > AnandTech, in most benchmarks, the Radeon outperforms the GeForce by a > good margin. From the benchmarks alone, it looks like it's worth the 75$ > difference. Except that these benchmarks mean little - they were done in Windows and focused on DirectX with Windows drivers. While ATI Linux drivers are improving, they are still not on par performance-wise with Windows. You can easily expect 20% or more performance hit - last year they were benchmarked and the difference was up to 50% in some cases! Actually, Linux OpenGL benchmarks are showing exactly the opposite: http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=ati_radeonhd_4850&num=1 This card is (quoted from the above): > As you have witnessed already from the results, in a number of the > tests the Radeon HD 4850 had fell behind the GeForce 8800GT and > 9800GTX. In fact, the Radeon HD 4850 hasn't shown to be much faster > than the Radeon HD 3870 on Linux. In Nexuiz, OpenArena, Doom 3, Quake > 4, and X-Plane, the Radeon HD 4850 had fallen noticeably behind the > NVIDIA competition. In Enemy Territory: Quake Wars and GtkPerf, > however, the Radeon HD 4850 had risen to the top. In Enemy Territory: > Quake Wars at 1920 x 1200 with high quality settings, the Radeon HD > 4850 was about 8% faster than the GeForce 9800GTX. In the 2D GTK > tests, the Radeon HD 4850 was dramatically faster than the GeForce > 8800GT and 9800GTX. However, NVIDIA has known problems with 2D Linux > performance. For the record, when the GeForce 8 series was introduced > it initially had a major performance delta too between Windows and > Linux. Simply the OpenGL is not their top priority even on Windows. The Linux drivers are improving, but in terms of stability and features, not performance. If you want to do 3D work on Linux, nVidia is still the way to go, unfortunately. Regards, Jan -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.4.9 (GNU/Linux) Comment: Using GnuPG with Mandriva - http://enigmail.mozdev.org iD8DBQFIZoDNn11XseNj94gRAiCKAJ40imdlhgQaIM6LkD6AonMPEQ48YgCdE+As dB1zMY+OkXe+ioU0i0+ENAA= =/wt8 -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- _______________________________________________ osg-users mailing list osg-users@lists.openscenegraph.org http://lists.openscenegraph.org/listinfo.cgi/osg-users-openscenegraph.org
