ATI vs NVIDIA
 

Well currently I have an Nvidia GTS 250 which is running fine. No complaints about it.. but I've been looking into bit coin, and bit coin mining seems like it could be fun and a really good learning experiance overall, so I was considering jumping on the bandwagon and going out and replacing my card with a 5770, but from what I remember ATI is notorious for having terrible drivers (and difficult to set up drivers at that) for linux... so what I'm wondering is if it's improved any over time, and would the 5770 be an upgrade for gaming.

basically what I'm asking:

has ATI's driver support improved over the past few years to be on par with Nvidia for things such a gpu accelerated h264 playback and running new games in wine?

and

Would an 5770 radeon be an upgrade over a GTS250 for playing games in wine?

Bitcoin is not very reliable as a means of money. It is very hard basically to win with bitcoin. Though if you had a machine with a lot of video cards and an i7 you would most likely be able to win. Best of luck to you. Yes ati has improved a lot over the past few years, and even has a card that is considered to be the fastest in the world. I would say that radeon is a viable competitor with nvidia. Yeah many games on wine could use radeon and nvidia.

The 5770 should be faster than the GTS250 (BTW, GTS250 = GTX9800 = GT8800, which shows how old the basic chip is). However its not worth upgrading to a 5770 IMO. Save yuor money for a faster 6XXX or GTX 4XX/5XX card.

ATI/AMD XvBA isnt as good as VDPAU last I tried it.

yea i gave in and picked up a 6950.

LOL, gone to 6950?

Thats a serious jump, and its going to blow the poor ol GTS250 to the weeds.