For what it's worth, I've been using the nVidia drivers for a good few years - my current desktop has an nVidia card, as did my previous one. (Aside: though my current machine is ten years old I haven't had it that long, I got it second hand). I've never had any problems with them, and the proprietary nature is tolerable considering I could manage without it.

ATI, by contrast, is a total unknown for myself.

If what Hephasteus says about open source drivers being better for GPGPU is correct, then that may seem to be a reason to go ATI. Indeed, in the context of GIS raster map algebra - where you perform a calculation on every point of a large 'image' - seems like a good candidate for GPGPU (AIUI its strength is performing the same fairly simple operation on massive numbers of data points).

Unfortunately they are pretty much mutually exclusive now; quiet components are still exotic and priced accordingly -- things like solid cases with anti-vibration mountings, passive heat sinks, large fans, mobos with (more than CPU) fan speed control -- especially if you want main stream computing power.

You can do some quietening cheaply, though, like fixing (automotive?) sound deadening to the inside of case panels and fitting (cooker hood?) filters. Check out silentpcreview.com for ideas.

I don't believe you are correct on this. GPUs are Graphical Processing Units. I believe their purpose is to do vector math. I don't believe they are capable of general purpose processing. If they were, they would have already taken over desktop and business computing.

I think I am biased toward ATI because:

I used ATI cards all the time

I would like to use the open-source solution if it's at all good enough

Maybe my bad experience with Nvidia's driver is because of my dual-monitor setup

The open source ATI drivers are ok for the older/lower chipsets. I have an HD-4670, and the open source drivers are AWFUL. Screen tearing, vertical ghosting, extreme slowness. The fglrx drivers are ok, but proprietary.

The older ATI cards are doing really well with the open source drivers, though. My x1300 is doing very well with it.

I believe that this will be the case for quite some time to come; both for ATI and Nvidia. At some point, maybe they will reach the end of the innovation cycle and we'll see some stability. When that happens in anyone's guess. But for now, each new chipset is faster and different in enough ways from the previous sets that open source will lag behind.

1 members found this post helpful.

Well quiet is relative. My current machine roars like an engine at times - I haven't measured the volume but it's load enough to be intrusive. I'd hope that providing I don't buy bottom-of-the-barrel fans, I should end up with something that's reasonable.

Given a fixed budget, there's a trade-off between the various components. I'm willing to accept a drop in power in order to get a quieter machine, but obviously within limits. For example, my understanding is that Atom processors have very low computational power to go with their very low electrical power use, so I'll avoid them. But the energy-efficient desktop processors offer comparable performance to their energy-guzzling counterparts, albeit at a price premium.

I'm not sure what the usual arrangement is nowadays for case fans. The PSU pretty much always exhausts right? So then would you have a second exhaust fan, an intake fan, both, or neither?

I typically do all exhaust, but there are certainly many schools of thought on this.

Having a slot fan next to the video card has definitely improved my system temp.

You can cut down on a lot of noise, and the need for more fans, by getting a PSU with a 120mm temperature controlled fan.

I'm using an HD 4850 (I am not sure, but it's definitely 48x0) and it works fine, even better than the HD 2600 I used to have in this computer before.

And it works only with xf86-video-ati, NOT xf86-video-radeonhd. The older 2600 worked with both.

The newer one with xf86-video-radeonhd is accelerated, but displays blocks of static instead of objects, even the mouse cursor!

1 members found this post helpful.

That's interesting - maybe I should have bought the better card!
I was using radeonhd until I switched to fglrx. Sounds like it would be worth revisiting, since installing fglrx is a bit of a mess.

Does anyone know if Xilence (fans, PSUs, etc) are any good?

Hoping it's not too soon for a double post with another question:

Should I get a socket AM2+ motherboard. It means a lower HT bus speed than the newer AM3, and might mean processor support ends sooner. But against that are two pros. Firstly they're cheaper, and secondly there's a much bigger range of such boards with nVidia chipsets - having read around a bit, I think nVidia graphics are the way I want to go.

I don't think that the brand of chipset has anything to do with your choice of graphics card, correct me if I'm wrong.

I don't think that HT bus speed will be the bottleneck in anything you do.

AM3 processors also work in AM2+ sockets.