ATI + Ubuntu = video tearing

Hi all, I know this question may be more suited for Ubuntuforums, but I wanted to try over here as well.

I have the following problem: I have an XP/Ubuntu(9.04) dualboot system with an ATI HD 4890 graphics card. In windows the 4890 is a monster that eats Crysis for breakfast, but in Ubuntu the monster seems to be chained by shitty drivers, it can play some older games (Stracraft and Mafia) smoothly without artifacts but it seems sluggish when handling desktop effects and it cannot play video (AVI, MKV) without tearing. The tearing looks like the tearing you see when you play a game with vsync turned off.

There are some older threads (about older ATI cards) on Ubuntuforums that basically blame the issue on ATI's drivers and say there's nothing that can be done about it.

I was wondering if there's been any progress in this department, or not, because Nvidia cards don't seem to have these issues in Ubuntu and this is 2009, so I'd like to get some decent video quality from my $250 graphics card.

I run ubuntu and Windows Vista-64 ultimate on my PC.....

I use Linux for engineering and design related application that require unix/linux environment.

The rest that run on windows remain in windows. There are far more resources in the Windows world to support games than in Linux.

Linux developers don't get paid for games. Linux developers are focus for design, engineering, science based development...There is very little business or games to support in Linux environment.

Play games in windows and it will make life simple.

In this type of economy both Nvidia and AMD are losing money....I don't expect their resources to be diverted to Linux-Games application support.

I don't care about gaming in ubuntu, of course I understand linux can't compete with directx, but is decent video playback too much to ask? If ATI can't even get that right, why bother releasing linux drivers at all?

I think I solved the problem: install maplyer and then type in "mplayer -vo gl2" in the console. Then open mplayer --> preferences --> video and choose X11(OpenGl) as output and click ok, the next time you open mplayer video's won't tear any longer, this only works for mplayer though.