I'm looking to buy a new computer soon, I'm wondering if anyone has advice on whether to get an ATI or Nvidia. I've heard that Nvidia has high failure problems, so I'm leaning towards an ATI 4850 (on a budget). The problem is I'm wondering if I'll be able to run programs similar to the following with an ATI in Linux or Windows.
http://www.motiondsp.com/
http://www.badaboomit.com/
Also, I'm thinking of getting one of the cheaper Core i7's to go with the system. It has 4 cores, and since it has HT (I think) Intel claims it will appear as 8 threads in the OS. I read somewhere that Linux supports practically unlimited threads, is there an actual limit? Will I see any performance increase compared to a current quad core?