Re: [Xpert]Best 2D-only card for X11
On Fri, 2002-01-04 at 08:49, Ross Vandegrift wrote: What is the best pure 2D card in X11 with non-binary-only (read nvidia) drivers? Does a Matrox G450/550 compare to GeForce Radeon in 2D? Matrox is the only company I've ever heard make noise about their 2D performance. The box from my G400 DualHead billed it as the fastest 2D accelerator ever created. Don't know if it's true, but the 2D performs quite well for me! The mga driver has a very good reputation for 2D performance, but I just replaced a G450 with a Rage128 Pro in this work machine and it's at least as fast in general, in fact it feels slightly snappier, but maybe that's just me. :) A Radeon should be significantly faster in turn. The only thing lacking yet is Render acceleration for AA text. I'm experimenting with that but no dice yet. -- Earthling Michel Dänzer (MrCooper)/ Debian GNU/Linux (powerpc) developer XFree86 and DRI project member / CS student, Free Software enthusiast ___ Xpert mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://XFree86.Org/mailman/listinfo/xpert
Re: [Xpert]Best 2D-only card for X11
Matrox is the only company I've ever heard make noise about their 2D performance. The box from my G400 DualHead billed it as the fastest 2D accelerator ever created. Don't know if it's true, but the 2D performs quite well for me! The mga driver has a very good reputation for 2D performance, but I just replaced a G450 with a Rage128 Pro in this work machine and it's at least as fast in general, in fact it feels slightly snappier, but maybe that's just me. :) A Radeon should be significantly faster in turn. The only thing lacking yet is Render acceleration for AA text. I'm experimenting with that but no dice yet. Hmmm, that's really interesting. Maybe I'll have to see if I can find some ATI cards and do a comparison. Is it most likely the hardware and not the drivers? I'm also mostly interested in fast 2D performance from a card. (A friend of mine has a Rage 128 Pro. Maybe I'll see if I could borrow it and do some benchmarks) Ross Vandegrift [EMAIL PROTECTED] ___ Xpert mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://XFree86.Org/mailman/listinfo/xpert
Re: [Xpert]Best 2D-only card for X11
Ross Vandegrift [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: Matrox is the only company I've ever heard make noise about their 2D performance. The box from my G400 DualHead billed it as the fastest 2D accelerator ever created. Don't know if it's true, but the 2D performs quite well for me! The mga driver has a very good reputation for 2D performance, but I just replaced a G450 with a Rage128 Pro in this work machine and it's at least as fast in general, in fact it feels slightly snappier, but maybe that's just me. :) A Radeon should be significantly faster in turn. The only thing lacking yet is Render acceleration for AA text. I'm experimenting with that but no dice yet. Hmmm, that's really interesting. Maybe I'll have to see if I can find some ATI cards and do a comparison. Is it most likely the hardware and not the drivers? I'm also mostly interested in fast 2D performance from a card. (A friend of mine has a Rage 128 Pro. Maybe I'll see if I could borrow it and do some benchmarks) Most 2D operations (blits, area fills, etc) are infinitely fast these days for all practical purposes on modern cards with a driver that can accelerate the basic operations. Performance has to do with: - Usage of video RAM. - Acceleration of RENDER extension if that is in use - Bus bandwidth. (speed of getting data to and from the card matters.) Only the 3rd has any significant dependence on hardware alone; the first is a function of the XFree86 core code mostly, combined with the amount of video RAM available, the second is mostly a driver issue, though speed does depend on the card; of the two I've tested with hw accel, the G400 is darn fast, the nvidia binary drivers are a lot faster yet. I like the Matrox cards because they produce high quality output, are pretty well accelerated, and have docs available to the community; but in terms of pure speed, even for 2D operations, they probably lag recent ATI and nvidia cards. ATI also does pretty well on the quality and OSS areas, and if you have any interest in 3D, their cards are a better bet. (Though the Matrox cards work fine for Quake3 level-games.) In the end, 2D performance shouldn't be much of an issue for users on any decently supported video card these days. The exceptions to this are typically application, toolkit, server, or driver problems, not HW limitations. Regards, Owen ___ Xpert mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://XFree86.Org/mailman/listinfo/xpert
Re: [Xpert]Best 2D-only card for X11
On Thu, 3 Jan 2002, Steve Wingate wrote: What is the best pure 2D card in X11 with non-binary-only (read nvidia) drivers? Does a Matrox G450/550 compare to GeForce Radeon in 2D? Well, I am not sure what precisely you are looking for, but if you want an inexpensive card ATI Rage Pro and Rage 128 are quite good. And (last time I checked) there were plenty of them on the shelves. You get good 2d perfomance, YUV-RGB, and support for high-resolution modes. Vladimir Dergachev ___ Xpert mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://XFree86.Org/mailman/listinfo/xpert ___ Xpert mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://XFree86.Org/mailman/listinfo/xpert
Re: [Xpert]Best 2D-only card for X11
What is the best pure 2D card in X11 with non-binary-only (read nvidia) drivers? Does a Matrox G450/550 compare to GeForce Radeon in 2D? Well, I am not sure what precisely you are looking for, but if you want an inexpensive card ATI Rage Pro and Rage 128 are quite good. And (last time I checked) there were plenty of them on the shelves. You get good 2d perfomance, YUV-RGB, and support for high-resolution modes. Well, I use FreeBSD and I figure I'm not going to get great 3D performance no matter what with nvidia only producing linux binary drivers. So I may as well go for the absolute best 2D I can get. Cost really isn't an issue, other than not wanting to pay $400 for top-end 3D performance I'll never see anyway. I just want support for high resolutions and refresh rates, say 1920x1440@85hz, true color. ___ Xpert mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://XFree86.Org/mailman/listinfo/xpert
Re: [Xpert]Best 2D-only card for X11
On Thu, 3 Jan 2002, Steve Wingate wrote: I just want support for high resolutions and refresh rates, say 1920x1440@85hz, true color. I have a $90 (last-year's price, retail) 16MB 3DFx Voodoo 3000 AGP in my main machine that does 1920x1440x32bpp (well, 24bpp/32pixmap in 4.X), @81Hz (limited by my monitor's 300MHz dotclock bandwidth) under 3.3.6/4.1.0 with nary a problem. As I don't do games (but will watch MPEGs from time to time), I'm very happy. -Kenny -- Kenneth R. Crudup Sr. SW Engineer, Scott County Consulting, Washington, D.C. Home1: PO Box 914 Silver Spring, MD 20910-0914 [EMAIL PROTECTED] Home2: 38010 Village Cmn. #217 Fremont, CA 94536-7525 (510) 745-0101 ___ Xpert mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://XFree86.Org/mailman/listinfo/xpert
Re: [Xpert]Best 2D-only card for X11
Well, I use FreeBSD and I figure I'm not going to get great 3D performance no matter what with nvidia only producing linux binary drivers. So I may as well go for the absolute best 2D I can get. Cost really isn't an issue, other than not wanting to pay $400 for top-end 3D performance I'll never see anyway. I just want support for high resolutions and refresh rates, say 1920x1440@85hz, true color. Hi Steve, But would it make a difference to your decision process if you /could/ get hardware 3D under FreeBSD? Firstly, you may or may not have known that there's a project to get the NVDIDIA binary-only drivers working on FreeBSD as well as Linux, which has been apparently been quite successful. The web page is here: http://nvidia.netexplorer.org/news.html Secondly, (and more interestingly to those who get a warm, fuzzy feeling from knowing that they have the source code to everything they run), is this URL posted by Doug White: http://gladstone.uoregon.edu/~eanholt/dri/index.html The thread started today on freebsd-multimedia, search for MsgID [EMAIL PROTECTED] for the start. As this won't be in the archives yet, I'll quote another tidbit: Additionally, joeo at cracktown.com said: Most common AGP capable northbridge chipsets are supported by stable and current. What is also needed for direct rendering is the kernel module for the card type. Currently supported for direct rendering with freebsd are; 3Dfx Voodoo 3/4/5 (both PCI and AGP varieties work) ATI AGP radeon (the older generation of cards) ATI AGP r128's (but not the fury maxx) MGA AGP G200/G400/G450's The PCI versions of the latter cards are not supported since the person who ported the card specific kernel modules didn't have the pci versions of the cards available or the time/interest to make it work. Much of the work on the uoregon.edu site mentioned earlier in this thread has been folded back into the XFree86-CVS head branch for possible inclusion with the 4.2.0 XFree86 release, but it needs some FreeBSD users testing it. HTIOI. Let me know if you want the details of the branch tags etc. Me, I'm pumped!! :) Cheers, AS msg02886/pgp0.pgp Description: PGP signature
Re: [Xpert]Best 2D-only card for X11
What is the best pure 2D card in X11 with non-binary-only (read nvidia) drivers? Does a Matrox G450/550 compare to GeForce Radeon in 2D? Matrox is the only company I've ever heard make noise about their 2D performance. The box from my G400 DualHead billed it as the fastest 2D accelerator ever created. Don't know if it's true, but the 2D performs quite well for me! Ross Vandegrift [EMAIL PROTECTED] ___ Xpert mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://XFree86.Org/mailman/listinfo/xpert
