On Sun, 2004-02-08 at 19:35, Stroller wrote: > The UK supplier has some graphics cards on sale "Today Only" (which at > the weekends means Monday, too). > > Has anyone got any recommendations out of the following cheap graphics > cards..? > Which will give best bang-per-buck..? > > - 64Mb ATI 7000 DDR with TV/Out for �23 > - 64Mb ATI Radeon 7500LE SDR AGP TV Out for �30 > - 128Mb ATI Radeon (Sapphire) 9200SE Tv/Out for �35 > > Does the extra RAM make much difference..? > > I don't really NEED a new graphics card, but I'm kinda tempted to > indulge myself and it might be nice to play the odd game since I > recently upgraded my machine. > I'm guessing that any of these will show quite some performance gain > over my ageing G400 - is that right..?
I'm not going to get into one of the flames accidently sparked off earlier, I'll just give you my (as impartial as possible) view on things. I have an 32MB ati mobility 7500 in my notebook, and a 128MB radeon 9200 (built by ati) in my desktop. I use the open source dri driver with both, and havent had any issues (neverwinter nights is a little slow on the 7500, but it's about the same speed as my old geforce2 mx. Nothing unexpected there, they are both older cards). So far all I have really played on the desktop is Enemy-Territory. I'll go about installing nwn and ut2003 when I have some time off, so I cant comment on more graphically intensive games. The reason I would reccommend the 9200 above the 7000 and 7500, besides the age of the card, is the fact that the 9200 is the highest ati card that is supported by both the open-source dri driver and the binary ati driver. You might need to look into whether the binary driver will work with a card that isn't built-by-ati or not (it probably would, but you never know). My only experience with nvidia is with my old geforce2 mx. The driver is fairly easy to install through portage and manually. My only issues were some stability issues as people were changing the kernel interface around the latter 2.5 kernels (after .65-ish). The catch here is that you need to use the binary drivers for 3d accelleration for any nvidia card (and any ati card 9500 or later, and optionally for 8500 and up). Not really a big deal unless you hunt kernel bugs in your spare time. I'm assuming you don't, but just a heads up incase you were curious. That said, I paid $125 CAN for my 9200, so that looks like a pretty good deal. -- Chris I [EMAIL PROTECTED] :: www.cidesign.ca/~chris/ Windows 95: Proof that P. T. Barnum was right. -- [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailing list
