Lawrence [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:
Alex Yukhimets wrote:
I am about to get a new P II system and had to decide on many
alterantives available. My current concern is what video card
would suit me the best. I have no doubt that I would go with AGP one
(even not for the sake of performance, but to save PCI slot :)
and my current choice is between Matrox Millenium II AGP and
Number Nine Revolution 3D AGP. Matrox seems to be the fastest under
X (and free driver is already available from S.u.S.E.), Revolution 3D
is faster under Windows. I do not intend to use Windows a lot, so
the best bet would be Matrox, but I heard the opinion that in spite of
the fact that it is the fastest, it's image quality is substantially
worse than that of Number Nine cards. Could anyone confirm this?
As luck would have it, I just installed debian on one of each of these
(neither was mine :( ), and I didn't notice a problem with either in
terms of image quality. Both could drive their monitors up to
1800x1440 at some flicker-free rate (but I'm very tolerant), and both
work fairly well with alpha versions of XFree86. If you wanted to use
XFree86, the Matrox is a better choice, since there is an SuSE server
for that. The alpha servers work well enough that it's a good bet both
cards will be well supported in the next XFree86 release. The Matrox
code is down to mostly performance tuning, while the #9 still has a
few glitches. The Matrox does packed-24bpp, which is nicer on memory
but causes a few pixmap weirdnesses, though.
And another thing, assuming I would have to use Accelerated X server
with my card, what are the cons of the fact that server is libc5
compiled and my system will be libc6-based (of course, I would have to
install libc5 runtime libraries also).
I don't know about AccelX, but I believe that the Xfree86 compiles
under both. I think the SuSE server was compiled with ibc5, since it
runs under vanilla debian 1.3.1(bo).
Both cards use WRAM. Millenium II uses 250Mhz RAMDAC and Revolution 3D
uses 220Mhz, if you have a high end monitor, eg. Viewsonic 815, I don't
think Revolution 3D can display 1600x1200 16-bit color at 85Hz refresh
rate.
The XFree86 run a max pixel clock of 230MHz on the Mil2, which runs
1600x1200 at 85Hz and 1800x1440 at 64 Hz, both of which look
flicker-free to everyone I asked to look on a Sony 21 monitor. The
i128 server used for the #9 does max out at 220MHz, so I had to doctor
the 1800x1440, but it still seems fine to me on a Nokia 445X... this
modeline
ModeLine 1800x1440m 2201800 1896 2088 2392 1440 1441 1444 1490 +HSync
+VSync
looks fine to me, but should only be around 61Hz. The following
modeline is a standard(ish) one for XFree86, which should let you do
1600x1200 @85Hz on both cards:
# 1600x1200 @ 85 Hz, 105.77 kHz hsync
Modeline 1600x1200 2201600 1616 1808 2080 1200 1204 1207 1244 +HSync
+VSync
In any case, both cards can do their 1800x1440 at 8,16,24, or 32bpp,
so I'm not sure where you got the 16bpp number. I also should check
the 250MHz number, but I'm not near my Matrox documentation;
certainly, XFree86 assumes it's 230MHz max.
Anyway, they're both good cards, and they should both be XFree86able
in the next release, but if you want XFree support now, there is an
SuSE server for the Mil2AGP but not (last time I checked) for the #9
Rev3d.
$0.02
- M
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Mark Monty Montague | [EMAIL PROTECTED] | I don't do Windows(tm)
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DON'T PANIC! I'm a trained professional, and far more | *Why* question
qualified to panic in this situation than you are. | authority?
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