RE: Wanted: Advice on Video Cards
Thanks, Yes, I discovered after I posted that my problem seems to be that at home I'm still using slink (getting ready to switch to woody) and between slink and potato Savage4 support was added to the SVGA server. So I may hold off on changing the video card, although I'm getting the itch for a TNT2 card for the Windows side. Chris -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Wednesday, October 18, 2000 8:28 PM To: debian-user@lists.debian.org Subject: Re: Wanted: Advice on Video Cards I'm also using a cheap S3 Savage4 based AGP card and it works for just south of fine. Note however that I'm not a gamer and all the graphics I do is GIMP (the default potato version). I use the SVGA server for it (available on the install CD). No crashes thus far here. On Tue, 17 Oct 2000, Chris Gray wrote: On my home box I run Windows 98 for games and Debian(Woody) for serious (non-graphics-intensive) work. I want to upgrade my video card. I'm more interested in something that will be straightforward to install on both platforms and will give respectable performance for a while to come. I want to avoid the situation I'm in now. I have a cheap S3 Savage4 based AGP card for which there is no X server in the Debian packages. I can get X servers elsewhere but on exit they crash my system. At the moment I'm leaning toward an ATI Fury. I'd be grateful for any advice, opinions, or caveats. AdTHANKSvance Chris -- Unsubscribe? mail -s unsubscribe [EMAIL PROTECTED] /dev/null -- Unsubscribe? mail -s unsubscribe [EMAIL PROTECTED] /dev/null
Re: Wanted: Advice on Video Cards
I'm also using a cheap S3 Savage4 based AGP card and it works for just south of fine. Note however that I'm not a gamer and all the graphics I do is GIMP (the default potato version). I use the SVGA server for it (available on the install CD). No crashes thus far here. On Tue, 17 Oct 2000, Chris Gray wrote: On my home box I run Windows 98 for games and Debian(Woody) for serious (non-graphics-intensive) work. I want to upgrade my video card. I'm more interested in something that will be straightforward to install on both platforms and will give respectable performance for a while to come. I want to avoid the situation I'm in now. I have a cheap S3 Savage4 based AGP card for which there is no X server in the Debian packages. I can get X servers elsewhere but on exit they crash my system. At the moment I'm leaning toward an ATI Fury. I'd be grateful for any advice, opinions, or caveats. AdTHANKSvance Chris -- Unsubscribe? mail -s unsubscribe [EMAIL PROTECTED] /dev/null
Wanted: Advice on Video Cards
On my home box I run Windows 98 for games and Debian(Woody) for serious (non-graphics-intensive) work. I want to upgrade my video card. I'm more interested in something that will be straightforward to install on both platforms and will give respectable performance for a while to come. I want to avoid the situation I'm in now. I have a cheap S3 Savage4 based AGP card for which there is no X server in the Debian packages. I can get X servers elsewhere but on exit they crash my system. At the moment I'm leaning toward an ATI Fury. I'd be grateful for any advice, opinions, or caveats. AdTHANKSvance Chris
Re: Wanted: Advice on Video Cards
I like my Nvidia Geforce 256. I've always found the drivers easy to install, and it gives very respectable performance now. I've heard from some people that the drivers can be a nightmare if they don't like your system(don't know there). The drivers are also binary only, and slower to update than some of the open source drivers. You can also use the drivers built into XFree86 under linux if you just want the 2d support under linux, that code is open source. Greg * Chris Gray ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) wrote: On my home box I run Windows 98 for games and Debian(Woody) for serious (non-graphics-intensive) work. I want to upgrade my video card. I'm more interested in something that will be straightforward to install on both platforms and will give respectable performance for a while to come. I want to avoid the situation I'm in now. I have a cheap S3 Savage4 based AGP card for which there is no X server in the Debian packages. I can get X servers elsewhere but on exit they crash my system. At the moment I'm leaning toward an ATI Fury. I'd be grateful for any advice, opinions, or caveats. AdTHANKSvance Chris -- Unsubscribe? mail -s unsubscribe [EMAIL PROTECTED] /dev/null
RE: Wanted: Advice on Video Cards
Greg, Thanks. I'll check it out. Yes, I only really need or want 2d under GNU/Linux. Chris -Original Message- From: Greg Gilbert [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Tuesday, October 17, 2000 10:06 AM To: debian-user@lists.debian.org Subject: Re: Wanted: Advice on Video Cards I like my Nvidia Geforce 256. I've always found the drivers easy to install, and it gives very respectable performance now. I've heard from some people that the drivers can be a nightmare if they don't like your system(don't know there). The drivers are also binary only, and slower to update than some of the open source drivers. You can also use the drivers built into XFree86 under linux if you just want the 2d support under linux, that code is open source. Greg * Chris Gray ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) wrote: On my home box I run Windows 98 for games and Debian(Woody) for serious (non-graphics-intensive) work. I want to upgrade my video card. I'm more interested in something that will be straightforward to install on both platforms and will give respectable performance for a while to come. I want to avoid the situation I'm in now. I have a cheap S3 Savage4 based AGP card for which there is no X server in the Debian packages. I can get X servers elsewhere but on exit they crash my system. At the moment I'm leaning toward an ATI Fury. I'd be grateful for any advice, opinions, or caveats.
Re: Wanted: Advice on Video Cards
I recently got myself a used Matrox Millenium (there are several---I got the one with the 220MHz RAMDAC and 4Megs WRAM), and am very happy with it. The online manual is available at http://www.matrox.com/mga/support/user_manuals/older/home.cfm if you want to check out the specs. It's an old card, but it seems able to handle plenty of bandwidth (e.g., I'm doing [EMAIL PROTECTED] without any trouble), and Xfree86 supports it well. (According to the 3.3.6 documentation at http://www.xfree86.org/3.3.6/MGA.html, This server is very well accelerated, and is one of the fastest XFree86 X servers.) I assume it'd be pretty lame for 3D graphics and games, not that I'd know, but for text editing and such it's great. I paid something like $35 at a local shop, but I've seen them on ebay for around $10.---jbf On Tue, 17 Oct 2000, Chris Gray wrote: On my home box I run Windows 98 for games and Debian(Woody) for serious (non-graphics-intensive) work. I want to upgrade my video card. I'm more interested in something that will be straightforward to install on both platforms and will give respectable performance for a while to come. I want to avoid the situation I'm in now. I have a cheap S3 Savage4 based AGP card for which there is no X server in the Debian packages. I can get X servers elsewhere but on exit they crash my system. At the moment I'm leaning toward an ATI Fury. I'd be grateful for any advice, opinions, or caveats. AdTHANKSvance Chris
Re: Wanted: Advice on Video Cards
There are those who would have you believe that Chris Gray wrote: On my home box I run Windows 98 for games and Debian(Woody) for serious (non-graphics-intensive) work. I want to upgrade my video card. I'm more interested in something that will be straightforward to install on both platforms and will give respectable performance for a while to come. I want to avoid the situation I'm in now. I have a cheap S3 Savage4 based AGP card for which there is no X server in the Debian packages. I can get X servers elsewhere but on exit they crash my system. At the moment I'm leaning toward an ATI Fury. I'd be grateful for any advice, opinions, or caveats. The most important single factor is going to be whether you're interested in a 3D card or not. If you are, the NVidia GeForce 2 cards are probably the best out there (although Voodoo fans will probably argue this point). The GeForce 2MX is the bargain version, but as far as price/performance goes you can't beat it at ~ $100. The GeForce 2GTS is the more expensive one, going for around $200. Be aware, though, that these require an AGP 2.0 motherboard. If you don't card about 3D, then the Millenium that was mentioned isn't a bad way to go if you can get your hands on one cheap, and the Millenium II comes in an AGP version. You can also get an NVidia TNT2-based card for under $50, and that has good 2D performance (AGP 4X, 16 MB, I think the RAMDACs are 300 Mhz). The TNT2 cards still have decent 3D performace, although you might find yourself limited to 800x600 or less in newer games and/or if you have a low-end CPU. The Matrox Millenium G400 are good if you primarily want a good 2D card but also want accelerated 3D. ATI's advantage seems to lie mostly in their hardware DVD/MPEG2 support. I really don't know if this is supported in their Linux drivers. The NVidia cards have a pretty good accelerated driver for XFree 4.0.1 that you can download from NVidia's website. For 3D on XFree 3.3.6, you might be better off with a Voodoo card, although IMHO you'll end up spending more for no overall gain in peformance. Enough rambling...
Re: Wanted: Advice on Video Cards
I like 3dfx, fairly good performance, they provide info, opensource drivers etc... the new ones are a bit too expensive though (up to $300), the older models (voodoo 2) are about $100 (still good performance (for me) but does not match newer competing cards)... erik Andy Bastien wrote: There are those who would have you believe that Chris Gray wrote: On my home box I run Windows 98 for games and Debian(Woody) for serious (non-graphics-intensive) work. I want to upgrade my video card. I'm more interested in something that will be straightforward to install on both platforms and will give respectable performance for a while to come. I want to avoid the situation I'm in now. I have a cheap S3 Savage4 based AGP card for which there is no X server in the Debian packages. I can get X servers elsewhere but on exit they crash my system. At the moment I'm leaning toward an ATI Fury. I'd be grateful for any advice, opinions, or caveats. The most important single factor is going to be whether you're interested in a 3D card or not. If you are, the NVidia GeForce 2 cards are probably the best out there (although Voodoo fans will probably argue this point). The GeForce 2MX is the bargain version, but as far as price/performance goes you can't beat it at ~ $100. The GeForce 2GTS is the more expensive one, going for around $200. Be aware, though, that these require an AGP 2.0 motherboard. If you don't card about 3D, then the Millenium that was mentioned isn't a bad way to go if you can get your hands on one cheap, and the Millenium II comes in an AGP version. You can also get an NVidia TNT2-based card for under $50, and that has good 2D performance (AGP 4X, 16 MB, I think the RAMDACs are 300 Mhz). The TNT2 cards still have decent 3D performace, although you might find yourself limited to 800x600 or less in newer games and/or if you have a low-end CPU. The Matrox Millenium G400 are good if you primarily want a good 2D card but also want accelerated 3D. ATI's advantage seems to lie mostly in their hardware DVD/MPEG2 support. I really don't know if this is supported in their Linux drivers. The NVidia cards have a pretty good accelerated driver for XFree 4.0.1 that you can download from NVidia's website. For 3D on XFree 3.3.6, you might be better off with a Voodoo card, although IMHO you'll end up spending more for no overall gain in peformance. Enough rambling... -- Unsubscribe? mail -s unsubscribe [EMAIL PROTECTED] /dev/null
Re: Wanted: Advice on Video Cards
On Tue, Oct 17, 2000 at 02:17:15PM -0400, J. Bruce Fields wrote:
I recently got myself a used Matrox Millenium (there are several---I got
the one with the 220MHz RAMDAC and 4Megs WRAM), and am very happy with it.
The online manual is available at
http://www.matrox.com/mga/support/user_manuals/older/home.cfm if you want
to check out the specs. It's an old card, but it seems able to handle
plenty of bandwidth (e.g., I'm doing [EMAIL PROTECTED] without any
trouble), and Xfree86 supports it well. (According to the 3.3.6
documentation at http://www.xfree86.org/3.3.6/MGA.html, This server is
very well accelerated, and is one of the fastest XFree86 X servers.) I
assume it'd be pretty lame for 3D graphics and games, not that I'd know,
but for text editing and such it's great.
Actually, for 3D stuff using Utah-GLX, Matrox G200's and G400's cards
kick serious butt. ('sproingies' from xscreensaver needs to sleep() a
lot more to be visible... the sproingies bounce down the stairs so
quickly they're hard to -see-).
The only drawback is that Utah-GLX can be sorta flaky somedays, and when
glx dies, it can take everything with it. (But, then, that's what I get
for using the 'daily snapshots'.)
Matrox cards are nice midrange cards: not as fast as
the-latest-and-greatest-ultra-voodoo-7 at 3D, but very good 2D and still
good 3D ... and Matrox has been Linux friendly for some time.
Oh, yeah, John Carmack loves Matrox cards. :)
