>Collating a table of which versions of which drivers supported >which features would be a mammoth task, and unless you have access >to all the cards, it would mean hassling people who do to tell you Subsequent to my post of this message I found that Tim Jansen has a short, self-admittedly incomplete table of this sort at: http://www.tjansen.de/xfree-features/ Granted this still does not tell me which versions work with which exact card, but it did at least tell me that ATI support was further along than I thought and I'll consider that for my next purchase. (here comes the life-story which really does get to a point) I have major interactions with 3 FreeBSD systems all currently running 4.1 (will upgrade to 4.2) next month, two desktops 1GHzP3 and 1.7GHzP4 with nVidia (Riva and Ultra resp) and one laptop 450MhzP3 with an s3virge. Now for whatever reason, the best game console play (snes9x) occurs on the 1GhzP3 -- you can fullscreen the emulator and play is still smooth. No xvideo on the desktops but the x11 playback on the Riva is still smooth at full screen. On the other hand, the desktop, which should be a superior machine in terms of card and CPU has bad snes play (requires a mode change to be fullscreen and smooth) and the video playback under x11 is attrocious, and is better under sdl. Oddly, the sdl doesn't do too well with the 1GhzRiva. The laptop, while having what would otherwise seem a far weaker processor and video card plays video just fine through xvideo (no idea what snes play is like). Now yes, I know the reason for the difference between the laptop and desktop video play. And I am sure someone can tell me the reason for the P3Riva vs the P4Ultra. But that's not the point. (here is the point) The point is that I would like to know, before purchasing a card if I can expect to see better performance from it or not. Right now, it seems like such an utter crap-shoot. Much of the purchasing decisions which went into the P4Ultra were based on some vague notions I had at the time about CPU and VC superiority, which were shattered by my experinces (of course, such shattering experiences are good motivators for education and activism). Googling the web doesn't help much. There is too much confusion floating about and it is hard to sort out of date info from up to date info. The XFree86 website gives little idea of what extensions might be available. Tim's page is not exact, but it does, at least, give me more clue than I could get from the man pages, readme's and release notes. I may still go wrong just basing on his chart, but at least I think I will go wrong less. >The ReadMes and man pages for individual drivers may or may not be >more reliable than the release notes, they suffer the same problems. I do not think it is necessary to have a comprehensive list of all cards for all versions of XFree86 to help me, and the undoubted dozens of people like me. We're all just trying to avoid a disappointing purchase and the hassle of restock fees and more hunting. You guys develop with some cards, and doubtless you would not be part of this project if you didn't want to use your cards 'to the max'. Surely, those developers which use a particular card can take the time to write a short para and attach it to the appropriate place. It might even encourage some manufacturers to DONATE. -r _______________________________________________ Xpert mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://XFree86.Org/mailman/listinfo/xpert
