[GLLUG] New Video Card Advice

[Edward Glowacki]

On Thu, 2003-10-30 at 09:32, Brian Hoort wrote:
> So far, system is:
> Antec Quiet Media case (Overture)
> ASUS A7V8X-X MB
> Athlon 2400
> 1 Gb RAM
> 120 GB ATA Seagate 2MB cache(quiet)
> etc.

I've got the same motherboard and processor in my system, along with a
GIGABYTE RADEON 9200 128M VIVO, which was $99 from NewEgg back in
mid-May.  The video card has both VGA and DVI connectors (plus an
adapter so you can turn the DVI back into VGA for dual-VGA output),
works great with 2 monitors under XP [1].  The VIVO option gives the
card video in and video out, both composite and s-video, which I'd like
to play with sometime if I ever get around to buying long enough cables
to go to my stereo/TV... =)


> I've put a lot of effort into making this thing quiet.  The last thing I 
> want to do is put a video board with a jet-engine sounding fan on it into 
> it.  Fanless would be better.  The MB supports AGP 8x, but it looks like 
> Linux doesn't, currently?

Can't really say much about the noise from the video card, and I don't
even remember if it has a fan or not.  As for Linux and AGP 8x, no idea.
=) 


> I haven't had time to play a game in years.  So I don't need the latest 
> gamer board.  That said, I'd like to find the time again, and don't want to 
> put a board that can't handle any game in there.  As you can see, I'll 
> probably keep this computer till I'm too old to fart without assistance so 
> let's get something at least decent by todays standards in there.

Best bet in video cards is to pick a price point and shop.  You can
spend anywhere from $50 to $400.  I was trying to make a decent gaming
machine without going overboard, so I ended up trying to keep each
component under $100 (CPU was $104 at the time... =p).  The Radeon 9200
was a new chip when I bought it, so it had some of the newer features,
but it was still pretty much a lower-end chip.

> I'm having trouble finding the current driver situation on drivers.  It 
> looks like NVidia has good support for linux, you have to compile them, but 
> they're proprietary?
> ATI seems to be the other company, and they're more open to Linux, but 
> according to the most recent info on our list, they don't work.

Running XFree86 4.whatever at work, and I've had nothing but problems
getting an ATI Rage128 Pro card working in multiple-monitor setups,
keeps locking my machine hard.  I have an Nvidia card in there now and
things run just fine.  That said, I wasn't trying to use ATI drivers,
just the ones that came with X.

> 3. Cost - I am a cheap bastard.  I see on pricewatch boards start at $50 
> and rapidly go up.  A $100 would be nice, and would probably get me a year 
> old gamer card w/ 64 RAM?

As I said, I got a somewhat low-end-but-not-bare-bones Radeon 9200 w/
128mb for $99 6 months ago (it's down to $85 now at NewEgg).


-ED

[1] I haven't tried running Linux or Xfree86 on that machine yet.  As a
side note, XP does seem to handle 2 monitors on my home machine a bit
better than XFree86/Gnome does on my machine at work.  With Xinerama,
Gnome splits my background image across monitors, which looks horrid,
and without Xinerama, you can't move windows between monitors...  As a
second side note, ATI has XP software that can give you multiple
desktops (which I don't actually use much at home, but it's there...).



-- 
Edward Glowacki			glowack2 at msu.edu
A PBS mind in an MTV world. 
	-- Author unknown