[plug] Appropriate video card

[Dennis Plester]

How much is cheap? AGP or PCI?

If AGP, it's quite hard to go past one of the cut down Nvidia TNT2 based
cards, aka TNT2 M64, TNT2 Vanta. You can pick up one of these for just over
$100, which will give you 32 MB of video RAM, reasonable 3D acceleration,
very good 2D acceleration and plenty of resolution/colour depth/refresh rate
options.

Nvidia support is built in with most of the more recent distributions,
including Red Hat 6.2 and Mandrake 7.1 onwards if I recall correctly. Nvidia
also have detailed info on their site as to how to setup their cards for X
and OpenGL in Linux.

While the 3D might seem like overkill if you don't dabble in Quake or
CAD/Animation, the 2D feature set is excellent, and there isn't much else
out there in the sub $100 AGP bracket. These have nearly become the S3 of
the budget PC set.

You will find them at BestBuy, Austins, PLE (Peter Lingley Enterprises), Net
Solutions, James Computers and many others. Look in Saturday's West
classifieds for more info.

PCI? Dunno. Last time I tried to get a cheap/reasonable video card, I nearly
resorted to 2nd hand...

Hope this helps.

Dennis.

	-----Original Message-----
	From:	mbailey at ois.com.au [SMTP:mbailey at ois.com.au]
	Sent:	Monday, 23 October 2000 10:42
	To:	plug at plug.linux.org.au
	Subject:	[plug] Appropriate video card

	I have been having a lot of problems which
	I suspect are caused by my cirrus logic
	video card.

	I have decide to bite the bullet and buy a
	new one.

	I am concerned about buying something that
	may have difficulty being recognised by
	Linux (Redhat 6.2).

	Hence, can anyone recommend a card that
	is readily identifiable and relatively
	cheap. Also, where in Perth stocks them.

	Regards,
	Mark Bailey.