[plug] low end 3D video cards for linux and win

[Dennis Plester]

--major paraphrasing on--

Ari wrote about chasing a low end video card for linux and win, for less
than $100.

--major paraphrasing off-

Just my humble opinion Ari, but you should probably be looking at a TNT2
M64. You can pick up one with 32 MB RAM, AGP (2/4x) and in some cases TV out
for $90 - 100 at PLE, Austin computers, Network solutions, BestBuy, etc.
Some shops may be selling the TNT2 Vanta instead for the same price, and
performance for both cards is similar. The Vanta has slower clock and RAM
speeds while the M64 uses 64 bit transfers instead of 128 bit. Most of the
budget TNT2 cards are M64 based nowadays. 

If you shop around, you may even stumble across a "normal" TNT2 for just
over this price if you are really lucky, but they are very rare, with the
Geforce2 MX being the "lower end - high performance" card from Nvidia now.

These will work perfectly in both of your operating systems, and give very
reasonable performance for the money. Just make sure you pick up the latest
drivers, and read the notes carefully for Linux, as there is a tweak
required to stop the M64 from crashing X if I remember correctly. They may
have actually fixed it themselves anyway, and if not, the M64_README file
clearly spells out the change in the script.

In Windows they offer the full Direct 3D and OpenGL feature set for gaming,
albeit not quite as quickly as the latest cards.

The other nice thing about the Nvidia cards is that they all use the same
driver. The TNT, TNT2, TNT2 Vanta, TNT2 M64, TNT2 Ultra, Geforce 256,
Geforce 2 MX, Geforce 2 GTS and Geforce 2 Ultra all use the same Detonator
drivers in Linux and for Windows, so you can count on driver support for
your older generation card for some time to come.

Hope this helps.

Dennis.