[plug] Video cards

[Dennis Plester]

This is just my opinion...

Despite the drivers not being open source, the only answer for this type of
action is a Nvidia. As much as 3dfx was seen as the Linux gamer's friend, it
is about to be no more with Nvidia buying out 3dfx and its technology this
year.

Having said that, all of the Geforce cards are perfect for this type of
thing, and show minimal or no loss of performance playing OpenGL games in
Linux as they do in Windows. (Check out Tom's Hardware www.tomshardware.com
<http://www.tomshardware.com>  for a benchmarking article with the Nvidia
cards and Quake 3 in SUSE).  The 3dfx cards typically suffer a 10 - 25 %
framerate loss compared to in windows.

The Geforce2 GTS is a nice card, and will make you very happy. If you want
to save a few bucks though, the Geforce2 MX is a very attractive option.
Costs about half the price of a Geforce2 GTS (~$200), and although it is the
underclocked "budget" version of the more premium Geforce cards, it still
beats everything that is not made by Nvidia in this type of category. It
also beats the much more expensive Voodoo cards as well, apart from the top
level Voodoo 5, and the older Geforce 256 cards too.

The only downside is that some very old games rely on the Glide API, which
is a Voodoo native API, including the original GL port of Quake 1. Glide is
going the way of the dodo, especially with 3dfx being swallowed by Nvidia,
so this is not a great loss. There are workarounds for those who are
desperate.

The Nvidias are still a little bit tricky to set up in Linux, but there are
a number of good step by step articles on how to do it for most of the
popular distributions. Jason (another plugger) put me on to one at
www.evil3d.net <http://www.evil3d.net> . They have the details in their
articles section. I went this way with a lowly budget TNT2 card, and Quake 3
flies with very healthy, stutter free framerates, even with the highest
quality settings on my Celeron 500. Your Athlon, coupled with a Geforce2 MX
or GTS would make this config look slow. I have twin Voodoo 2's (SLI'ed)
next to the TNT2 in my system, but I am about to rip them out, and replace
the TNT2 with a Geforce2 MX myself.

Sorry about the long post, but I hope this helps. As you can see, I take
frame rate seriously. :-)

Dennis.


-----Original Message-----
From:	Garry [SMTP:bigbadbill at dingoblue.net.au]
Sent:	Tuesday, January 02, 2001 11:23 AM
To:	plug at plug.linux.org.au
Subject:	[plug] Video cards

After giving the home machine a kick in the pants, up to Athlon 800, 128 M 
etc, I need to put a video card in it.

I will be using Quake3 Arena, which needs an OpenGL accelerator.

Thinking of a Geforce2 GTS based AGP card. Anyone had experience with 
particular cards, and know any good web references which helped them? Any of

the companies particularly friendly to Linux (in reality)?

Have coughed for the Linux version, as it is a MS free zone. Hope others do 
too, to encourage porting of decent games to Linux.

TIA,

Garry.