[plug] [OT] graphics cards (was: LTSP + Multiple XF86 users)

[Cameron Patrick]

On Thu, Dec 04, 2003 at 12:05:38PM +0800, Ben Jensz wrote:

| Chris Caston wrote:
| 
| >Your right, those $&@#*@#&@# (pardon my french) gamers have molded a
| >market where you *can't* buy a basic video card anymore instead it's all
| >the fancy gamers stuff. 
| >
| Thems fighting words :P
| 
| If there was a market for basic video cards, then you'd be able to buy 
| them.  But the majority of the market which are non-gamers (obviously) 
| are buying graphics card that are 3D capable (the cheapest cards I 
| wouldn't say are very gaming capable if you're playing anything released 
| in the last 2 years from a gaming perspective).  So really, the graphics 
| card manufacturers are selling cards with more bells and whistles 
| because it costs stuff all to put them on (i.e. TV out etc).  All of the 
| low end cards are based on very cutdown versions of the high end 
| "gaming" cards.  Its cheaper for them rather than having to design and 
| manufacture a completely different graphics card for the low end market.

Another side-effect of this is that PCI graphics cards are hideously
overpriced compared to a comparable AGP card.  (A quick glance at the
NetPlus web site showed ATI PCI cards going for twice the price of the
AGP version, and NVidia ones for a little over twice the price of an AGP
card.)  This means that people wanting to use dual-monitor configurations
either get gouged for an overpriced secondary PCI card, or an overpriced
AGP card that has decent-quality secondary output.  (Rant:  I bought an
(admittedly cheap) ATI Radeon dual-head card a few months ago, hoping to
free up a PCI slot.  The second output was absolutely atrocious at high
resolutions/refresh rates, and I'm back to using two cards again.  Grr.)

Cameron.