[plug] PCI VGA cards

[Craig Ringer]

On Fri, 2004-02-13 at 16:56, Adrian Woodley wrote:

> 	I've managed to convince the boss, not only that we should use linux on
> our workstations, but they should be thin clients. On top of that, I'm
> going to attempt to run two consoles per machine.
> 
> To this end I need five PCI SVGA cards. Specs aren't that important,
> provided it will do 1024x768x16 and ISN'T S3.

My experience with linux-based thin clients at the POST suggests that
specs /are/ important if you want snappy and pleasant graphics, instead
of nasty laggy graphics. Our original workstations are P133/32MB/S3 and
they don't perform at all well when talking to a server with a modern,
RENDER-based graphical environment. The same machine with a better
graphics card can be quite snappy.

So avoid S3 Trio* cards, they're slow and crap. I'd say you already know
that, going by your requirements above. 

I bought a few SiS based cards from Austin, and found them to be fairly
fast (and cheap!). Alternately, NVidia GeForce4 MX PCI cards, even in a
P133, have such great 2D performance that you could think you were
sitting at the server. I hear that Matrox cards are excellent, too - if
you can find any. I haven't tested those as thin clients, though.

Craig Ringer