[plug] Radeon Graphics cards

[Trevor Phillips]

On Friday 16 January 2004 14:55, laurie anderson wrote:
>  Hi one & all,
>
>  What experience have pluggers had with Radeon Graphics cards in particular
> a 128MB Radeon 9200se to run with Debian.

I've recently got a Radeon 9600XT. I ummed & aaahed a lot before getting it, 
due to the shonky linux support I'd heard about in the past.

Ironically, I'm having more problems with it under Windows XP than Linux! But 
then again, I'm playing 3d games under XP. Under Linux I use it for normal 
desktop stuff, as well as playing video, with TV Out.

My system is Debian-based (testing now, with bits of unstable), and I'm using 
the official ATI linux drivers, which installed with minimal hassles.

Overall I'm very happy with the card, and I've not had any problems under 
Linux yet, although the official ATI drivers are still very immature. They 
are improving gradually, though.

One thing I HAVE learned though is that Celerons suck. ^_^ The box was 
originally JUST a media box, so I got the cheapest CPU I could; a Celeron 
2.2GHz (yes, I would've gone with Athlon/Duron, but they wouldn't exactly fit 
in the MoBo I had to work with). Well, the latest games really tax the poor 
CPU (and some of the video playback under Linux stresses it too). I'm 
wondering how much of a performance boost I'd get upgrading to the cheapest 
P4 I can find...

So, overall, no I don't have any experience with 9200se's per se, but in 
general, ATI Radeon linux support is much better than it used to be, and is 
improving steadily. Unless you NEED UT2k3 under Linux with extreme 
frame-rates (which I'm guessing isn't a priority if you have a 9200), then it 
should be fine.

The best forum I've found for Linux/ATI stuff is:
   http://www.rage3d.com/board/forumdisplay.php?s=&forumid=61

-- 
. Trevor Phillips             -           http://jurai.murdoch.edu.au/ . 
: Web Technical Administrator     -          T.Phillips at murdoch.edu.au : 
| IT Services                        -              Murdoch University | 
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