Video card recommendation?

[Eric Eisenhart]

On Sat, Feb 10, 2001 at 10:12:35PM -0800, Cameron Tully-Smith wrote:
> I'm looking at getting an AGP graphics card for use with Red Hat 6.2 and 
> I'm wondering what the people on this list recommend.  I'm trying to get a 
> card with, ideally, stable drivers, good 3D performance (for Quake 3 Arena 
> :)) and, ideally, < $100 cost.  If it helps, I'm using Gnome Enlightenment

Well, for good 2D performance, the best route is to go with Matrox.  I've
got a Matrox G200 AGP and an old Matrox Millenium 2064W (PCI) in my machine
at home, and until I got laid off I was using a Matrox G400 AGP at work. 
I've also heard good things about the Matrox G450.  The G200, G400 and G450
all do have 3D support, but it's not as good as what you get from companies
more dedicated to 3D.  But for your other criteria, a Matrox G450 meets them
beautifully.  Some very well supported, stable drivers and they can be found
for under $100.  (Even a dual-head can be found for under that)

3D under linux is, unfortunately, not as well supported as it is under
Windows, mostly due to driver issues.

Also, if you want good 3D, you'll probably want a card with plenty of RAM in
it, which is unlikely to be found at the pricepoint you want...

Since you're talking games and Loki is pretty much the main source for games
under Linux, here's Loki's answer to what cards will work:
http://faqs.lokigames.com/faq.php3?view=faq&product=GL0&faq_notes=2&faq_id=1

For benchmarks, you can look here:
http://www.tomshardware.com
They did some benchmarking on an NVidia under Linux that looked pretty
good...  Make sure to specifically look for benchmarks under Linux; a card
that performs well under windows might not perform well under Linux yet.

Still, a 16MB Matrox G450 would get you okay 3D, be under $100, work very
nicely for everything 2D and can drive 2 monitors.

Oh yeah, also: if you want better graphics support, XFree86 4 will work
better than XFree86 3, generally.  RedHat 7.0 has XFree86 4, and RedHat 6.2
has XFree86 3.  What window manager you're using shouldn't make any
difference, though in my experience, Enlightenment uses a lot of RAM. 
(Specifically, it forces X to use a lot of RAM)
-- 
    Eric Eisenhart   Freedom is slavery.      http://eric.eisenhart.com/
 ^  ICQ#: 48217244   Ignorance is strength.   eric-dot-sig at eisenhart.com
/e\ Perl&SQL Coder   War is peace.            IRC Nicks: Falsch Freiheit
---                        -- George Orwell