[geeks] Recommendations?

[Sridhar the POWERful]

On Sun, 7 Apr 2002, Joshua D Boyd wrote:

> > > I was looking for recommendations of a good card for all around
> > > performance.  Most important to least important:
> > >
> > > 1. Works with as many OS's as possible (specifically FreeBSD and Win2K)
> > > 2. Is great for games (this is the real reason I'm buying the card...
> > > I've got a lot of lag and poor performance in some of the newer games
> > > when I pump the detail up.  I'd like to max out detail and have only the
> > > CPU be the bottleneck)
> > >
> > > I'm not a hardcore gamer, but I like to pay for quality #1, and #2 this
> > > is mainly for the girlfriend.
> > > (Diablo II, Baldur's Gate 2, Return to Castle Wolfenstein, NOLF, etc.)
> > > Good for both DirectEcch and GL.
> > >
> > > ATI has a Radeon 7000 or something like that (PCI) (I only have PCI)
> > > or the 64MB DDR Hercules card.
>
> > ATI's cards are always good, as are 3DLabs or Matrox.
>
> 3DLabs cards are going to be problematic for FreeBSD I would imagine.  At
> least, they are under linux for the most part.

3DLabs cards are fine if you use the commercial Xserver you get for the
asking.

> Matrox cards are decent, but I'd recommend finding a PCI Geforce2 MX. They
> exist.  They should provide good performance for games, and usually have
> decent video quality (when bought from quality manufactors.).  Plus, under
> windows, the Geforce drivers are often supported for doing real work more
> quickly than the Matrox or ATI drivers are (For instance, Softimage3d was
> only certified for the TNTs on for what would be considered consumer cards,
> the last I looked.  Don't know what XSI is certified for).  And, Geforce2mx
> cards won't break the bank.

But when you can get a used 3DLabs Oxygen RPM for less money, it is a
faster card, has more features, and does dual-head on a single card.

Peace...  Sridhar