> I've seen alot of discussion on graphics cards and their suitability for FG. > > dedicated boxes seem to be the preferred way to go so I've been looking at > graphics cards as a place to start.
Dunno what you mean by a "dedicated box" -- I've run FG on a couple of different machines on which I also do plenty of other things (some development, some audio work, etc.). But it's certainly true that if you give some thought in advance to a configuration that won't give you trouble with FG, you'll be happier with its performance. > What's the significance of "AGP"? In x86-based PC systems (as opposed to Macintoshes, for instance), your video card could be plugged into one of three different interfaces. You could, for instance, have a PCI video card; such a video card would go into one of the standard PCI expansion slots, where other cards (like ethernet cards, sound cards, TV cards, etc.) often go. Or, it could be an AGP video card, where it would go into the AGP slot, assuming the motherboard has one. AGP cards and slots in turn come in several types based on speed -- 1x/2x/4x/8x, the number being a multiple of the base speed. You really only see 4x or 8x these days. The physical connection is the same, but the maximum speed of communication between video card and rest-of-system is limited by the speed of the AGP link. Or, you could have a PCI-Express (PCI-E, for short) video card, which would go into a PCI-E slot on your motherboard. These are new -- the newest motherboards and video cards are made for PCI-E. It has advantages over AGP -- the maximum throughput you can get is faster, and it doesn't share the bus with anything else so heavy traffic elsewhere on the bus doesn't slow down the video connection (in contrast to AGP, which is really just a souped-up part of the PCI bus, and so if you're using the ethernet connection heavily, your video performance can be effected). PCI-E connections and cards come in a range of physical sizes -- larger connectors equate to more data lines and thus higher throughput. The fastest are x16 connections, and right now those are being exclusively used for the latest sexiest video cards. This is a great way to go, but will cost you some serious cash. To the best of my knowledge, no one here has done any systematic look into whether FG benefits from PCI-E x16 over AGP 8x -- that is, whether its demands on the video card are so heavy that you can really benefit (in frames-per-second, for instance). It's not an easy question to answer anyway, since PCI-E comes on the latest motherboards, and thus is typically being used with the latest processors and faster memory; so there are multiple factors involved. All of this is explained well, and in detail, at Wikipedia and other sites, btw. Google Is Your Friend. -c P.S. > Has anyone had any experience with the GF MX4000 cards? I have not. I used an nVidia Ti4600 at AGP4x for quite a while, and liked it a lot. Those aren't made anymore, but you can pick them up used on eBay for fairly cheap nowadays (that's what I did). _______________________________________________ Flightgear-users mailing list [email protected] http://mail.flightgear.org/mailman/listinfo/flightgear-users 2f585eeea02e2c79d7b1d8c4963bae2d
