Not entirely correct. You could find some ATI [EMAIL PROTECTED] or the likes, for around 200NIS. It will work with X out of the box. It will have zero (0) 3D abilities, and it's fine for you. If you want to play the simplest 3D game - let's say tux racer, you need 3D acceleration, else you'll get around one frame every 3 or 4 seconds (it's up to your CPU power, of course, using MESA) Now, Tux-Racer is not what I call "advanced heavy game", so 3D acceleration might come in handy. You could use it as well for 3D modelling (CAD programs, etc.). One of the advantages, generally speaking, of these cheap 3D cards (around 350 and above) is that they support quite a good 2D modeling, thus, you get better draw speed, faster minimization of windows, etc. You could use the open drivers supplied with X for NVidia cards, but you will lose lots of advantages, both 2D and 3D. These are open drivers, and you get to have the minimum required for things to work. Slow, but working. Have complains regarding closed specs? Use them.
Being real, you do not gain the ability to debug the driver yourself (although I believe you could debug it to some extend), but you get to "enjoy" the good support team and good forum NVidia supplies. You could like it, and use these drivers (BTW, they work really well), or you could oppose it, and buy a different (non-accelerated) card, or use the default X drivers. I think it's fair asking "why aren't these specs open", but I don't think it's fair blaming them for closed specs, after you have bought the card, and decided to use their drivers. My oppinion. Ez On Saturday 03 January 2004 00:10, Oleg Goldshmidt wrote: > Muli Ben-Yehuda <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: > > No, I'm afraid I haven't done any research into this problem yet and > > thus cannot point you to such a card, although I should, soon. I > > think Oleg did recently, though. Oleg? > > Well, I tried to stay away from this discussion, but now I am drawn > into it explicitly. I changed a couple of video cards recently. My > Voodoo card that had served me for a few years went bust a few months > ago. The ATI Radeon card I bought then lasted about 3 months or so > (till the first power outage). I am using an nVidia card at the > moment. It works for me, so I have not had a chance to peruse their > support in any form. > > Basically, the "normal" (i.e. your friendly neighbourhood computer > store) market is shared between ATI and nVidia. There is nothing else > worth mentioning, at least if you are a layman retail purchaser. As we > all know, ATI cards have free (as beer and speech) drivers, nVidia > cards have proprietary drivers that happen to work. Linus (check his > recent LKML postings on the subject) does not mind nVidia drivers all > that much, though he says it is one of the few cases where binary > modules are OK. > > It well may happen that your friendly neighbourhood computer store > will not have ATI or nVidia in stock. That is, they may have nVidia > but not ATI, or the other way around. Chances are that they can order, > say, an ATI card for you if you insist on it for ideological reasons. > The shop I bought my current card at did not carry ATI, and not being > too ideological I bought nVidia knowing it would work. > > Now, to the question of specs. Short answer is, I don't know, and this > has a bearing on everything else I will write below. A longer answer > is, it is likely that even if there is a free (as in whatever) driver > for your card it does not utilize the cards full capabilities in 3D > acceleration etc, because the spec is not fully known. > > Now, you only need 3D acceleration (or AGP for that matter) if you do > something really heavy, e.g. play advanced games on your computer. I > don't play games, so I would be very happy if there were simple > non-accelerated cheap (as in NIS 25 rather than NIS 250 a pop) cards > on the market, I would be very happy because that's all I need. > > Now please write down your requirements for a spec (e.g. "full > specification of every bell and whistle related to 3D acceleration", > or "basic stuff that is enough for KDE"), google or otherwise ask > around, and decide for yourself if that is available for the card of > your choice. I would venture a wild guess that if games is your thing > you will likely be better off with nVidia's proprietary driver than > with a free one for ATI. ================================================================= To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word "unsubscribe" in the message body, e.g., run the command echo unsubscribe | mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
