Re: amd64 and video card experiences?
On Sun, 2004-08-22 at 16:38 +0300, Kyuu Eturautti wrote:
> > On Sat, Aug 21, 2004 at 08:28:50PM -0600, Marcelo E. Magallon wrote:
> >> So, if you want current-generation hardware you have no choice but
> >> NVIDIA, which is available now and works.
> >
> > Not exactly.
> >
> > Current generation X (for example X.Org) seems to run fine on current
> > generation ATI. [Well... it runs fine on 9600 and 9800 -- I'm only
> > presuming it runs fine on X800.]
> >
> > It's the 3d acceleration which is not yet supported on amd64 for ATI.
>
> Two questions coming to my mind - first, to clarify, am I right in
> assuming that if I don't want any 3D, I don't have to go toss my Radeon
> away to run nothing more complex than a browser and a terminal in X on
> AMD64?
I have problems with my Radeon, even with plain 2D desktop graphics. On
a Radeon 9700 Pro, there is noise of red dots all over the screen, at
1600x1200. If you use the ATI binary drivers, there is an option
"TMDSCoherentMode", whose only effect seems to be to change the red dots
to blue dots. Sigh.
On another Radeon 7000-series card, which appears to have two DVI ports
on the back, I cannot get the DVI output to work with the XFree86/Xorg
drivers. ATI's drivers are required, and even then I can't get both DVI
ports to work at once.
> As for Nvidia, there's a lot of talk about Geforce series cards, but I've
> too often found them to be unstable and quite hot (just imo, no flamebait
> intended). So from Nvidia, I prefer the Quadro series. How's their
> functionality, are there any experiences?
I have a Quadro NVS at the office. It came with a Dell machine. With
NVidia's drivers on Debian i386, it works fine (fast 2D and 3D). Even
the quad head(yes FOUR outputs) works well.
On another machine I have removed the fan from a GeForce 5200. Without
using the 3D features, it still runs cold to the touch.
Probably if you want a cheap card with *all* features supported in open
source drivers, you should pick up an ATI Rage 128. The PPC people and
others have really done a fine job with the driver.
-jwb
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