Kjetil S. Matheussen schrieb:
>
> After working as a linux-audio sysadmin for 4 years, heres my
> experience with gfx-cards (my memory might be a bit unaccurate though):
>
> Matrox 400+500: Had four of those. All the machines were somewhat
> unstable
> for unknown reasons, also in windows. I'll probably never trust matrox
> again. I think the sharpness of those cards are overhyped, at least
> with long cables, its not as good as the gforce cards I have tried.
>
> Ati: Tried two the newer types 8xxx/9xxx. One of them have a picture
> that sometimes is a bit psychedelic, the other one caused crashes and
> had to be replaced (with a gforce card).
>
> Built-in intel graphics driver: Two of those, very old type. No
> problem, exept that it couldn't handle 1600x1200 resolution with at
> least 16bit
> colors. Very sharp pictures.
>
> Nvidia rio (or something): Had two of those. No problem with the open
> source drivers, but the pictures were quite blury.
>
> Nforce built-in gfx-card: Tried something like 4-5 of those. All works,
> but they need the binary-driver, and the picture is not sharp. Bad stuff.
>
> Nvidia gforce 2,3 and 4: Had something like 8 of them. All worked
> flawlessly with extremely sharp pictures. No problem with latency,
> because they work just fine with the open-source drivers. My next gfx
> card will probably be a gforce 4, if its still possible to buy it.
>
> Nvidia gforce fx: Tried one of those. In the beginning, the open
> source driver were horrible slow, so I had to use the binary driver.
> But that was fixed later, and now it works just fine with the open
> source driver. Very sharp picture, just like the other gforce cards.
>
AFAIK, the problem w/ the open source driver is:
a) does not support dualhead
b) does not support xv / xvmc
c) NO (not even slow) OpenGL support
but, of course, things might have changed a bit. it's still some time
gone since i last checked state of the nv driver.
To comment on picture sharpness:
the picture does not only depend on the chip, but also on some external
filter components, and on the pcb.
while the pcb's of those GFX cards often are the reference design, the
filter components may be different for different brands.
here in germany, a computer magazine ran some tests about the signal
quality of those cards, and
they have basically proven that nv chips have better ramdacs than theit
ATi counterparts. But they also found some
"black sheeps" among the nv cards that obviously used bad filters, so
their image quality sucked, they were even
worse than the good ATi cards.
Anyway, i's suggest a DFP w/ DVI in, so the image will be sharp, no
matter what brand your card is.
I also noted that this seemed to be a discussion about matrox, nv, or ati.
there is another gfx chip mfg: XGI.
they released their 2D drivers as open-source.
never tried them, thou, i'll stick with nv (and their closed source drivers)
Received on Fri Dec 16 04:15:05 2005
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