Re: [gentoo-amd64] Re: Heads-up: KDEers: Particularly kde3-ers,

[Volker Armin Hemmann]

On Freitag 28 August 2009, Jesús Guerrero wrote:
> On Thu, August 27, 2009 17:49, Paul Hartman wrote:
> > On Thu, Aug 27, 2009 at 8:16 AM, BRM<bm_witness@×××××.com> wrote:
> >> Not everyone upgrades their video card every 6 months.
> >> Most probably get a video card upgrade only when they buy a new
> >> computer; and most don't buy a new computer every other year either,
> >> probably more like 4 years or so.
> >
> > You can get a GeForce 9600 for around USD$50, which comes near the
> > performance of the famously-expensive 8800 series (or at least near
> > enough for costing hundreds of dollars less), and has an H.264 decoder so
> > you can use vdpau with mplayer or mythtv to allow even very slow
> > computers to play high-res video smoothly. Many people spend that much to
> > fill up their automobile or go out to to the movies or a dinner with the
> > family. I don't think it's an incomprehensible amount of money to spend
> > on something that will greatly improve performance on your computer for
> > quite a long time, but I also understand that everyone has their own
> > budget to live by, things are more expensive in some countries, and some
> > people are not technically inclined or physically able to do things like
> > changing a video card.
>
> You also forgot that not everyone has a pci-e slot, which is the only way
> to use these new cards. The rest of the mortals are limited to 7xxx series
> at most, and only if they have the extreme luck of finding an agp based
> card, which is an odyssey nowadays. Well, there's ati as well, up to 2600,
> at least supports agp, if you are brave enough.

agp goes up to hd4670 - but the cards are pretty expensive. There are also 
4650s, 3850, 3650, 3450. From nvidia you can still get 6200 or 5500 as agp 
versions. If you look around you might even find the occasional matrox card.

But they are all expensive compared to their pcie counterparts.