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

[Duncan]

Jesús Guerrero posted on Fri, 28 Aug 2009 02:18:56 +0200 as excerpted:

> On Fri, August 28, 2009 01:52, Duncan wrote:
>> Jesús Guerrero posted on Fri, 28 Aug 2009 00:08:07 +0200 as excerpted:
>>
>>
>>> Just for the record, things like compiz work preferctly in an nvidia
>>> 6200, agp. They will work without a problem in an hd2600 which is a
>>> much
>>>  better card, agp as well.
>>
>> Hmm, I wasn't aware the Radeons (I assume you're talking about here, I
>> don't even bother with nVidia any more and have no idea their model
>> numbers) had AGP available beyond the r5xx (thru x1950) series.  Got a
>> link?  But I hadn't finished researching and actually bought, either.
>
> http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/category/category_slc.asp?
CatId=318&name=AGP%20Video%20Cards
>
> The first thing I found in google, you can see there an nvidia geforce
> 7600, it's agp. The 7xxx is the last series of nvidia with agp support,
> though in some parts it's quite difficult to find one.

Well, the nVidia might be nice, but I asked specifically for Radeon (tho 
other well freedomware driver supported or headed that way card would 
work) as well as AGP, because Radeon is AFAIK the best freedomware 
supported hardware available.

But... (vv)

> You can also see an ati radeon 2400 there, I own one however I can't say
> I am really happy with it. But that's another story and I don't want to
> spoil the thread more than it already is.

hd2400, right?  I'll have to take a look, now that I know it's 
available.  That's r6xx I believe, and while freedomware support is still 
a bit rough, come about the end of the year or early next, it should be 
coming right into its own.

Plus at least the PCI-E versions I saw were substantially cheaper than 
the $150 x1950 I was looking at.  But while an r6xx chip, the x1950 is 
top of the r5xx line while the hd2400 is near the bottom of the r6xx 
line, so the x1950 may well be better performing.

> My only point is there there are *lots* of agp cards that are more than
> capable of doing desktop effects of any kind. The beryl/compiz stuff was
> born much before pci-e was in our houses. :)

Yes, but Intel is on-board-only, AFAIK, so out as far as an expansion 
card, nVidia freedomware drivers just aren't there yet and may never be 
without nVidia's cooperation at least on documentation (and they'd still 
be out for me, as they are NOT cooperating, and there's a reasonable 
alternative that is), Via has started to cooperate and got a big boost in 
freedomware points for hiring Herald Welte as their FLOSS community 
liason but is a good year behind AMD/ATI, Matrox seems to be out of the 
game now or at least it's been a very long time since I read about any 
new product... and the only one left is AMD/ATI with their Radeons.

Now, on the Radeons, thru the r5xx chips (thus thru x1950 cards) are well 
supported now, and the r6xx and r7xx are getting there but will be 
another few months.  But I (obviously mistakenly) thought the r5xx was as 
high as AGP went, so I thought the x1950 was the top of the line in terms 
of what I could upgrade to.

It may still be that the x1950 is my top option, but I know there's r6xx 
AGP cards now, something I didn't know before, and so at least have 
another option, and it may be I now have equal performance at better than 
that $150 the x1950 seems to run, or better performance at about the same 
price.  I have the extra option to research, now.

-- 
Duncan - List replies preferred.   No HTML msgs.
"Every nonfree program has a lord, a master --
and if you use the program, he is your master."  Richard Stallman