[gentoo-desktop] AGP card recommendations wanted =8^)

[Duncan]

Currently, I'm running a rather old Radeon 9200 series card.  I'd like to 
upgrade, but don't know which of the newer Radeons work best with either 
of the freedomware drivers (xf86-video-ati or xf86-video-radeonhd).

I do have some requirements.

First, in keeping with what Donnie B. recommended in an interview I read 
(was it on LWN or somewhere else?), I want to stick with an AMD/ATI/
Radeon card.

Second, it's an AGP 4/8x slot.  No PCI-E (tho I could do PCI-X, but I 
don't believe they made graphics cards for that).

Third, I'd like 2x dual-link DVI-I.  My current monitors are both analog/
hd-15 connector, 1600x1200, stacked for 1600x2400.  I'm planning on 
upgrading to preferably dual 2560x1600 digital, but at least dual 
1920x1200.  The former would certainly need dual-link DVI; I'm not sure 
on the latter.  Thus, I need dual outputs, dual-link DVI to handle the 
bandwidth of the digital when I upgrade to it, and DVI-I so I can use the 
adaptors and keep the analog in the mean time.

So I need recommendations from anyone running that sort of setup.  Also, 
which driver do you use and why?

Also, to anyone running the xf86-video-ati driver, I've not been able to 
get the ~arch 6.8.0 version to work at those resolutions for me.  I can 
get it to do 1600x1200 on one monitor, or (IIRC, I was tired and a bit 
fuzzy headed when testing) 1024x768 on both, but I haven't gotten 
>1024x768 to work on both yet.  As a consequence I package.masked it
here, and am still on 6.6.0, running merged framebuffer.  Yes, I know 
they killed merged framebuffer for 6.8.0, in favor of separate configs 
and xinerama, but altho I've had experience with a xinerama config some 
time back and as I said I can get it running in dual 1024x768 mode, I 
can't seem to get it to run higher.  Is that a limitation of the 9200 
series in Xinerama mode, or of the driver, or of my config, somehow?

I /think/ it may be due to the recommended resolution of my 19" monitor, 
as I'm stretching it a bit running it at 1600x1200, but 1024x768 is just 
ridiculous on it, let alone on my 21".  I think RandR may be seeing that 
1024x768 recommended and that I may need to tell it to ignore that, but I 
don't really know how to do that with RandR 1.2 yet, only the old way, 
which RandR seems to be ignoring.

That second question will likely need to go to the xorg list if I don't 
find an answer in the FAQ and RandR 1.2 docs etc that I've not looked at 
very closely yet, unless I get lucky and find someone with a similarly 
large desktop real-estate config running the driver here, but I thought 
I'd ask, and since I'm subscribed here and not to the xorg list yet...

-- 
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

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