[sclug] Re: Video driver

[Tony Sumner]

> 2.5. port the 3.3.6 driver to 4.x ;-)

Mm. Thing is, if it were that easy wouldn't XFree86 have done it?

> I've recently bought a Gigabyte AR64S-H Radeon 7500-based card and
> an Innovision Inno3D Tornado using the nVidia GeForce 440MX.

Thanks, Alex. These sound good. There is a page
http://the.earth.li/XFree86/current/Status.html that lists supported
video cards and neither Radeon nor Gigabyte is listed. Odd, but I suppose
if you are running it under XFree86 v.4 then it must be ok. It has this
to say about nVidia:

   4.2.1:

       Support (accelerated) for the Riva 128, 128ZX, TNT, TNT2 (Ultra,
   Vanta, M64), GeForce (DDR, 256), Quadro, GeForce2 (GTS, Ultra, MX),
   GeForce3, and Quadro2 is provided by the "nv" driver.

----

> If you go for option 4, I can do some pretty cheap video cards:

Thanks Phil.

> Mercury AGP 32MB SIS305 AG305-32 SDRAM     13.20 GBP +VAT

The XFree86 page (above) has a list of SiS cards but the 305 is absent:

   4.2.1:
   
       Support (accelerated) for the SiS 530, 620, 6326 is provided by
   the "sis" driver.

   Summary: Support for the 86C201, 86C202, 86C205, 86C215, 86C225, 5597
   and 5598 is currently only available in 3.3.6.

> or if you want PCI (which I guess you would):
>   Jetway 32MB WONDER 5000 TNT M64 SDR PCI    23.10 GBP +VAT
> You'll need to check the chipset support just to be sure (TNT-M64),

I have one AGP slot but PCI is fine. The XFree86 page on NVIDIA (above)
includes TNT (M64) so I guess that is ok and I think that is the one I
shall go for. 

>  MERCURY 32MB AGPx4 S3 SAVAGE4              14.30 GBP +VAT

Savage4 is supported but is there any disadvantage in AGP? I hope to get
to the meeting on Wednesday and I can talk about it then.

> but I'd imagine they'd be a little better than what you've got ;-)

Oh, yes. I have a newish motherboard but the videocard is 1997
 
Tony Sumner