[Gllug] OT hardware recommendations

[Tethys]

Mike Brodbelt writes:

>> - The scan 17" TFT screen seems pretty cheap, what is the catch?

The catch is that it's from Scan. Check the archives for Scan horror
stories. To sumamrise: you're fine until something goes wrong. Then
you're screwed.

>> - If my Dad is going to be doing 3D work, will a consumer 3D card make
>> much difference, or are these more useful for 3D games acceleration?
>
>If his 3D package uses OpenGL, then any kind of hardware GL will be very
>noticeable.

Are you saying specifically to go for a FireGL or similar card? Or just
any card with 3D acceleration?

>No, and in general, U320 won't be any faster than U160 for a single
>disk. 

Yes, but since the system is going to be used for video editing, it will
benefit from RAID anyway, rather than just a single drive. I'd always
say go for SCSI over IDE, but IDE RAID configurations are coming up
pretty cheap these days, so if cost's a factor, it might be worth
looking into.

>The Adaptec controllers are pretty good, and well supported. I would
>price a similarly specced Tekram as a comparison - they're also good,
>and would be worth going for if they're cheaper than the Adaptec.

Tekram controllers are pretty good, but check in advance which ones
have native kernel support. Although mine (a DC-395X) is supported,
the driver isn't in the stock kernels, so I have to apply a patch
from external sources to get it to work.

>> - Can anyone see anything obvious that will not work with Linux?
>
>The graphics card. The Radeon 9000 is based on the Rv250 core, which is
>not yet supported by the DRI projects. Buy a board based on the Rv200
>core instead. These are the Radeon 8500 LE, Radeon 8500, Radeon 9100,
>Radeon 8700, or Radeon 8800 boards.

Actually, Rv250 cards have full hardware accelleration under Linux.
Not only have ATI have their own closed source driver, but unlike
NVIDIA, they've released full programming information to XFree86,
so an open source driver is available as of XFree86-4.3.0 (released
a couple of weeks ago).

Tet

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