On Fri, 1 May 1998, Michael wrote:
> 3) Todays GUI's are very heavy, so I want to speed up my comp. and therefore
> want a card which work fast. A 220 MHz Dac or above and 8-16 MB of
> RAM.
Actually the DAC doesn't have any effect on the speed of the card. All
the speed of the DAC determines is how many dots per second the card can
display to the screen. It doesn't affect how fast the card accepts new
graphics from the CPU, or anything like that. So it's important that the
speed of the DAC be higher than the bandwidth of your monitor, but
otherwise, it doesn't matter.
Most 17" monitors have a bandwidth in the 100 - 120 MHz range.
> I don't really play much on my comp. so I don't think I need a lot of
> 3D, but it
For right now, the Matrox Millenium II has the best combination of speed
and Linux support. It has little or no 3D capability. In the future,
look to 3DFX's Banshee chip to outperform the Millenium II and have good
drivers as well as 3D support, but for now, the Millenium II is good.
NVidia's Riva 128 chip (used in a number of cards) is also supported under
Linux (you have to download a special driver, doesn't come with Red Hat)
and has the advantage of being a very good 3D card in addition to its also
excellent 2D abilities. I don't know whether the 3D abilities are much
use under Linux, though.
> I don't really know what the difference is between the RAM-types. What
> are the differences between SG and W RAM ? Which one should I go for ?
SGRAM is a little faster in terms of pure throughput, which improves
fillrate on 3D cards. But the WRAM has some capabilities for simultaneous
input and output that allow CPU and monitor to access data simultaneously,
which is better for 2D throughput.
> What about OpenGL. What is it exactly ? Is it supported by Redhat Linux 5.0 ?
OpenGL is a 3D standard invented by SGI and supported by most 3D intensive
systems. Linux supports it for the 3dFX Voodoo chipset (gaming only) and
the 3dlabs Permedia 2 chipset (which is really targeted at CAD users and
has terrible game performance, but a lot of features). It might support
it for the Riva128, I don't know.
OpenGL support does not come with Red Hat. You must install it yourself.
> Also, is AGP supported ?
Yes, if a particular chipset is supported then the AGP one usually will
work just as well as the PCI.
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