ati 9100 vs geforce4

[Kevin Freeman]

On Mon, 2004-11-15 at 21:14 +0100, piero orsi wrote:
> i'm in the position to switch from my actul video card
> nvidia geforce4 mx 64mb to an ati 9100 128mb. looking
> the technical specs the ati seems to be far better
> than the other. there are compatibility problems or
> other issues in using it under fc2?

I can't offer any experience on the ATI card.  Which model GF4 do you
have?  I have had a GeForce4 MX 440 AGP 4x card in this machine for some
time that I purchased on sale for ~ US $35.  I have tested both GF 5200
and GF 5600 cards (the 64-bit memory interface models that retail for <
US $100) and my 440 AGP card is significantly faster than both.  If your
card has a fan then you can probably use nvclock (from the livna.org
repository) to boost performance 10% or more.  (nvclock does not require
a fan, but I would not feel comfortable making a significant change to a
passively-cooled device that almost always hangs upside down).

I was shocked that the "new" models were consistently 15% - 30% _slower_
in glxgears, Chromium, FlightGear, GL screensavers, etc. than the old,
cheap MX 440 card.  Even overclocked, the 5200 and 5600 could not beat
the stock MX 440 frame rates.  The difference was also consistent when
installed in a Windows XP machine.  So don't discount the GF4 card just
because it is old.  It seems that anything faster has a price tag > US
$150 as well as a huge fan.

The ATI's extra memory would be useful only if you play games that use
lots of textures.  Regarding relative graphics core performance, others
will have to comment.

Kevin Freeman