[OTs] free video hardware

[Bruno Wolff III]

On Sun, Apr 23, 2006 at 05:20:02 +0200,
  "A.J. Bonnema" <abonnema at xs4all.nl> wrote:
> Bruno Wolff III wrote:
> >On Sat, Apr 22, 2006 at 10:08:37 +0200,
> >  "A.J. Bonnema" <abonnema at xs4all.nl> wrote:
> >  
> >>What I am looking for is 3D performance. I will just go and see if I can 
> >>find a comparison of Radeon 9200 and other cards (like my radeon 800 XL).
> >>    
> >
> >Another nice thing about 9200s is that they don't need a fan for the card,
> >so its quieter.
> >
> >  
> Cool. There is enough noise as it is.
> >>BTW my own card works well with the radeon driver for 2D, but I am 
> >>looking for 3D performance too (I don't know why, but I like playing 
> >>games :{  )
> >>    
> >
> >The driver for the 9200 uses the 3d features of the card. The reason things
> >are slower is that the card is an older model.
> >
> >  
> Ok. Do you know which driver we are talking about here? I assume you 
> don't mean the ati driver? Is it the radeon driver?

No it isn't ATI's driver, it comes with the standard xorg distribution in
FC.

> The card being slower is no problem, as long as it has about the same 3D 
> capabilities for rendering in games, albeit at a slower speed.

I can play Neverwinter Nights using a 9200.

> >If you buy a 9200, stay away from the SE cards.
> >  
> Why?

They have half the memory bandwidth. You don't save much on the cost of
the card by doing this. For people interested in using the card's 3d
features, this doesn't seem like cost effective savings.

> >Also note that free software support for ATI r300 based cards is being 
> >worked
> >on. I don't know the exact state of things, but my impression is that the
> >the driver is usable now.
> >
> >  
> I am not clear on the series in ATI. FC5 identified my card as r430. Is 
> the 9200 one of the r300 based cards?

The 9200 uses an r200 series chip. ATI released the specs (or at least most
of them) for how to use this chip so that a free driver could be written.
In contrast the r300 driver is being done by reverse engineering.
I don't know if r400s are similar enough to r300s to use that driver.

You can use google to find the project and get some general information about
that project without too much trouble and this may be a better way to get your
questions answered.