digitallysane Posted November 1, 2003 Share Posted November 1, 2003 Hi all, I'm on the point of buying a new (mid-priced) graphic card and I want to know which is the state of things at this moment. I'm interested in both Win and Linux behaviour. Doeas anyone have experiences with the mid-range graphic cards, stability (the most important), speed, features, OGL support/accuracy, driver quality on both Win & Linux? I'm thinking about cards like GF 5200/5600/5700, Radeon 9200/9600. Dragos Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Stremik Posted November 1, 2003 Share Posted November 1, 2003 I've just bought GeForce4 TI 4600 from MSI. Haven't had time to put it through test yet but so far, didn't have any problems. No glitches of any kind. One thing tho! When I installed it, Windows recognized it as 4800 !!! I'm interested what will it become when I SOFTQUADRO it. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
digitallysane Posted November 2, 2003 Author Share Posted November 2, 2003 One thing tho! When I installed it, Windows recognized it as 4800 !!! I'm interested what will it become when I SOFTQUADRO it. Does it have an advantage to buy a GF4 Ti instead of FX? Is it more tweakable (ie SoftQuadro) from the point of view of a 3D app user (instead of a gamer)? Dragos Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Stremik Posted November 2, 2003 Share Posted November 2, 2003 I have no clue! This is the first time I own an NVidia card and I just Softquadroed it couple of hours ago. (I've got Quadro4 980 XGL now ) I'd suggest you go to NVWorld forums and ask there. I've noticed there a fiew conversations on the topic of converting GeForce FX into Quadro FX. I didn't read in, but if it's true than probably it would make more sence bying GeForce FX. Moreover.Riva Tuner utility comes with patch scripts for ATI cards and there is a talk about converting some of ATI gaming cards in to FireGL. Just go here and investigate all the possibilities for yourself. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
glyph Posted November 4, 2003 Share Posted November 4, 2003 Stremik, is it worth the trouble? I have a gf4 ti4200 and everything is nice and stable, which took a while as it is.. I just don't want to spend ages fiddling just to get a small improvement thanks Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Stremik Posted November 5, 2003 Share Posted November 5, 2003 I'm sorry but I can't be much of a help here! I didn't allow myself any time to try and run Houdini while the card was still GeForce. I turned it in to Softquadro as soon as I installed it so I have nothing to compare to. One thing for shure tho. It doesn't take whole lot of a time to do that. Took me just about 15 minutes. There is only a fiew steps. 1. Install "Detonator"(you can use the latest one even thogh it's not supported by patch scripts). 2. Install "Riva Tuner" utility. 3. Download from NVWorld.ru latest driver supported by patch scripts (I use 40.74) 4. Run "Riva Tuner" and apply patch to a downloaded driver. 5. Now, install patched driver via "Update driver" option in Device manager. 6. Restart... Voila!!! Riva Tuner gives you a great deal of access to otherwise hidden from user options. Most of them affect only quality of the picture. As for performance (speedwise), I don't know. The benchmarks on NVWorld.ru show at least 10-15% performance boost in most of the tests. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
glyph Posted November 5, 2003 Share Posted November 5, 2003 guess I'll give it a go and report back later . . thanks! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MatrixNAN Posted November 19, 2003 Share Posted November 19, 2003 Hi All, This is my strong Warning. Do not buy an ATI Card if you plan to do Linux. Heck don't buy one period. Yes the cards are faster. Yes the drivers suck so bad that it really does not matter that the cards are faster because they do not begin to utilize that speed. I have an ATI X1 256 Pro. On linux my Geforce 3 was several times faster. Not to mention it is not compatable with Mandrake so you will have to use red hat. The driver has to be forced in. It is very unstabble even in the most stable mode set in the XServer Configuration file. The NVIDIAs work flawlessly with the drivers and end up being much faster because their drivers actually take full advantage of their hardware. ATI cards have serious problems with Houdini. Prepare to be crashed on Windows and Logged out every few minutes on Linux and or crashed. Yes ATI has managed to crash linux surprising a good number of times until your linux no longer works. The Windows update for the ATI driver is a must as little in the way of 3D apps will work on startup where you are met straight on with a system crash almost everytime. The linux update seems to not make any large strides in the way of having even a descent driver. Mind you my X1 256 Pro card could not even run Tux Racer because the drivers were too slow. That is rediculous!!! Please I urge you to not buy the ATI Card and get a FX or Quadro. I will never ever buy another ATI card. I am extremely disappointed. Cheers, Nate Nesler Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
noworries Posted November 19, 2003 Share Posted November 19, 2003 Well I have a 9800pro radeon and it works fantastic. Not to mention the TUX racer. I even have a feeling that under RH 9 linux card works better than under windoze, but that very well may be because Houdini works better under linux. I've done some test under linux in dual head mode and again it was fine. Only problem is with hardware limitation that for full working dual head mode you can't go higher than 2x1024 in resolution because ati has blocked double buffering for resolutions 2x1280 and higher just to force us to buy firegl. And if you are in hardware hacking mood there is a way to turn this card into firegl that can do doublebuffered 2x1280 or higher. You must patch something on the card, replace the bios with the firegl bios and you have firegl. Drivers have an easiest instalation i have seen among all devices that need a driver not included in distribution - meaning that for instance you dont have to compile anything. You just install rpm, run fglconfig and startx. You even have a small graphical utility that you can use for switching single/dual screen and various modes. As for Mandrake, drivers are not compatible but that was never a problem for me. Mandrake was always too much winlike user friendly and I had a feeling i'm out of control of what's going on in os. Now, with this rh/fedora problem many users will think again about Mandrake (i know i am) and there is more than few of us rh users with ati's so i expect mandrake will soon solve the problem with drivers. I expect that because as i recall the problem with drivers was something stupid like: drivers expect to find some configurational files during installation that red hat calles "redhatsomething". Maybe problem is bigger but I'm sure they will solve it. Because of the money of course. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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