a few random hardware questions (slightly OT)

[volvoguy]

On Thu, 7 Oct 2004 20:22:52 -0700, Matt Zimmerman <mdz at canonical.com> wrote:
 
> The 7500 is supported quite well with the stock, open source "ati" driver
> (the one you're using).  I have such a card, and 3D (DRI) and everything is
> supported out of the box.

Yay! I wasn't imagining things. :) I knew the out-of-box performance
was significantly better than other distros where 3D related things
were measured in SPF (seconds per frame) instead of FPS. I would guess
whatever speed issues I'm having then would be the hardware
limitations - after all, the card is 3+ years old. This leads me to
ask another question though - is there a definitive guide somewhere
that documents which cards/chipsets (in low, mid and high price
ranges) are best supported in Linux? Call me a newbie (I'm really not
;-) but from now on I'd like to try to buy hardware with better Linux
support and I've been in the market for a new video card for about 6
months now. I read the recent Ars Technica article about video card
performance in Linux, but most of the cards they reviewed were a
little on the high price side for me.

I'll probably be looking for an 8x AGP card with 128Mb+ of RAM. I
usually prefer ATI products, but in the past I only had Windows
support to worry about. Their All-In-Wonder stuff is intriguing, but I
haven't even started researching Linux support for that.

If you have a good comparison article bookmarked, or have firsthand
knowledge (I know people that upgrade 3 times a year. I usually
upgrade once every 3 years), please pass it along. Something in the
range of a Radeon 9600 or 9800 (with or without AIW) is what I hope to
spend. Since this is becoming slightly OT, feel free to direct your
replies to me personally (unless others are interested as well).


> Those messages are being printed by an application (mplayer?), and they
> indicate that while your CPU supports these features, they are disabled in
> the application.

See... that's what I get for poking around in hidden log files. :-)

Thanks Matt, you guys rock!

Aaron