OT: recommend fast 2D card?

[bill g]

On Sat, 16 Oct 2004 11:39:49 -0400, David Williamson
<nospam1 at nullcutter.com> wrote:
> Off Topic:  but with the wealth of knowledge here somebody's bound to
> know... I have a fast GeForce4 but never game on this box, and want
> faster 2D performance for my digital pics.  They are 1.5 megs or so each
> and take a noticeable moment to load.  Can anyone with personal
> experience recommend a card that would be faster in 2D than the GeForce
> chipset?

I'm interested in this, too. For years, I used Matrox cards and was
quite happy. The last one I used was a G550, which is still available
at reasonable cost.  Here's a caveat:  XFree86/Xorg probably won't
drive it if you use a flat panel LCD monitor in DVI mode. Matrox
offers an old, unfinished, and very problematic beta driver that might
work, but the odds seem to be against that. The G550 will work in
analog mode, but, in my experience, the display will be awful.

I learned this when I bought a flat panel, and had to swap the G550
for an Nvidia card. Like you, I don't have much use for 3D.  I'd
consider grabbing a new 2D card to avoid the hassle, and potential
problems, of reinstalling Nvidia's driver every time I tweak a kernel.

billg