Graphics card suggestions
 

Hi,

I currently have an ATI Xpert 98 (AGP 8Mb rage Pro) graphics card which is supported no problem on my Linux install. Mandrake 8.1 (XFree 4.01 I think!). However since upgrading to XP on my infrequently used windows install I cannot use the OpenGL features of this card as the XP driver does not support them. Installing older versions of the driver which support Open GL seems to work OK BUT I cannot run "Return to Castle Wolfenstein" which is one of the very few reasons I would be in windows anyway.

What I would like is a few suggestions for good Linux supported graphics cards which support Open GL in XP. As a ball park figure I do not really want to spend much more than 60-70 quid as I have other financial commitments i.e. a wedding to pay for!

Any suggestions or comments greatly appreciated.

Cheers

Iain

Hello, and welcome to LinuxQuestions.org!

Currently, the only manufactuerer of graphics card i can recommend you in NVIDIA, they currently have great support for OpenGL and actually perform better than the competition in terms of framerates (don't flame me please).

If your budget is around $80 you cannot go wrong with a GeForce2 MX 400 by a quality manufactuer like LeadTek. Alternativly you can get a VisionTek GTS-V which is better than the GeForce2 MX becuase it has DDR memory and will give you quite a boost for the same price. The only downside of this is that the HSF unit on them are bad for using and especially for overclocking. You can get a BlueOrb for it and it will be the best thing you can get for under 80 bux.

Good luck if you have any questions you know where to come to.

Actually crisscross that out for a minute...

I just checked out the current prices on the GeForce2 Ti 64MB by gainward and its $87 bucks. If i was u i would save the extra few dollars and go for this quality card over the Visiontek. I myself have a Gainward graphics card and i am extremely pleased with it in performance and overclockability.

I admit you won't be able to play Wolfenstien at 1600x1200x32 max details but it will sure chug along fine at 1280x1024x16*.

*depending on processor/ram/motherboard.

therion, how would you compare the performance of your card against some of the rage 128 cards for example?

personally, i've only bothered using my gf2, and it works perfectly, there's possibly a card more suited to your needs tho... i tried an Xpert2K card, but it was officially un-supported by X, and the various workarounds looked ott, so i changed it...

on and therion now that you've officially disowned mandrake, can you please change your daft signature.

I just noticed your in the UK...mmm well i'm not sure how the much more expensive things are over there, but see if you can afford a GeForce2 Ti 64Meg.

With my monitor it wouldn't go that high anyway! I'm not really a games fiend just like a first person doom-esque game once in a while. I will see if I can track down those cards in the UK.

Thanks for the recommendations, I knew it wouldn't take long in here ;)

Cheers

Demig

Well i am using a Gainward GeForce3 overclocked to Ti500 speed.

Well my card is approximatly 7X faster than a ATI Xpert2000 in just about every single game. This is excluding the fact that the ATI can't render games in 32Bit while the Geforce3 does so i say the difference is like Night/Day :)

hehe, damn you're good at making up stuff.

:confused: What distro are you running this on. Your profile says your running FreeBSD but I am sure that FreeBSD doesn't support OpenGL, right?

Thx

Yeah FreeBSD 4.5 Ownzzz!!!

Wtf are you talking about? i know this from personal experience.

This shouldn't be completly based off of 3dmark, but in that benchmark a Athlon 1.4Ghz with a ATI eXpert will probably score no more than 1500 3dmarks.

Take the same processor and put in a GeForce3 Ti500 and you'll get 7500 3dmarks with default core/mem speeds. Overclock the core to 260 and memory to 600 and you will hit 8000 with ease, so i am not making this up !

Oh yeah, i forgot about that sig:cool:

arent there linux binaries for rtcw? Have you tried those?
just curious, as i have ditched windows totally and was going to download the binaries and run rtcw under linux.

Yeah i saw them at 3ddownloads but i could never download them...always get eerrors connecting to the ftp site with Mozilla, Konquerer, and last but not least 'wget'.