Greetings I have come to a crossroads with my linux box running
slackware 9.1 The problem is I have 2 video cards and can't seem to
determine which one is better to use.

card 1: AGP Voodoo 3 3000 with 16 megs
card 2: AGP ATI Rage 128 GL RF with 32 megs I think

The question is does one of these outshine the other by a landslide or
are they both pretty much equal to each other seeing as they both are
from about the same year. I have done some reading online and it
almost seems the Voodoo should be faster yet it only has half as much
RAM. Does slackware have better support for one manufacture over the
other? Any input would be great.

Right now I have the ATI in the machine and X runs fine but currently
it's running in frame buffer mode which seems to be extremly slow with
anything openGL based.

One last concern is that I know the Voodoo only can do 16bpp, does the
ATI also have that problem?

RayzrShrp <rayzrshrp@tds.net> wrote:
> card 2: AGP ATI Rage 128 GL RF with 32 megs I think

This card has hardware GL (Graphic Language) and there is DRI (Direct
Rendering) support for it in newer versions (2.4.2x, I think) of the
kernel. On the other hand, on my system at home (Dell with ATI Rage 128
Pro) the DRI didn't work too well, so I disabled it and then the card
isn't all that fast, but your milage may vary.

> Right now I have the ATI in the machine and X runs fine but currently
> it's running in frame buffer mode which seems to be extremly slow with
> anything openGL based.

Enable glx (load "glx" in the XF86Config), tryout the DRI too.

> One last concern is that I know the Voodoo only can do 16bpp, does the
> ATI also have that problem?

No, not at all, 24 bpp works fine with the Rage.
I'm running 1280x1024 at 24 bpp with mine without any problems.
--
************************************************** ******************
** Eef Hartman, Delft University of Technology, dept. EWI/TW **
** e-mail: E.J.M.Hartman@math.tudelft.nl, fax: +31-15-278 7295 **
** snail-mail: P.O. Box 5031, 2600 GA Delft, The Netherlands **
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On 28 Jan 2004 16:41:34 -0800, RayzrShrp <rayzrshrp@tds.net> wrote:
> Does slackware have better support for one manufacture over the
> other?

Support for the cards is in XFree86, rather than in Slackware. You can
find details at <URL:http://www.xfree86.org/current/Status.html>.


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