Currently I'm running xfree86 4.3.0 on slackware 9.1 through a ATI
Rage 128 with DRI enabled and running. As I get things tuned better
and configured the way I want them I am seeing that perhaps a video
card upgrade would be a good thing for preformance. My question is
what would be a solid video card to use that won't cost a ton of money
for a mostly dated system. Should I go the nvidia route or perhaps
ATI? I know this may be a bit OT but I figured you guys/girls would
have a good grasp of what brands work well and which ones are the best
bang for the buck. I've checked out Tom's hardware guide and also
Ace's hardware but to be honest a lot of that benchmarking stuff is a
little over my head. I guess I'm looking for friendly suggestions for
a cheaper card with the best features. I would like 128 megs of video
ram but that seems pretty pricy and I don't even know if it would be
worth it since the agp port only does x2 I recall.

Thanks in advance for any replies.
Thanks for nothing in advance for flames or RTFM's!

On Mon, 23 Feb 2004 17:28:44 -0800, RayzrShrp wrote:

> Currently I'm running xfree86 4.3.0 on slackware 9.1 through a ATI
> Rage 128 with DRI enabled and running. As I get things tuned better
> and configured the way I want them I am seeing that perhaps a video
> card upgrade would be a good thing for preformance. My question is
> what would be a solid video card to use that won't cost a ton of money
> for a mostly dated system. Should I go the nvidia route or perhaps
> ATI? I know this may be a bit OT but I figured you guys/girls would
> have a good grasp of what brands work well and which ones are the best
> bang for the buck. I've checked out Tom's hardware guide and also
> Ace's hardware but to be honest a lot of that benchmarking stuff is a
> little over my head. I guess I'm looking for friendly suggestions for
> a cheaper card with the best features. I would like 128 megs of video
> ram but that seems pretty pricy and I don't even know if it would be
> worth it since the agp port only does x2 I recall.
>
> Thanks in advance for any replies.
> Thanks for nothing in advance for flames or RTFM's!

For total ease of use, maximum compatibilty, cheap, excellent
video-fidelity, and good performance, I'd say grab yourself a Matrox G400.
Shouldn't be to hard to find on the net. I just checked www.shopper.com
and found one for $49.00

And, no 128MB on a P-III/500 AGP2x would not be very usefull. Any
program/game that made that much use of texture memory would choke a
500MHz machine. (UT 2003, that machine, will not play)

A Geforce2 MX400 wouldn't be too bad either, probably faster, bout the
same price, but you'd have to play with either installing the 3rd party
nvidia drivers, or dealing w/ the free "built-ins" that aren't quite...
well, they're still in progress... that's not to say they don't work, they
do, they're just... well, still working on them... so if the developers
aren't completely satisfied...

Since you're only talkin a 500MHz machine, I'd just say get the matrox.
Slack will pickup on it right out of the box, and you'll never
need screw with it again. It's a good card, just old...

> what brands work well and which ones are the best
> bang for the buck.

I bought Sapphire Radeon 9600XT @ 128MB a few days ago and I love it.
It's only $150-ish, I think that's the best you can get for now on a
decent price. You could also wait another month for the 9800Pro's prices
to come down a little bit.