Re: [Mesa3d-users] NVidia GeForce/GeForce2 with XFree86 3.3.6 and Mesa 3.2

[Stephen J B. <sj...@li...>]

On Sun, 25 Jun 2000, Dave Reed wrote:

> I'm planning to get a NVidia graphics card and am a little overwhelmed
> by all the information out there and know I don't fully understand it,
> so I've got a bunch of questions:
> 
> First, according to the XFree86.org web site, 3.3.6, it says the
> GeForce chip is newly supported.  Does this mean 3D support when using
> Mesa or just that X will run, but not take full advantage of the card?
 
The *nVidia* OpenGL implementation certainly requires Xfree 4.0.0, I
understand that the Utah-GLX driver may work with 3.3.6.

Be careful what you read into statements on XFree86's site - they
often talk about "support" in terms of 2D support for X - not 3D
support for OpenGL with hardware accelleration.

> Does GeForce include GeForce2 also?

Yes - the nVidia driver (and probably the Utah-GLX) works just fine
with GeForce2 - I've done it so I know for sure.

>  From what I've read at
> tomshardware.com, it seems that GeForce2 is mainly just a faster
> GeForce...

Well, it's quite a bit more than that - but the current drivers don't
expose the new features of GeForce-2.  That's annoying - but
understandable in the short term.

>  And will it work faster
> when I get around to using XFree86 4.0?

GeForce-2 was only a little faster than GeForce-1 on my 450MHz box,
I think I need a faster CPU to take full advantage of the new card.

>  I probably won't get XFree86
> 4.0 until it comes with RedHat 7.x (currently have 6.2) unless the
> performance increase is huge in which case, I might tackle trying to
> install 4.0 myself.

You *NEED* 4.0 for the nVidia driver - and IMHO, the nVidia driver is
*FAR* faster and more stable than the Utah-GLX effort (although that
could change - I havn't tested the Utah-GLX driver for at least a
month).

> Can anyone explain the differences in plain English betwen SDR, DDR,
> and GTS (see http://www.G256.com/features/gfpricewatch.html).
 
Nope.   :-)

> I'm not interested in playing games with it, but I am interested in
> visualization (using VTK right now) so I'm interested in being able to
> render lots of small shaded polygons and 3D texturing (for volume
> visulization). 
 
Cool!

(Does 3D texturing work yet?  I havn't tried it.)

> I'm planning to spend around $250-$350 and would rather closer to the
> high end than spend $200 now and find myself wishing I'd spent more
> and wanting to buy a new card a year from now.  Any recommendations?
>
> My current sytem is a 400 MHz Pentium II with an Asus P2B motherboard
> (I believe it is only 1xAGP).  A year from now, I may get a new
> motherboard and faster chip (800 MHz PIII) so I don't mind buying a
> card now that is overkill for the PII 400 if it will work better with
> a 800 MHz chip.
 
I think that (in my experience) the GeForce-2 deserves a fast CPU.

Steve Baker                      (817)619-2657 (Vox/Vox-Mail)
L3Com/Link Simulation & Training (817)619-2466 (Fax)
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