which affordable ATI card?

[Christoph Brill]

Am Samstag, den 02.08.2008, 19:02 -0400 schrieb Gene Heskett:
> On Saturday 02 August 2008, Christoph Brill wrote:
> >Am Samstag, den 02.08.2008, 18:10 -0400 schrieb Gene Heskett:
> >> Greetings;
> >>
> >> Older radeon 9200SE video card, using the radeon driver here.
> >>
> >> With wine-1.0, google-sketchup-6 almost works, but will not open the work
> >> area of its screen, instead filling that portion of its screen with
> >> portions of other screens running on this box.
> >>
> >> Also its just barely fast enough to run google-earth.
> >>
> >> Which of these ATI cards is the fastest and most stable when running on
> >> the livna fglrx drivers?
> >>
> >> http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo
> >>=3101646&CatId=318
> >> http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo
> >>=3876340&CatId=318
> >> http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo
> >>=3101648&CatId=318
> >>
> >> Thanks everybody.
> >
> >I'd rather recommend a HD3450 with 512MB ... but that PCI Express, but
> >available for ~32 € (which should be about 50 dollars). I think that a
> >reasonable price. R500 based ATIs are to expensive compared to the R600.
> >They seem to cost the same (in the lower price segments). And these
> >cards have no fan so they are completely silent. Take a look at
> >http://www4.atelco.de/articledetail.jsp?aid=20319 for example. I know,
> >it's from germany but I guess you can find similar ones.
> 
> Unforch, this mobo is AGP, not PCIe :(  Is the HD3850 in the middle link the 
> same except AGP?

The card I suggested was a HD3450 while you looked at the HD3850. The
3450 is cheap while the 3850 is powerful. Both of these use the chip
generation.

> >Note also: Then drivers only support 3D up to R500 (R600+ is in the
> >works). And I can't really recommend the close source fglrx.
> 
> I wasn't impressed with its stability the last time I tried it, but we've made 
> about 3 loops around our star since then.
> 
> I was under the impression the fglrx was becoming open sourced a piece at a 
> time?

fglrx can and will never become open source. AMD/ATI is helping open
source developers to produce an open source driver by given
specifications on the cards and by paying developers to work on it. 

> What are we now calling what used to be the radeonhd driver?  Or is that the 
> one you say does 3d for the R500?

3D support comes from mesa plus the r300 dri driver. 2D is provied by 2
different drivers, xf86-video-ati (which supports every Radeon card
generation) and xf86-video-radeonhd (which supports R500 (also named
X1xxx) and newer.

> This present in service card is RV280 
> based, and I didn't see that there was a difference between the drivers for 
> this card.  I sure wish the card box said what was actually in the box.

For the RV280 card you got 2 options:
a) use an old fglrx that supports it. ATI/AMD dropped support for
   pre-R300 cards at some point.
b) use xf86-video-ati + mesa + dri/drm. I had an R200 (Radeon Mobility
   9000) in a laptop and it was really useable. no idea how it would
   perform on compiz or new stuff, but it sucessfully ran blender and
   quake 3

> What about that HD-3850?  What chipset is on it?

I think the HD3850 has an RV670 and the HD3450 has a RV620. I personally
own a x1650 (512 MB) R535 which does a really well job for me. I also
own a HD3450 (512 MB) RV620 which does a great job 2D wise (no open
source 3d support yet).

Regards,
  Christoph