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At some point hitherto, Jerry Feldman hath spake thusly:
> I've got my Voodoo3 3000 AGP, and I'm runnin 1280x1024 with 24 planes. You 
> should be able to do better than 800x600.

Note the OP's comments:

> "Scott Prive" wrote:
> 
> > rives, saving me about $100. This video card now becomes a serious bottleneck
> >  for hi-res gameplay (800x600 tops in Return to Castle Wolfenstein for Linux)

The issue is not so much whether the card is capable of running at
higher resolutions, but whether 3D games are playable at those same
resolutions with that hardware.  With newer generation games, the
answer is they're generally not.  The 3dfx cards are (of late) vastly
outperformed on Linux by the NVidia cards.  Plus, they're defunct, so
there are no longer any driver enhancements coming out of 3dfx...
NVidia is live and kickin'.  FWIW, the NVidia chipsets also have much
more vibrant color than the 3dfx chips, making for a more pleasing
video experience, IMO.


At some point hitherto, David Kramer hath spake thusly:
> On Mon, 13 May 2002, Scott Prive wrote:
[snip]
> > card not only "works" in Linux, but also has hardware-accelerated OpenGL
> > support. 3D setup in Linux can still be quirky. For that reason I would
> > suggest NVidia cards over ATI any day.
> 
> The thing about the NVidia cards is you have to get the proprietary binary 
> driver on there after installation for it to work.  That makes me a little 
> nervous, so I was thinking Matrox instead.
 
You do need to install a binary driver, but they're readily available,
and they work quite well.  I've been using them under linux since the
TNT2 first arrived, with no problems.  Since then, NVidia cards are
all I've bought.  The drivers also support the GeForce2Go chips (for
laptops), making 3D gaming on mobile computers very possible, even on
Linux.  Initially those chips were considered "unsupported" and had some
bugginess, but with the most recent versions of the drivers it works
quite well.

Note also that if you don't need 3D acceleration support, the NVidia
cards are supported quite well by XFree86's generic SVGA server, so no
proprietary driver is needed.  It's only required if you need DRI.

I'll mention that very shortly before I bought my TNT2, I bought a
Voodoo3 3000, and I was very disappointed with it when I got a good
look at the TNT2.  So I bought one.  And I haven't looked back.
Ultimately, I feel strongly that this is what killed 3dfx.  NVidia
made a much better card, for not much more money than the comparable
Voodoo.

- -- 
Derek Martin               ddm@pizzashack.org    
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