video cards

[Jonathan Hutchins]

On Thu, April 3, 2008 09:13, Leo Mauler wrote:

> People keep going on about "3D acceleration" in ATi
> cards, but I've never gotten an ATi card to run in
> Linux on anything other than the VESA driver...

I have an old ATI card (Radeon RV100 QY [Radeon 7000/VE]), and it works
fine for 2D graphics, using the xorg ATI driver (radeon).  The system
boggs down in the latest Crystalspace games I have, but that's a system
power issue.  (I don't know if Crystalspace counts as 3D).

In my experience, ATI cards work great for everyday 2D stuff, desktop,
web, photo, even video.  Where they fall flat is on the 3D level, where
nobody has anything good to say.  3D is gaming and the new 3D desktop
effects fad - not something essential to most people's daily PC use.

As far as "acceleration" goes, that's just a term for the card's GPU
taking over some of the processing that would otherwise be done by the
CPU.  Most cards do some level of "acceleration" in both 2D and 3D mode,
and it's more a question of the end results - rendering speed and quality.