New parts for new PC (need help - little knowledge of hardware)

[Jud]

On Tue, 18 Nov 2003 17:58:23 -0800 (PST), Dan Strick <strick at covad.net>
wrote:

[snip]
> My video card choice was a compromise.  I wanted something new enough to
> have hardware support for recent DirectX features, old enough to be well
> supported by XFree86 and cheap enough to be justifiable.  The Radeon
> 9500/9700 families of cards are the newest for which XFree86 claims
> substantial support and yet are long out of production and the ATi web
> site even categorizes the 9500 as "discontinued".  The 9000/9500/9700
> seem to have been replaced with the 9200/9600/9800.  The need for  
> reliable
> XFree86 support trumped other considerations because I spend virtually  
> all
> of my time running XFree86 on FreeBSD and very little time running
> feature hungry whizbang graphics applications.

AFAIK XFree86 doesn't have 3D hardware acceleration support for the ATI
Radeon 9K cards.  I have a 9500 (modded to 9700 specs with Riva Tuner)
myself and don't miss the 3D support, but that's because I play games only
occasionally and use Windows for them.

Jud