Re: [gentoo-amd64] Re: Heads-up: KDEers: Particularly kde3-ers,

[BRM <bm_witness@yahoo.com>]

----- Original Message ----
From: Paul Hartman <paul.hartman+gentoo@gmail.com>
To: gentoo-amd64@lists.gentoo.org
Sent: Thursday, August 27, 2009 12:27:31 PM
Subject: Re: [gentoo-amd64] Re: Heads-up: KDEers: Particularly kde3-ers,
> On Thu, Aug 27, 2009 at 11:03 AM, Sebastian
> Beßler<sebastian@darkmetatron.de> wrote:
> > Paul Hartman schrieb:
> >> On Thu, Aug 27, 2009 at 8:16 AM, BRM<bm_witness@yahoo.com> wrote:
> >>> Not everyone upgrades their video card every 6 months.
> >>> Most probably get a video card upgrade only when they buy a new computer;
> >>> and most don't buy a new computer every other year either, probably more like 4 years or so.
> >>
> >> You can get a GeForce 9600 for around USD$50, which comes near the
> >> performance of the famously-expensive 8800 series (or at least near
> >> enough for costing hundreds of dollars less), and has an H.264 decoder
> >> so you can use vdpau with mplayer or mythtv to allow even very slow
> >> computers to play high-res video smoothly.
> > Many mainboards from that time only have AGP not PCI-E and to get a 9600
> > with AGP is not easy or even possible, so that is not really a option.
> I have an old Pentium 4 box which has a PCI-E video card. If a
> computer is so old it doesn't even have PCI-E, its owner probably
> wouldn't expect 3D desktop effects to work so well in the first place.
> My old PII 266MHz had an AGP 3dfx card. I wonder if KDE4 desktop
> effects would run well on that? :)

Remember, however, pretty much 100% of laptops cannot have their video card replaced.
My laptop has a built-in ATI card. Great little card, and I do hope that it will be able to do some effects - though, as you said, I won't expect the world of it.

That said, about the only thing that really prevents a lot of this is drivers. I'll update everything else, but I have to be able to use the hardware. That is one reason _why_ I use Linux to start with.

Most cards - even the ATI R250 in my laptop - can probably handle a lot of effects without much problem; but it's the access to the drivers that is the problem.

I can't run the ATI binary drivers b/c ATI no longer supports the chipset; yet I _cannot_ upgrade the card - it's impossible - without throwing out an otherwise perfectly good laptop.
Fortunately the F/OSS drivers are good enough, and I hope they continue to stay around.

> > And even if it is possible why trash a card that most of the time works
> > and needs only a fraction of the power of a modern card?
> If your primary concern is power usage, you're probably not going to
> use the desktop effects anyway. To improve performance, which is what
> I thought we were talking about, you could get a better-performing
> card.

Graphically, I notice not difference between the ATI R250 in my laptop and the nVidia 9600 in my AMD64 Desktop.
Granted, the 9600 could probably beat the pants off the R250 by the raw numbers; but the general uses of the system make no difference between them.
Then again, perhaps KDE4 will show something - but I doubt it.

Of course, I wouldn't expect the nVidia RIVA128 in my PII 233 do be able to much if any effects at all.

Ben