7 Sep 2000 (updated 7 Sep 2000 at 16:20 UTC)
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A few packages arrived today, my first order from Copyleft
(this kick-arse mouse
pad, wrist rest and various Debian badges/stickers) and
the GeForce 2 MX card from a local retailer (Asus V7100).
After installing the card into the system (and
compiling/installing the new 0.9-5 drivers), the system
completely hard-locked when attempting to start X. No clues
in the system log, the recent XFree86 log, etc.
Four hours later... :)
Turns out my motherboard (also by Asus) has two modes of
"video caching": UC and USWC. USWC (Ultra-Speculative Write
Combining) apparently provides slightly better performance,
but naturally doesn't work with all video cards. Seems that
the V7100 is no exception. After setting it back to
UC, all is well.
Performance is pretty damn impressive for what you pay for.
It's one of the 'budget' range of video cards, and even
though "GeForce 2 MX" is mentioned, it just runs at about
the same
speed as a GeForce 1 DDR, though slightly more
overclockable.
A simple Q3A benchmark (demo001 - 1024x768 @ 32-bit color,
Vertex lighting): 55.8fps. A bit better from 30-odd from
the old TNT2. Soldier of Fortune is far more
playable, surprisingly Heavy Gear II has turned into liquid
silk.
I've posted some info to www.mcdownloads.com
about my little issue, I'll submit something to the Linux Hardware Database
in a few days after a bit of testing.
Seems that OpenGL with xmame is still a little screwy (okay,
a LOT screwy) with these drivers. I suppose I should be
fortunate that there are about six other display targets I
can use (including svgalib, standard X11 and SDL).
Compiling is fun.
ErikLevy:
Not one in a year or more? Consider yourself lucky...
you'd might have ended up with an unhealthy addiction to
"Counter-Strike" or something (cough).
Crap... 8 days to go until the Olympics?! This coming from
the same television network who repeatedly made pointless
adverts such as "874 days to go" all of these years.
I'm predicting two things to occur in Australia during the
games:
- milk/bread/essential supplies
shortage
(consequence
of people glued to their damn televisions)
- the slowest Asia-Pacific backbone response times ever
recorded
(consequence of International users all downloading
Olympic-centric content)
Now if you'd excuse me, I'm going to stock up on bread and
milk...