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Path: euryale.cc.adfa.oz.au!newshost.carno.net.au!harbinger.cc.monash.edu.au!news.mel.connect.com.au!munnari.OZ.AU!news.ecn.uoknor.edu!news.wildstar.net!serv.hinet.net!spring.edu.tw!news-peer.gsl.net!news.gsl.net!ix.netcom.com!news From: Andrew Dickinson <dickia@rpi.edu> Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc,comp.os.linux.hardware Subject: Re: Request for advice Date: Thu, 05 Dec 1996 20:19:44 -0500 Organization: Netcom Lines: 87 Message-ID: <32A774B0.5E02@rpi.edu> References: <va420d4suai.fsf@jay.dpmms.cam.ac.uk> NNTP-Posting-Host: bos-ma12-05.ix.netcom.com Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-NETCOM-Date: Thu Dec 05 5:20:51 PM PST 1996 X-Mailer: Mozilla 2.01I-Sun (X11; I; SunOS 5.5 sun4c) CC: gjm11@dpmms.cam.ac.uk Xref: euryale.cc.adfa.oz.au comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc:32104 comp.os.linux.hardware:58538 Gareth McCaughan wrote: > > - Memory. My guess is that I could survive uncomfortably > with 16Mb and would be reasonably comfortable with 32. > With prices where they are at the moment, this doesn't > seem a sensible corner to cut. Right? > Get 32 MB... Linux sucks up lots of memory. I used to run in with 8Mb, actually, but it was really slow. I upgraded to 16 and it still wasn't particullarly fast. I'd cut corners in other places before skimping on the memory. > - Memory again. If I don't get parity memory, am I really > seriously going to regret it? How common are memory errors > these days? > Rare, I think. If there were lives at stake, I would get parity. For general use, I don't think it matters -- I think the failure rate of your system due to alpha particles hitting DRAM is far lower than the failure rate of other things in your system... > - CPU. Any compelling reason to choose Intel over Cyrix/IBM? > I'm contemplating the 6x86 P166+, which seems to be very > well placed in price/performance. I don't expect to be > spending all my time doing simulations or solving differential > equations, or anything else that would require a lot of FP oomph. > > - Motherboard. How much difference does HX make over VX? > What about differences between manufacturers? Presumably > the main difference there is in reliability rather than > speed? Any manufacturers I should be avoiding? > Check out: http://sysdoc.pair.com/ They have an extremely comprehensive motherboard guide. > - Video card. What's the cheapest thing that will do, say, > 1280x1024 at 8bpp and 1152x900 at 16bpp? What if I want > to be able to go higher than that? (1600x1200 at 8bpp?) > I've had prices quoted at me for systems including a > "Diamond Stealth 2Mb 64 DRAM" (but, aargh, which chipset?) > and an "S3 ViRGE 3D VGA card", which sounds a bit vague. > How are these likely to perform? Should I just forget it > and get a Millenium? > I've been researching this myself recently. The verdict: Matrox (Millenium) isn't supported (yet) under Linux -- people are working on it, but who knows how long it will take? The latest Xfree86 (3.2) has S3 Virge support. I've heard from a few people that it works fine. The S3 Virge chips are definitely not the fastest -- there are better 3D chips out there -- but they're adequate. You'll need 4MB on your video card for 1280x1024, 8bpp (I think -- check out the manufacturer's home pages) Here are some links I've found: http://www.dimension3d.com/ http://www.pcworld.com/cgi-bin/interactive/tab.pl?file=/1412/1412p263-1.txt&col1_span_all=on&end_note=off&nobr=2,7&diagnostics=on&body_bg_color=ffffff&title_text=Top+10+Graphics+Boards+(12/96) (whoa...that's a long link...) http://www5.zdnet.com/products/content/revdir/moni3dgr.html http://www.matrox.com/mgaweb/3dtest.htm (I wouldn't buy a matrox card for linux, but they have some good benchmark data) http://www.ozemail.com.au/~slennox/hardware/video.htm http://www.zdnet.com/gaming/content/961115/3dwave/3dcards.html > - Network card. I don't expect ever to be getting higher > data rates across the network than, say, 200Kbytes/sec; > does this mean I can get away with a cheapo NE2000 clone? > Are there likely to be big compatibility problems here? > > Thanks for any advice. I'll try to follow things in these groups > (NB: anything Linux-specific or FreeBSD specific should probably > go in only one of the newsgroups), but it would be helpful if > you could mail me too. > > -- > Gareth McCaughan Dept. of Pure Mathematics & Mathematical Statistics, > gjm11@dpmms.cam.ac.uk Cambridge University, England. -- Andrew Dickinson (dickia@rpi.edu)