> Has anyone had any excellent experiences with PCI cards for X?

I am pretty happy with my STB Nitro3D Virge/GX card.  It runs up to
1600x1200 in 8bit, and 1280x1024 in 24bit (with 4MB on the card; you can
also use it with 2MB installed on the card).  I don't know if they are
still made, nor whether they are entirely superceded by cheaper, better
cards.  It's based upon the apparently popular & well-supported S3
chip[set] for video cards.  (Important: You shouldn't use the S3 X server
with it, though.  Either the S3V (which I prefer) or the SVGA should
work---but see below re. using the SVGA X server with the card.)

I usually run in 1280x1024x24 and am quite happy.

I have a couple of minor problems that you should be aware of before
buying one:

 * The XFree86 server that I use is the S3V server.  As of NetBSD 1.4's
   X, this server is apparently deprecated.  (The installation no longer
   suggests it for my card, and the install docs say that the
   functionality is-being, or has-been, merged into the SVGA generic
   server).  Fortunately, the S3V server is still _included_, but that
   may not last forever.

   This is a problem because the SVGA server really is markedly inferior
   to the S3V server, at least for the Nitro3D card.  I recently had cause
   to discover this first-hand when installing Mesa-glx (see the second
   gotcha).  The SVGA server doesn't seem to support backing-store for
   windows (requiring more updating), and may not actually support 24-bit
   displays unless you ask for 32-bit displays (which adds overhead to
   operations and cuts maximum resolution to something like 800x600).

 * Although I believe that the STB Nitro3D card has some 3D hardware,
   the Mesa-glx package only works with it if you use the SVGA server.
   When, or if, hardware accelerated GLX will support the card, I don't
   know.  Mesa 3.0 (without a proper GLX) works nicely, of course, with
   _any_ X server as far as I know.  (Unlike Mesa-glx, Mesa 3.0 runs
   entirely on top of the X server.)

   You do NOT want to run Mesa-glx on the card through the SVGA server.
   You will be much happier in terms of quality-of-rendering, if you use
   the regular Mesa 3.0.  (Well, the quality is nearly as good with
   Mesa-glx as with Mesa 3.0, IF you run the SVGA server in 32-bit mode.
   Even then, it replaces alpha blending with stippling/dithering, it
   looks like.)  The only reason that you might consider Mesa-glx
   with this card is if you have the card already and _need_ to
   interoperate with OpenGL programs which assume that the X server
   contains the GLX.


On the whole, I am pleased with it.  But for the above two reasons, I'm
not sure that I would recommend it unless it came cheap.  (Of course, you
can probably continue to run older XFree86 X servers...)

I had the impression that the ``hot'' graphics cards all leaned towards
AGP-only versions, but from the posts of people recommending cards,
apparently PCI is still widely used for even high-end cards.  (Though I'm
sure that I've seen product listings with AGP-only options for the
bleeding edge...(^&)


  "I probably don't know what I'm talking about."  --rkr@rkr.kcnet.com