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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!feed1.news.erols.com!news.dra.com!news.he.net!night.primate.wisc.edu!tmpnews.crd.ge.com!news.crd.ge.com!rebecca!rpi!not-for-mail From: gruelk@magritte.its.rpi.edu (Drathos) Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc,comp.os.linux.hardware Subject: Re: Request for advice Date: 6 Dec 1996 00:18:12 -0500 Organization: Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute Lines: 66 Message-ID: <588aak$5hei@magritte.its.rpi.edu> References: <va420d4suai.fsf@jay.dpmms.cam.ac.uk> <32A774B0.5E02@rpi.edu> NNTP-Posting-Host: magritte.its.rpi.edu Xref: euryale.cc.adfa.oz.au comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc:32121 comp.os.linux.hardware:58568 In article <32A774B0.5E02@rpi.edu>, Andrew Dickinson <dickia@rpi.edu> wrote: >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. hmmm... that's odd... how much swap did you have? i've seen machines w/ 24 meg swap and 16 meg of ram working very nicely... i'm running 16 meg swap and 32 meg ram and i almost never touch the swap... >> - 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) woah there... i've got a diamond stealth 64 2001 video (which has the s3 trio64v+ chipset) w/ 2 meg dram that handles 1280x1024 very nicely at 8bpp... if you've got some old vga card maybe, but i don't think many of the accelterated cards would have trouble...