I have a 17" LCD monitor that gives optimized screen quality at 1280*1024 resolution. Any other resolution lower than this becomes software interpolated and becomes blurred (as in every LCD monitor).

I use a Voodoo3 3000 AGP card and doubt that it can deliver 1280*1024*24-bit resolution with good quality. So I consider buying a ATI Radeon series card that produces good quality at 1280*1024*24-bit.

Assuming that there are no (or not satisfactory) 3D drivers at the moment, which ATI Radeon series card should I buy?

ATI Radeon 7000
ATI Radeon 9000
ATI Radeon 9200

There exist both PCI and AGP versions and some -I dunno what- "SE" and "Pro" and "VIVO" and All-In-Wonder versions of HIS and ASUS brands.

The 9200 is the slowest one. The 9200SE expecially is maybe the worst GFX board never done by ATI!
Take the 9000 (it should have no fan) or the 9000PRO (faster but with fan). Also the 7000 is good and cheap, i'm useing one of these (but PCI +Voodoo AGP) in this moment.

9000PRO and 8500 are almost equal in speed (8500 being a tad faster). 8500 is out of production now, so it can be tricky to get hold of. I would not reccommend 9200 as it is slightly slower than the 9000, and the 7000 almost twice as slow as the 8500. Anyway, I don't think it will make much difference in everyday-2d-use which ATI-card you choose. I heard some squealing that 9600-drivers are in the works, so maybe it's worth waiting some more

Thanks for the answers,

I don't need 3D on Pegasos at the moment. So my first priority is a clean clear 24*bit*1280*1024. Which of these cards can deliver this resolution, at a fast rate? Even if 7000 (has AGP models) can satisfy me, I can buy it...

I have a RADEON 9200SE on my PegII and 17" LCD monitor. So I use 1280*1024/24bit all the time.
I don't know how if 9200Se is slower than other ATI card but this card is enough for me on 2D and not expansive 55euro (without fan) in France.

as I know, difference between 9200 and 9200se is that SE uses only 64bit acces.

I bought a 9000 and am very happy with it...nice
crisp display, fast, fanless, cheap, and supported
decently under MOS. Overlay works, movies play
smooth/etc.

Quote:

I'll try that out after work and let ya know how
it looks.

-D-

I replaced the fan on my 9200 with a heatpipe. It's a passive cooler so it doesn't make a noise and dissipates enough heat even when running 3D games etc.

@ dholm

Do You recommend using the 9200?
I know that it is substantially faster than the 9200se
but do the drivers in MOS support the 9200 similarly to
the 9000 or 9100? What about overlays?

I have seen quite a few in stores lately and if this works
well it might be a good board, considering price and availability
at my local computer store they had a 9200, 9200se, 9000pro.
the 9000pro was the most expensive($129) with the 9200se for $40US.
the 9200 was $110US?


Thanks

katos1

Hi katos1


If there is a Best Buy near you they have better prices on Radeon cards 9000 $80 9200 $100

I got the 9000 and the video play back is good.

@guvenck

The 9000 supports 1280x1024x24 all the way up to
160Hz, and looks great on my monitor, even at 64Hz
(which is the best my little 15" Trinitron will do
at that resolution). Things *do* start to slow down
a bit after 1024x768, but it's only barely noticeable.

I have a Radeon9000 and I'm absolutly happy with it.

It is not the fastest card (that's the 8500, which is a few % faster), but it has 2 advantages:

- no fan -> noiseless
- already working overlay support

regards,
tokai

This is a great thread guys!

I had a Radeon 7500 agp card in my Peg2 G4 but was not happy with the overlay output quality with mplayer. Also games and other graphics were a little dithered. And no 3d support... so I put my Voodoo 3500agp/tv card from my Peg1 into the Peg2. Works nicely and has very good overlay output. I can also play all the cool Euro Demos too.

On peg 1 I've had MOS running on tfts with these cards:

Voodoo 3000 agp
Voodoo 3500 agp
Radeon 7500 agp
Radeon 7500ve agp
Radeon 7000 agp
Radeon 9000 agp

If you want to run Linux get a Radeon... 7500 and higher. 8500LE best bet if you can find one! Also no overlay support in MOS yet!

If you like 3d gfx, games, demos, and dvd get a Voodoo AGP. If you want fast lovely 2d graphics and use Linux too get the Radeon series for sure.
If you are on a budget get the Radeon 7000. It will be reliable.

magnetic

Well, I'm happy with my 9200 but I can't say if it's better or worse than any other card. The video quality equals the GeForce 2 I had in my previous computer.
Since I replaced the fan (ati's fans are crap anyway) with a heatpipe it makes no noise. And since DRI is supposedly working with the Discovery II I will get accelerated 3D in Linux as soon as Sven releases the kernel.
So I am happy

Hi,

Radeon 9200(se) are supported in MOS 1.4.1 on pegasos II.
9200SE uses only 64bit ram acces and 9200 uses 128bit so 9200se has half speed acces but is this so important on peg ? Personnaly, I bought 9200se card by gigabyte for 3 reasons : the price, no fan, slim profil of the card.

Quote:

Sorry to butt-in, but why voodoo3 is bad for linux/mac on linux ?

@ guvenck,


I'm having a 20.1" LCD monitor (NEC MultiSync LCD 2080UX) with a standard resolution of 1600x1200.

I'm using either a Voodoo3 (PCI) or a Radeon 7000/VE (depending what to test) with 16bit depth (also tried with 24 bit and they worked).
16 bit because the Voodoo only has limited RAM (16 MByte) and this also enables me to use 3D programs on the Ambient desktop.
The Voodoo monitor driver seems to have a bit of a problem with this resolution because if I display a screen with 1600x1200 and change afterwards to a lower resolution the hot spot of the mouse is about 32 (or so) pixels below the mouse pointer itself (making it hard to work with it).


Bye HAK

Hmm, I must have had a sudden loss of higher brain functions. I have a Radeon 9100 and not a 9200.
Sorry for any confusion.

When you guys say "video playback is good" you mean with Mplayer? How is fullscreen mode? Is there any blockiness/ugliness. What about DVD playback. Please let me know. Thanks

magnetic

MPlayer works just fine. As for blockiness that is really up to the postprocessing done by MPlayer which is a CPU-based task anyway. When we get AltiVec support in MorphOS we can compile MorphOS with the AltiVec enabled optimizations in postprocessing and some of the decoders .

Hi there,

I'm planning on buying myself a Radeon, but I want to make sure it will work on my Peg1. The card in question is a "Club3D ATI PCI Radeon 9200 128MB DVI TVOut".

Now I have seen that the 9200 is supported, but will this version also?

Thanx for helping me out (and again...and again...and it's tuesday! many more days to go, many more questions to ask :)

Stevo

I took Tokai's advice and picked up an ATI Radeon 9000, due to the overlay support. Overlay also works on the 7000, but it is not as fast as the 9000.

Then again, my 7000 is in my PegI.

Somewhat related to this subject-- I am a new Peg II user and I'm struggling with trying to create a simple 1280x1024x24bit screenmode in MorphOS. I had successfully added an 800x600 and 1024x768 (both 24bit) but I can't seem to get ModePro to create a 1280x1024x24bit mode that doesn't appear garbled on my LCD screen. I am using a Voodoo3 3000 PCI and Dell 1702FP 17" LCD monitor. I know that both are capable of handling the size and color depth and suspect my problem is with ModePro and tweaking the settings. Any help greatly appreciated.

jdryyz,

When I made mine, I used the first VESA setting for 1280x1024 in ModeEdit.
It's a 60Hz x 64kHz setting. My pixel clock is set to 108000000Hz.
It works with my generic 17" LCD monitor.

--Aaron

Okyz I tested 4 different cards:

ATI 9000 PRO
ATI 8500 LE
ATI 9200
ATI 7000

The best one in pure performance is the good 9000Pro, but it's out of production and use a fan.
8500 should be fine too, but it has a high price (compared to the speed).
Ati 9200 is the medium Gfx board in 3d field.
At last the Ati 7000 is good just to start with and Ati board on the Pegasos.
Now, about the DIRECT support under Morphos, actually the choice (for price, performance and support is the 9200 (NOT SE), because it's in production and a 128Mb version price is less than 99 euros.
If you are lucky to find a 9000Pro around for less than 149E, BUY IT. It's gambling fast and a good choice when 3d support for this board will be avaiable.

PS
As everyone stated,is, anyway, clear that VOODOO are ACTUALLY the best choice under Mos, due the really good 2D & 3D support. The problem is that you can find Voodoo cards only in the Used market (take a look to Ebay)

Aaron, I believe I have discovered my problem. The custom monitor driver I configured wasn't quite right. I increased my bandwidth setting from 80 to 150 (not sure what it actually is since it is not listed on my spec sheet). I didn't notice anything different at the time, but I am seeing a whole selection of 1280x1024 VESA modes that weren't there before. Fortunately, the one I selected is working the way I was hoping it would. My only complaint is that the workbench just looks too tiny at this res. It is hard to use anything smaller for web browsing these days, though. Perhaps I can find some larger screen fonts to compensate but the built-in ones do not go that high, though.