Groovy Arcade Linux and the right GFX Card for it.

[demetris]

I have a Bunch of cards laying around, all working fine.
Just want your expert opinion on what works best by relevance.
What i mean is
1. xxx for faster and compatible works great
2.compatible works great, just works
3.scrap, don't work don't even try
etc
Thanks
List:
Nvidia
7900GS pci-e
GF2 MX400 64MB RAM AGP
FX5500 256MB AGP
3D Blaster GeForce4 Ti 4800SE
ATI
9250 256MB AGP
X1900 GT 256MB PCI-E DUAL DVI-I/VIVO
Matrox
G45FMDHA32DB AGP (Millennium G450 32mb ram)

Thank you in advance.

[Calamity]

Hi demetris,

I don't have experience with nVidia cards + GroovyArcade. In theory they *should* work as the modeline setting is done via xrandr but afaik no one has reported positive (or negative) results.

As for the ATIs, the 9250 is my favourite, it's primary output is the VGA connection and bios screens output frequencies that a JPAC can manage. On the other hand the X1900 will be way faster but it won't do low dotclocks under Windows (no problem in Linux though). However, unless you plan to use some fancy emulators, the speed boost won't have any effect for MAME as everything is software rendered.

[demetris]

Thank you for your reply.
You mean X1900 CAN DO low dotclocks under Linux?
And Does it matter if its dual dvi and use a dvi2vga converter?

[ves]

Hello Demetri, only radeon vga are supported in groovyarcade, groovyarcade nvidia driver does not include.
I'm doing tests to try to support, but still not possible.

[demetris]

Thanks for the information.

[krick]

As for the ATIs, the 9250 is my favourite, it's primary output is the VGA connection and bios screens output frequencies that a JPAC can manage. On the other hand the X1900 will be way faster but it won't do low dotclocks under Windows (no problem in Linux though). However, unless you plan to use some fancy emulators, the speed boost won't have any effect for MAME as everything is software rendered.

As far as I know, the 9250 was only available in AGP or PCI, which limits your motherboard choices somewhat. It's part of the R200 chip series and is a DirectX 8 part.

The X300 and X600 are slightly more advanced and were available in PCIe.  They are part of the R300 series and are DirectX 9 parts.

I've seen X300 and X600 cards with the VGA connector as primary, but many (most?) have the DVI port as primary, so you'd have to use a DVI to VGA adapter dongle for those.

I don't know if the X300 and X600 cards output bios screen frequencies like the 9250.

Note that the X800 and later cards starting with X are based on a different chip series and are quite different than the X300 and X600.   The only exception to this rule is the X1050, which is actually a juiced up version of the X300.  They're pretty rare, and actually inferior to the X600 in my opinion.

I just picked up an X600 XT PCIe to play around with, and I think I have a 9250 PCI squirreled away somewhere.  I hope to get some free time to experiment with them using CRT_EmuDriver and GroovyMAME in Windows to see if they behave differently.

[Calamity]

Most 9250 are AGP, but I believe there was a PCI release. It's an ancient card anyway.

The X300 - X600 is definitely a great card for GroovyMAME. I've plenty of these that came with the Dell machines I bought 6 years ago, and they work like charm. I'd say these ones go up to 70 Hz during boot anyway.