Subject: Re: matrox or diamond?
To: Jasper Y. Wong <wongj@rpi.edu>
From: Michael L. VanLoon -- HeadCandy.com <michaelv@MindBender.serv.net>
List: port-i386
Date: 03/28/1997 07:45:46
>> I'm looking for a better graphics card (I have a Diamond Stealth 64 EDO)
>> and Diamond Stealth 3400 4MB VRAM looks nice.  Is this a fast card or
>> should I look the Matrox cards instead?  I want to run X with 65536 or
>> more colors (XFree32) on a "166 MHz" Cyrix 6x86.  I'm quite satisfied
>> with my current gfx card, but I can't use 1280x1024 because of running
>> out of display RAM.

>I've both Diamond Stealth 3240XL (2mb version of 3400) and a Matrox
>Millenium (4mb).  I've to say the Matrox is much better than the
>diamond.  The matrox may not be the fastest card but its driver
>support is much stabler.

How is it stabler?  The S3 968 (the chip on the Diamond) has been
supported by XFree86 much longer than the Matrox.  And, your
substantiations are unfounded.  I have two of these Diamond cards and
they work beautifully.

As for the Matrox being faster than this Diamond card -- I haven't
seen anything to substantiate that, either, unless you go with one of
the really high-end Matrox cards.

Finally, someone said that these can only go up to 4MB, while the
Number Nine 128 can go to 8MB.  Unless you're doing something really
wild, I'm not sure where you're going to need more than 4MB.  4MB will
get you 24-bit color at 1152x864, and 16-bit color at 1600x1200.
Plus, the Number Nine 128 is another card (like the Matrox) where the
XFree86 drivers are still very new, and not heavily tested.

I'm not trying to tell you that the Diamond Stealth 64 Video VRAM is
better than the others.  Just that it's the safest choice of these
three.  And I'm very satisfied with mine.  Performance is quite good,
the video quality is excellent, and XFree86 support is very solid.

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  Michael L. VanLoon                           michaelv@MindBender.serv.net
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