> 
> 
> >> 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.
> 
> -----------------------------------------------------------------------------
>   Michael L. VanLoon                           michaelv@MindBender.serv.net
>         --<  Free your mind and your machine -- NetBSD free un*x  >--
>     NetBSD working ports: 386+PC, Mac 68k, Amiga, Atari 68k, HP300, Sun3,
>         Sun4/4c/4m, DEC MIPS, DEC Alpha, PC532, VAX, MVME68k, arm32...
>     NetBSD ports in progress: PICA, others...
> -----------------------------------------------------------------------------
> 
First of all, I'd like to state that I'm speaking from my personal
experience with these two cards (Diamond Stealth 3240XL Video w/
2010(?) MPEG hardware plugin, 2megs.  As well as a Matrox Millenium
4 megs).  When I said "stabler" I referred to the fact that when
I used the Diamond card with my machine (it runs on a ASUS T2P4 mb)
and trying to "shutdown" would occasionally leaves the filesystem
"idle".  I didn't realize it had to do with the diamond card until
I changed the card to Matrox (I couldn't add more memory to the
3240XL without taking out my MPEG plugin...so I figured I needed a
different card).  From then on the system works perfectly.  Note
that I didn't say Matrox is the fastest card nor does it offer any
speed advantage over the Diamond card in actual usage, but it
does in my case offer stability and higher resolution/depth than
the Diamond (Matrox Millenium goes up to 8meg as well).  I've no
experience with the #9 cards so I can't comment on it.

Jasper

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