Decent Graphics card / 64 bit system / imaging

[Arc Riley]

> I tried that.  I tried it with a SiS too.  They were both awful.  Perhaps
> that's because they were both integrated video, but there was no way to get
> overlays with any decent speed and no obvious flickering or keeping sound
> in
> sync, etc.  It's been a few years I guess, yet again, so perhaps the
> landscape has changed.


SiS is awful.

The landscape for VIA changed around late 2005 with their release of GPL
licensed drivers.  Note this doesn't cover /all/ VIA/S3 video cards, though
they're releasing free drivers for more chipsets all the time.

If you haven't worked with VIA in the last 2 years'ish, for a system you
don't need 3d on but need decent video, it's the way to go.  Thousands of
mini-ITX hardware hackers agree. :-)


Last time I was shopping, the general wisdom of the internet seemed to
> suggest it
> wasn't worth trying, so after trying it with all the hardware I had in my
> old-hardware closet, I tended to agree.


outside of r200/r300, yes, the free driver support for Radeons was poor to
non-existent.  As I understand it, AMD did release specs for the r100/r200
(and r300 drivers were easily derived from these specs) but nowhere near as
much attention was given to r100 support as r200+ since by that point the
r100's were virtually discontinued.

In the last 6 months everything has changed as far as Radeons go, before AMD
released the specs for the newer cards there wasn't much that could be done.
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