[[email protected]: Re: hardware advice for a PC moron]

thanks for the pointers.

as a general rule:

1. is there any difference in functionality between the various AMD and intel processors? i.e., am i better off starting with one versus another?
2. is it worth getting a "fancy" 3d card (are they supported under linux) or is a plain-jane card good enough for 1280x1024x24bits. are any cards ATI or NVIDIA considered good or bad under linux?

thanks!

-rei

----- Forwarded message from Jeff Woods <[email protected]> -----

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To: Rei Shinozuka <[email protected]>
From: Jeff Woods <[email protected]>
Subject: Re: hardware advice for a PC moron
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While I haven't bought a Linux box from them, I've had good success with hardware from Monarch Computer Systems and I believe they recently (Linux World 2003 @SF) won some award(s) on their Linux bundles. You can learn more at http://tinyurl.com/24kpl which redirects to
http://www.monarchcomputer.com/Merchant2/merchant.mv?Screen=CTGY&Store_Code=M&Category_Code=linuxsystems

I've also heard good things about (but haven't personally dealt with)
http://penguincomputing.com/

You may also want to check out some of the other Linux-oriented hardware vendor lists such as those found at:
http://www.linux.org/vendor/system/
http://www.rice.edu/IT/hwsw/hardware/pclinux.html
http://www.linuxhardware.net/cgi-bin/viewvendor.cgi
http://directory.google.com/Top/Computers/Hardware/Systems/Linux/

Good luck! :)

--
Jeff Woods <[email protected]>

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----- End forwarded message -----

Rei Shinozuka [email protected]
Ridgewood, New Jersey

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Of course there are differences between the 2 lines, just as there are differences within the Intel line between, say, a fast Celeron and a P4. Your best choice depends a lot on the details of what you want to do with the system, and what other hardware choices you make. For example, as I recall, one use you want to make of this system is capture and playback of realtime video. That requires *either* a fast CPU *or* a dedicated encoder on the vidcap card (and maybe a dedicated decoder on the video-out side).

"Worth" is always a tricky call. In part it depends on how easily you come by, and part with, money, something no one here can help you with. As to what things technical advice can help with ... in practice, most any card will support a static X desktop at 1024x768x24 bits; that requires only about 8 MB of display RAM. You want a little more resolution, but any recent card with 32 MB of video RAM should suffice for that. What you call the "fancy" cards matter in three possible ways:

1. 3D acceleration. This mainly matters for playing games, something I do not do on Linux systems, so I will leave this one for someone else to discuss.

2. xVideo support. This is the hardware-level support needed for efficient playback of realtime video. Most newer cards support it, but you should check any card you are considering against the X database (somewhere at www.xfree86.org, but you'll have to look around for it) to be sure your card is supported. Most are, but there are odd exceptions (the savage driver supports xVideo, for example, but not on the Savage2000 chipset).

3. Non-standard output. Some video cards provide output to devices other than VGA displays ... TV-out (to NTSC or PAL devices) is the most common. But getting this to work under X can sometimes be a challenge. For example, the stock ati X driver does not support TV-out; you need to compile a poorly supported, non-standard driver to get TV out. OTOH, nVidia offere s afre-price but proprietary X driver that includes good support for TV out on many (maybe all, but I can't know that or sure) of the nVIdia cards, and the standard X nv driver will, with the nvtv supplementary application, support TV out in some cases.

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