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Mike Raiford wrote:
>> If you ever want 3D functionality in Linux, then be *very* careful
>> about your video card selections.
>
> Not worried about Linux at all. :)
>
> Poor OpenGL support may be a minor concern, but seeing as the games I
> primarily play are all DirectX, I'm not too worried. I don't use modeler
> software very frequently, so OpenGL isn't that big of a deal.
It's not just for games. If you want to run stuff like Compiz, you need
3-D support.
And frankly, I *do* play 3D games in Linux. Either using Wine, or just
plain Linux games. Not as famous as the Windows ones, but many require 3D.
--
... "All we are saying," "Is give pizza chants."
/\ /\ /\ /
/ \/ \ u e e n / \/ a w a z
>>>>>>mue### [at] nawaz org<<<<<<
anl
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OK, so I popped in the AGP Radeon 3850 board, and a new 500W power
supply, because I knew the 320 watt that had been keeping my computer up
and running was woefully inadequate for the graphics card. The new
supply had a 24-pin ATX connector and my motherboard had a good ol'
classic 20 pin connector. From the looks of it, the 24-pin beastie was
designed to be "Universal" or so the manual states. Just line up the
litte locking lug thinamajig and good to go. Hook in the additional 12v
connector to the main board and connect the PCIe connector to the
graphics card. Only the board is 8 pin and the power supply is a 6 pin.
No problem, they have an adaptor that will connect to the board's 8 pin
to 2 molex connectors. Just get one from each molex-chain and I'll be
good to go. Flip the hard switch on the power supply (no smoke, yet...
that's a good sign!) and punch the "On" button on the front of the
computer. Success! It boots. Load up Vista, which has taken on the
default resolution, and the computer promptly locks hard.
Hmm. Not good.
Reboot, and ... Nothing! Really not good.
Fine, power down, make sure everything is seated well, and power up.
Nothing for a few seconds (pretty normal for this motherboard on a cold
boot) then I hear something from the speakers. So, I turn the speakers
up.... It's a scratchy, poorly sampled, female voice stating repeatedly
something that sounds astonishingly like "System failed CPU check"
Oh, crap! the new PSU fried the processor. crap crap crap. OK, maybe
it's something else. In desperation, I yank the plugs from the new PSU,
plug in the old PSU, and power up the computer. Same result. :( Double
not good. My face turned pale, my wife kept asking if there was anything
she could get me. "A new computer?"
Hmmm. Vexing. So, I put back in the old video card. Fire up the system,
same disheartening result. Auggh. Wife pulls up the dell site, and hands
me her card. "Just buy it" After arguing back and forth about purchasing
a computer we can't afford on HER credit card (our main emergency card)
I finally sit at her computer. As a last ditch, I keyed in Asus and the
audio message I was hearing. Someone made a post on a Quicken forum (of
all things) about forgetting to plug in the power supply to the video
card. Aha! I intentionally didn't plug it in in an effort to speed
things up when I put the old card in. So, I go back, plug it in and the
system boots. Now, why won't the new card work?
Swap in the new card. Notice that it's precariously close to my old HDTV
tuner that I haven't used since I finally bought a real HDTV. OK, that
card can go. New card seems to fit well, so I tie it down, plug the
power connectors in and hook up the new PSU. System boots.
I installed the drivers, and fired up Spore, which ran just fine. Nice
and smooth on the movies, too. Good. good. Run the little Vista
Experience test, and the system goes from 4 to 2.9 the Aero rating was a
2.9 Hmmm. Well, I knew there were problems with Vista and this
particular card, and handily ATI released a hotfix just for this
situation. Started that install and went to bed.
Woke up, did some finishing touches, ran spore again. The intro video to
the cell stage was glassy smooth. Niiice. Everything was definitely
smoother. Everything was automatically cranked to max, too, in the
settings dialog. Thanks for that :) Though it does expose the CPU bottle
neck, since it procedurally generates textures, creatures, buildings and
other things still have a basic color for a few seconds.
But, Spore was not the reason for this video card. Oh, no ... Spore only
requires DX9. I wanted it for something that supports DX10. FSX. So,
this morning I fired up FSX and cranked the sliders to medium-high, just
to see what it did and it ran .... reasonably well. Again, exposing some
of the bottle-necks expected on an aging AGP system.
I have yet to enable DX10 support... So, I'll have to try that later.
But I'm happy, if a little shaken by the whole installation nightmare.
In retrospect, "System failed CPU check" was probably "System failed
video check" ...
I much prefer the characteristic 2 long beeps followed by 4 short beeps.
I at least KNOW what that is, and it isn't subject to a subjective
interpretation of poorly sampled speech.
The good thing is, even with the GPU-hungry FSX my new power supply ran
as cool as can be.
--
~Mike
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