Help me pick a replacement graphics card?

[Pieter de Goeje]

On Monday 22 January 2007 04:56, Kirk Strauser wrote:
> My aging GeForce MX 400 is dying and I want to replace it with something a
> bit more modern.  My desktop is running FreeBSD 6.2 on a Asus A7V (Via
> chipset) motherboard with a 1.4GHz Athlon.  This is more of a hardward
> question than software, although pointers to any FreeBSD-specific driver
> gotchas would be appreciated.
>
> Basically, I want to run a few OpenGL apps (particular the "Second Life"
> client, which works perfectly under Linux emulation), so I pretty much have
> to use the "nvidia" driver and not the open "NV" driver.  The old card's
> performance was fine for my purposes, so almost much anything at all newer
> should be OK.  Therefore, I don't want to spend a lot of money on this.
> However, I don't want to buy a card so old that NVidia will drop support
> for it in the next driver upgrade, as they did with this current card.
>
> My motherboard has an AGP 4x slot that the "nvidia" driver wants to run in
> 2x mode because it doesn't like the Via chipset.  Now, it seems like there
> are precious few AGP 4x cards available these days; most look like 8x.  Are
> those backward compatible all the way to 2x?  Google returns plenty of
> authoritative-sounding hits on both sides.
My understanding is that all AGP cards should be backwards and forwards 
compatible as long as the motherboard supports the correct voltage. For more 
information see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accelerated_Graphics_Port 
section compatibility.
>
> Is there anything else I should be looking for?  Any specific models you
> might recommend?
I can recommend the GeForce 6200 
(http://www.nvidia.com/page/geforce6200_agp.html)
It's compatible with AGP 4x. I have this one running on a KM400A chipset from 
VIA, using the freebsd agp driver. Performance is excellent. I used to have 
this one running without AGP support from the driver, but performance was 
still pretty good.
In europe you can purchase the GeForce 6200 for less than EUR. 50,- (65 USD).

Hope this helps,
Pieter de Goeje