[NTLUG:Discuss] Re: pci-e and linux ( and radeon -vs- nvidia )

[Steve Baker]

The reason to consider the nVidia 5xxx and 6xxx series machines in
preference to their earlier GeForce 2's, 3's and 4's is because the
5xxx and later fully support shader technology.  For future 3D graphics,
this is unbelievably important.  There are effects and techniques that
you can do with these new machines that the older ones simply cannot do
AT ALL.

So over the coming year or two, it will become increasingly true that
GeForce 4's and earlier will be getting less and less able to run the
greatest stuff.  So even if they are fast enough - there are strong
reasons to prefer 5xxx even if they were a little slower than GF 4's.

Shader technologies are the biggest thing to happen to 3D graphics
since the early 1980's - there has been no similar leap in technology
for 3D since the very first multimillion dollar hardware accellerators.

---------------------------- Steve Baker -------------------------
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