Re: Which Graphics Card?

["Pavel A. Romashkin" <pavel.romashkin(at)noaa.gov>]

Hi David,
I just went through this graphics card chosing business for building a
PC for a f riend and upgrading my own, although on a different budget
level. GeForce3 is the hottest 3D gaming accelerator, but is overpriced
(as all new products) and not many programs take advantage of its
features. GeForce3's advantages are in shadowing, lighting and massive
fill rates used for rendering 3D virtual worlds in games. However, for
2D CAD applications (and possibly IDL's OpenGL?) you might want to check
into expensive ($300 and up) professional cards that outperform the GF3
hands down. They are useless for games but superb for CAD.
I found out that a cheap ($70) Radeon LE 32Mb DDR card is totally
adequate for my needs. By adding a couple of registry entries, you turn
it into a $150 RadeonDDR :-) I have not tried IDL on it yet (the CD is
in the mail supposedly), and will report as soon as I try it.
Cheers,
Pavel