🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <815779071snz@sierra.demon.co.uk>
           Geoff@sierra.demon.co.uk "Geoff Smith" writes:

>My 1Mb video card has decided to give up on me, so I need another one
>fast.  I don't really know much about them, so I need some help with what
>I should buy.  I basically want SVGA, 1024*1024, 16 M colours.  Beyond
>that, I am not sure.  Is 1Mb enough?

Not for the numerate.

1024*1024 isn't a standard size but that's a meg of pixels. 16M colours
requires 3 bytes / pixel to hold the colour information so you are really
looking for a card with at least 3 meg of RAM.

2, 4 and 8 meg are common amounts of video RAM. Personally I use 4 meg of
RAM and use 1024*1280 at 16M colours. This is great except that win 3.11
keeps running out of resources when drawing the desktop.

Fortunately I don't use win 3.11 except for testing. Get any of the real
OSs to get the benefit of the sort of video card you want.


>  Is 1Mb enough?  It seems to have been when my old
>card worked,

Well, you wern't getting 1024*1024*16M col out of it. Maybe you were
working at 1024*768 at 256 colours ?


> but what am I missing out on?

Resolution, colour depth and maybe speed and refresh rate.


>   How about this VESA thing?
>What is all that?

Vesa can be two things, a bus or a video API. You want the API, you don't
want the bus unless your machine is a VL ( Vesa local ) bus motherboard.


>So, could anyone please help me with the best I can get (for a limited
>budget),

Not unless you say how limited ?


> tell me what it will cost me if possible, and where to get it if
>they know of a particularly cheap place?  How about trading in my old
>card-Any chance of that?

Square root of none at all at a guess. Most dealers of skiploads of broken
kit that would have zilch second hand value if they could get it fixed which
they can't. Generally the most valuable resource that gets recycled are the
jumpers !


>  It is actually only about 6 months old, but I
>have trouble with my supplier, and I am wondering if it is really worth
>chansing him any longer.

Well, if it's under guarantee and your budget is tight it probably is !


Cards with a meg of ram ought to be under 100 UKP.

Cards with a few meg of ram might well be 200 to 300 UKP.

You need to think if your above aspirations are worth it.

I doubt we can be more specific with our recomendations unless you tell
us more about your machine and OS, especially what type of bus you have/
I guess we should know what monitor spec you have too.

-- 
John Beardmore