Re: [OT] Crazy idea: Design open-source graphics chip

From: Torrey Hoffman
Date: Thu Jan 29 2004 - 13:09:36 EST


On Thu, 2004-01-29 at 08:13, Timothy Miller wrote:

> We cannot compete with Nvidia or ATI or 3Dlabs or Matrox or even S3.
>
> The real question we have to ask ourselves is, what would be the market
> demand for a graphics card that is 3 generations behind the state of the
> art and over-priced, the only advantage being that it's a 100% open
> architecture?

I think I can do better than that by buying two-generation-behind cards
off EBay.

The older Matrox, ATI, etc. cards have complete driver documentation
(AFAIK) or at least are very well supported by completely open Linux /
XFree86 drivers.

You can get a Matrox Millenium G400 on EBay right now for under $20. Or
an ATI 7500 for under $30.

So, as cool as an open-source graphics chip would be, I think if you
can't manufacture a complete AGP card with your new chip for less than
$30, and better performance than those parts... don't bother.


--
Torrey Hoffman <thoffman@xxxxxxxxx>

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