[Leaplist] so, dead nv part?

[Bryan J. Smith]

The biggest reason for PCI video cards were multi-head, beyond
just older disk usage.  This has now been replaced by PCIe.
There are quad-output PCIe x1 (yes, _x1_) cards for this now.
But since it's so easy to bridge, there are still lower-end GeForce
cards with the PCI option through the 8000 and 9000 series (100
as well?).

The GeForce 4 MX was the ultimate mark-up GPU.  nVidia took it's
3-year old GeForce 2 MX (NV11) core and created the NV17 (and,
later, NV18) by fusing the old GeForce2 core with a few GeForce4
add-ons -- namely the generic VIVO (video-in, video-out) and motion
compensation.  But for all intents and purposes, it was always slower
than an NV20 (GeForce 3), and nearly all NV10 (GeForce 2 GTS)
cards -- let alone the NV25 (GeForce 4Ti) was nothing like it (but
an improved NV20 that already destroyed the GeForce 2/4 MX).

Using the cheap NV11 core meant it cost pennies in fabrication space,
and getting the retailers on-board meant you could get $99-139 for a
card not even worth $39 anymore.  It artificially kept video card prices
up at the retail shelves, even as you could get newer cards with much
better performance in mail order at half the price (or less).

But it was available in a PCI flavor.  ;)



----- Original Message ----
From: Kevin Korb <kmk at sanitarium.net>

Interesting.  I never even considered looking for newer video chipsets in
PCI.

IIRC the last PCI video card I bought was a GeForce MX 4000 which was a
favorite for NTSC video output.  At least until they dropped driver
support for it.

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