[OT] 3D linux video card advice please

[J Sloan <jjs@pobox.com>]

I know this may be just a bit off topic, but there _are_ some
hard core 3D linux users here, whose input I'd like to have.

The rest of you, feel free to ignore -

I had been using a voodoo 3 for a couple of years and had been
happy with it. however in the search for more power, and partly
out of curiosity, I picked up an nvidia geforce and replaced my
trusty old voodoo3 to see how it would do - no question about it,
the geforce is clearly much better.

However I'd really prefer to use a video card that's natively
supported by XFree/DRI and the linux kernel.

I'm building a new Linux box, I already have a 1.4 G Pentium 4
on an ASUS MB - but I want to select the video and sound cards
that will really do it justice -

Last I checked the voodoo 3 was still the best natively supported
video card, but as you know it's running out of gas by now - support
for other, newer video cards was "coming" but not quite there. My
built in i810 is almost usable, sort of. Anything changed? Who's
using a voodoo 5? Is it still basically a more expensive voodoo3,
or is it a measurably better performer on Linux now?

Anybody using ATI Radeon? Rage?

Any Others?

Any success stories, recommendations?


Thanks for your input.

Joe