best VGA (graphic) card

hello everyone,

I have been on this forum over a month now and I have seen that it's really cool - ppl are really willing to help you a lot!!!!

Out of my own curiosity, I have a question now!!! - I have seen other members mentioning various 3D cards, names and qualities - I personally have an nVidia 32MB 3D VGA card (hoping to upgrade soon to 64MB) on a P4 2.8GHz, and I'm wondering whether that is enough to work with all my OSs at its best? - I run a dual boot with slackware9.1 , Mandrake9.2 and winXP - (I need them all for different purposes :wink: )

what I mean is: is that a good graphic card? shall I upgrade to something more consistent? can you give out some names?

any suggestion will be read and considered
thanx

i personally use a generic nVidia-based GeForce FX 5200 128mb card and have gotten quite impressive results from it.. but then again, i was using a voodoo3 before that..

It's hard to answer whether "it is enough". Technically, I don't need a 3D card at all, since I don't use any 3D functionality (or at least very seldomly - that would be the screen savers). However, I have a GeForce FX 5200 anyway, but that's mainly because it was the cheapest one that I could find that supported the features that I do need - dual monitors and TV output.

So, you know, an answer to your question would be hard to give without knowing what you intend to do.

hello and thanx for your inputs,

but as usual I always forget to be more specific!!! - what I meant was: would my nVidia Geforce 32MB be enough to decode satellite streams?

After lots of reaserch I have found out what hardware I need (softare included) to decode satellite streams on my PC rather than on the TV - I'm also trying to learn a bit of powerful Linux scripting (using slackware9.1) so that I can view more than one image (and possibly play with them :roll: )

if you have any suggestion or tips that you can give me I'll be very happy to consider - ohhh by the way, do you think that I could easily upgrade my laptop (P4 2.8GHz - 512MB RAM - 60GB /dev/hda - 32MB nVidia GeForce) to a GeForce 128MB?

thanx to all
the opearator

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't think that a good video card is needed to decode satellite streams. Isn't that done by the CPU?