by I didn't find anything (on Google/etc) before buying and installing, so I
thought I'd spread the word...
I just purchased an nVidia GeForce4 Ti 4200 AGP graphics card manufactured
by "MSI". Works awesome with Red Hat Linux 7.3 on a Dell Optiplex GX240.
* cost about $160
* dual head with different size monitors! (monitors: 1-Sony Trinitron
Flat Screen 21", 2-Sony Trinitron Flat Screen 19")
* drivers (RPM, SRPM, source) provided by nVidia. I used the SRPMS.
* works out-of-the-box, but nVidia's drivers allowed for dual-head and other
customizations (hardware-powered cursor shadow. woo hoo!)
* fast as hell: Tux Racer is amazing. I don't have Quake to test.
* my window manager (sawfish) seems to recognize the dual-headedness;
it places windows appropriately.
My only complaints are (1) it moved away the Mesa GL libraries in
favor of the nVidia GL stuff, so I wasn't able to compile "Cannon Smash"
from source. Not that I'll really play games anyway, I just thought I'd
try. (2) Every time I switch to a virtual terminal, any ANSI-colored
console text looks funky (or is invisible). Luckily, color can be
disabled most of the time for console apps.
My reason for trying the nVidia card was because I believe the ATI drivers
that come with Red Hat 7.3 (XFree86 4.2.0, I think) _don't work well_. I've
seen numerous problems ranging from full lock-ups to no virtual terminals,
to unusable X configurations. Bye bye ATI.