[GTALUG] Has the graphics-card world gone mad?

[Anthony de Boer]

Giles Orr wrote:
> On Tue, 30 Mar 2021 at 13:08, Anthony de Boer via talk <talk at gtalug.org> wrote:
> >  ...
> > If all else fails, a Raspberry Pi 4 will drive a pair of high-end
> > monitors, probably not with the grunt that any modern game would want,
> > but enough to be the new X Terminal.
> 
> That just shifts the problem.  He has a good computer with a
> not-entirely-working video card.  You're suggesting something that
> would put him in a situation where he'd have a passable video card
> with a not-entirely-working computer attached to it.

At no point did I suggest this would outperform anything, other than a
lack of a usable video card on the good computer vs the Pi being able to
light lots'n'lots of pixels.

Back in the day it used to be customary to run X applications on the big
grunty server in the machine room, talking over the network to a
relatively underpowered desktop X Terminal that knew little more than how
to paint stuff on the screen, and that's still a possible fallback today,
with the big PC using the RPi as a terminal.

Awesome PC video card > RPi4 > crappy or no video at all.

> Don't get me wrong: I use Raspberry Pis for a lot of things.  But I
> don't use them as my daily driver, because they don't have the
> horsepower.  Shifting to ARM would also break most games.

They're more powerful than most of the machines us oldtimers have used,
not an entirely bad modest desktop experience in their own right, and a
possible silent-computer frontend to noisy spinning rust in another
room.

Granted, the ancient X protocol didn't include sound and this is probably
going to be a much more viable setup for a non-gamer.  But back then we
had 10 Mbit thinnet shared with everyone else on the floor, while
nowadays we have to make do with GigE, so the experience might actually
be better than remembered.

-- 
Anthony de Boer