I wrote Quote:
Ports of 3D games on the Sam440 tend to not run so well, I *think* often due to a lack of video memory. A 128MB Radeon 9250 PCI would probably solve that, but disabling Compositing & switching to 16-bit Workbench might help in some cases (I'm not really a gamer, so I haven't bothered experimenting).
I did some quick tests with some 3D games I remember running really slowly on my Sam440, with mixed results:
* Lugaru does still run very slowly for me, and in fact recommends a 128MB graphics card. But I was able to get it to run really fast by just reducing my video memory usage (16-bit Workbench with no Compositing). So this "proves" my idea has merit.
* srb2riders now seems to run fairly fast, even though video memory (just about) runs out. It seems that improvements to OS4's video memory usage with Update 3 (?) already helped here, although reducing my video memory usage did seem to improve it a little more.
* srb2 - same comments as srb2riders.
* supertuxkart still runs dog slow, even when reducing video memory usage. The documentation indicates it has very demanding OpenGL requirements, and really needs Gallium3D for good performance. Although a fast CPU (which my 667Mhz Sam440 does not have) would help.
Conclusion based upon these quick tests: Only some 3D games don't run well due to a lack of video memory, and these would likely benefit from a 128MB graphics card.