On Wed, 4 Sep 2019 at 10:54, Chris Green <cl@isbd.net> wrote:

On Tue, Sep 03, 2019 at 09:27:28AM +0100, Phil Thane wrote:
>    Hello folks,
>
>    Looking for hardware advice. My desktop PC hasn't had a hardware
>    upgrade for about 5 years when I bought a MoBo bundle and a secondhand
>    graphics card. It's an AMD Quad core CPU running at 3200MHz with 2G of
>    RAM and Nvidea GE Force 8400.
>
>    For the most part it's OK, I don't do video editing or gaming so it
>    doesn't work too hard. The graphics card has always been an issue
>    though, it refuses to run 64bit Linux distros. I've tried several in
>    the past, Debian-based and others, and always get the same result,
>    installs OK but on boot just gives a black screen. Annoyingly it will
>    run 64bit distros from DVD so you think it's going to be OK after an
>    install, but it isn't. It hasn't been too much of an issue running
>    32bit versions until recently but it seems they are being phased out.
>    I'd like to try KDE Neon for example, but there is no 32bit version.
>
>    So:
>
>    Any recommendations for a cheapish graphics card that will work?
>
I've always gone for intel graphics on board after a few issues like
yours in the past.  Intel board with intel graphics 'just works' in
Linux in my experience. So I'm not a lot of use unless you go for a
new motherboard.


>    Is it worth getting 4GB or more RAM?
>
Probably, RAM is relatively cheap, I have 8Gb in my refurbished
Fujitsu system.


--
Chris Green

Surprised you are having problems with the Nvidia GE Force 8400.  PC I am using at the moment has a quad core AMD II X4 620 and the onboard graphics is Nvidia 8200 which works fine with 64 bit distros.  Presently have a  GeForce 9500 GT graphics card in the same PC which also works fine with 64 bit distros. On separate partitions I have Peppermint 9 , Manjaro, MX and Devuan which all work fine.

For 64 bit, more memory would be better, minimum of 4gb but 8gb would be better.