Recommended "entry level" nVidia graphics card
I have a PC with on-board ATI HD-6530D. The motherboard is less than a year old, but apparently this is far too old for AMD/ATI to still support the chipset so proprietary drivers don't exist for it. I'm using the FOSS drivers (which would be my preference anyway) but I'm having issues in X that are causing it to die one way or another every day or so. The research I've done so far suggests that I have two options: give up half my life to working out what's going on, or accept it and move on. With the latter option in mind, that means I want to buy a cheap PCI-X video card, but I'd like to get one that's at least as "good" as the HD6530D. And for reasons of lack of support I'd like to avoid AMD/ATI. That pretty much means nVidia (unless someone tells me they're just as bad?). Any recommendations? No gaming, so just responsive desktop graphics, and reliable under Linux. (I'm on Kubuntu 13.04 (beta) at the moment, which I upgraded to in part to see if it improved things, which it didn't.) Aside: I did manage to install the ATI drivers and it did seem better, albeit with an "unsupported hardware" logo permanently on my screen, which it may be possible to get rid of. But I didn't stick with it long enough to see if it really made things better. If nVidia/ATI are as bad as each other then I'd consider either brand's card that's currently supported if it's cheap enough, especially if it's reliable under the FOSS drivers. I was sure that AMD made some moves to open sourcing their drivers, but I must have dreamed it? -- Mark Rogers // More Solutions Ltd (Peterborough Office) // 0844 251 1450 Registered in England (0456 0902) @ 13 Clarke Rd, Milton Keynes, MK1 1LG
What mainboard is it ? I assume you mean PCI-e as a year old PC with only PCI-X slots would be weird and you'd be extremely limited in choices of GFX card you could plug in ;) For PCI-e really for the mainstream you are limited to either Nvidia and their closed source binary blob or ATI/AMD who despite now trying to be OSS friendly have never managed to provide me with a satisfactory experience (on Windows or Linux but especially on Linux) Myself if I have wanted 3D and accelerated video etc to just work I have used nvidia and their binary blob, if I just want a reliable desktop machine with enough oomph to maybe handle a composting window manager then I try and find something with a compatible intel gfx core but you can't get those on a GFX card. There are also two alternative OSS drivers for nvidia "nv" which was developed with/by nvidia and is now discontinued and doesn't support the modern chipsets or nouveau which is a product of reverse engineering and only really supports 2D acceleration at the moment (so any compositing desktop ideas are out) it may work well enough as a general machine not sure what video performance is like though.
On Sun, 24 Mar 2013 09:19:02 +0000 Wayne Stallwood <ALUGlist@digimatic.co.uk> allegedly wrote:
There are also two alternative OSS drivers for nvidia "nv" which was developed with/by nvidia and is now discontinued and doesn't support the modern chipsets or nouveau which is a product of reverse engineering and only really supports 2D acceleration at the moment (so any compositing desktop ideas are out) it may work well enough as a general machine not sure what video performance is like though.
I'm using nouveau with an Nvidia Geforce GT220 card on a three year old PC running Mint 14 Xfce. I get perfectly acceptable video performance for DVDs, TV and video streaming at 1920x1080 resolution. I am not a gamer. Occasionally though (say once or twice a month), the display will have odd colouration after a screen lock session. This normally clears after about a minute or so of use. I do not know if this is caused by the nouveau drive. Mick --------------------------------------------------------------------- blog: baldric.net gpg fingerprint: FC23 3338 F664 5E66 876B 72C0 0A1F E60B 5BAD D312 ---------------------------------------------------------------------
On 24 March 2013 09:19, Wayne Stallwood <ALUGlist@digimatic.co.uk> wrote:
What mainboard is it ? I assume you mean PCI-e as a year old PC with only PCI-X slots would be weird and you'd be extremely limited in choices of GFX card you could plug in ;)
Yes, PCI-e, brain not in gear....
Myself if I have wanted 3D and accelerated video etc to just work I have used nvidia and their binary blob, if I just want a reliable desktop machine with enough oomph to maybe handle a composting window manager then I try and find something with a compatible intel gfx core but you can't get those on a GFX card.
Indeed, I often go with an onboard Intel for this reason but it's a bit late to pick a different motherboard! I've generally used nVidia in the past so based on comments here and elsewhere I've bought a cheap G210 - we'll see how I get on. I made just find out my problem wasn't graphics related after all.... -- Mark Rogers // More Solutions Ltd (Peterborough Office) // 0844 251 1450 Registered in England (0456 0902) @ 13 Clarke Rd, Milton Keynes, MK1 1LG
On 20/03/2013 11:05, Mark Rogers wrote: [BIG SNIP] I too had trouble with an ATI HD card after a recent update. I tried to fiddle with drivers etc., but in the end, I just gave up. I replaced the (entry-level) card card with one of these: http://www.ebuyer.com/252476-asus-g210-silent-1gb-ddr3-vga-dvi-hdmi-pci-e-lo... and it works fine on a stock Sabayon system, coping with whatever I throw at it (but no games) and is totally silent. When I bought mine a few weeks ago, it was £19.98, but £22.98 isn't unreasonable. Cheers, Laurie. -- --------------------------------------------------------------------- Laurie Brown laurie@brownowl.com ---------------------------------------------------------------------
participants (4)
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Laurie Brown -
Mark Rogers -
mick -
Wayne Stallwood