What Video Card Should I Get

[Dancen]

Long story short, a few months ago I built myself a new computer (with much help from a friend) and had most of the parts from my old computer left over. The only thing I'm missing is a video card, then I can turn the whole thing into my Linux fun-box at last. I'm just not sure which one I should get.

While I don't intend to do any gaming with it, I am going to be running 1600x1200 resolution with plenty of eye-candy. I want a card that will be able to handle this smoothly. This will be FluxBox on a Gentoo install most likely, although I will probably have 2 or 3 other distros on there eventually. I'm thinking Ubuntu and SuSe, if that affects anything.

Another factor is driver complexity. If I need to install specific drivers, they either have to be very straightforward or have very detailed documentation.

My price range is anything under $51, preferably ordered from Newegg. That limitation still yields 112 results, so I'm a little daunted. Any advice is appreciated!

[DimGR]

my laptop's X600 does 1680x1050 just fine :)

[StarTiger]

nVidia has by far the best linux driver support. it's also straight forward and well documented.

IMHO, I have had the best luck with PNY, MSI, ASUS are the most reliable cards.

[fallen0047]

I have an ATI Radeon AIW card, with the plan of making my Linux box into a Home Entertainment System. It is very painful. Stick to Nvidia.

[IsaacKuo]

I wouldn't automatically discount low end Ati cards. I have a couple Debian Stable systems with bottom end Radeon cards (an old Radeon 7200 and a less antique Radeon 7000). Both of them worked great out-of-box, using the open source ati driver built into the default Debian install. I never had to install any driver.

I run them at 2048x1536i with a lot of eye candy, including 3d accelerated OpenGL special effects and screensavers. Some of the GL screensavers have funny graphics glitches, but not a big deal.

That said, I never had a problem installing the (commercial) nvidia drivers. My bottom end nvidia card simply isn't capable of the 2048x1536i resolution I favor, though, so it's currently not being used in any of my systems.

If I get another video card, it'll probably be another low end Ati Radeon card. As easy as it is to install the nvidia drivers, it's even easier to not install any driver. The OpenGL support may be incomplete, but it's enough for me.

[kart38]

The new ATI drivers are, IMHO, easier to install than the nvidia drivers. The ATI drivers can now be installed from within X now, saved quite some time over installing the nvidia drivers. IMHO, go with the one that has the features you need/want. I needed a DX9 compatible card and ATI had one cheap.

Jason

[Dancen]

Okay, in trying to combine everyone's recommendations into my purchase, I came down to this:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16814121186

I won't order it until tomorrow in case anyone has a specific warning about that card. Thanks for really helping me narrow my search, it was definitely a huge help! :D

I'm now one baby step closer to being Microsoft-free!

[bwkaz]

5200? Blech! ;)

5200s are cheap for a reason. They're the continuation of the MX line -- which was mostly severely underpowered junk. There is one variant of the 5200 that performs decently, but I don't know if it's this variant or not. (It was either the 128-bit variant, or the 128-meg variant. This card is the 128-meg variant.)

It may work for what you need (because you say you won't be playing games). But I would make absolutely sure I would NEVER change my mind, if I went with that card -- because unless the 128-meg variant is the more powerful one, the one you linked to is pretty badly crippled.

[XiaoKJ]

as long as you are sure you don't need 3d acceleration, just go ahead with any card and the driver vesa will fit it.

However, it is still the best idea to buy an nvidia, a second-to-cheapest since you _know_ you can do more with it later.

[Dancen]

5200? Blech! ;)

5200s are cheap for a reason. They're the continuation of the MX line -- which was mostly severely underpowered junk. There is one variant of the 5200 that performs decently, but I don't know if it's this variant or not. (It was either the 128-bit variant, or the 128-meg variant. This card is the 128-meg variant.)

It may work for what you need (because you say you won't be playing games). But I would make absolutely sure I would NEVER change my mind, if I went with that card -- because unless the 128-meg variant is the more powerful one, the one you linked to is pretty badly crippled.

Ack, this is why I didn't order right away. Unfortunately, even looking back at my final 4 cards, they're all 5200's. But since I am positive I won't be playing games on this I think it'll be my choice. I have a Windows comp. for games and to fall back on. Once I'm proficient in Linux I plan to install it on that computer anyway, so I'll never need this one for games, just the resolution/eye candy/screensavers. Thanks for the warnings though, I had no idea :)

XiaoKJ, that's something I was considering as well. I just wanted to make sure that if the generic drivers weren't enough for whatever reason, that the proprietary ones were relatively simple to get running.

[ooagentbender]

its been said before but im not sure you can stress it enough

NVidia

[ladoga]

its been said before but im not sure you can stress it enough

NVidia

I don't think thats anymore the case.

I have ATI Radeon 9800Pro and X800XT PE. I don't know about earlier model ATI cards, but atleast these have worked without a hitch and driver install has been painless. Performance in OpenGL games ported to both platforms (Linux and Windows) seem to give better performance under linux. So drivers probably arent any worse than ones for windows.

[zeroth]

nVidia has by far the best linux driver support. it's also straight forward and well documented.

IMHO, I have had the best luck with PNY, MSI, ASUS are the most reliable cards.

I bought CD-R's from PNY once...oh man was that a mistake. most of them didn't work. I'v eheld a grudge against PNY ever since and refuse to purchase anything produced by PNY, such as RAM, Graphics Cards, and yes, CDs.


I am an ATI fan, Nvidia does have superb linux driver support, but ATI is getting FAR better at supporting linux. their latest drivers show that, or at least the installation does.

ATI Radeon 9800 pro runs Doom 3 just nicely under Slackware 10.1. Counter-Strike and Half-Life 2 are another story...they run under Cedega, and they run nicely, but the performance drop o nthe same machine from Windows 2000 is just too much. however, the performance drop COULD be because of the Source engine's reliability upon DirectX. Cedega kind of emulates that I think (even though it does not emulate the game itself), or "converts" it into OpenGL API..I'm not entirely sure.

I've never personally installed or used an Nvidia card under linux.