[Lilug] Recommend nvidia card

[Kenneth Downs]

Chris, thanks for all of the detail.

I'm going to see about Intel, and if I don't like it I'm going to fall 
back to nVidia and re-read this email.

Chris Knadle wrote:
> On Sat, February 7, 2009 1:26 pm, Kenneth Downs wrote:
>   
>> i'm looking for the cheapest nvidia card that will be very happy with
>> Ubuntu and the fancy desktop nonsense^H^H^H^H^H effects.
>>
>> This would go into an existing machine as a 2nd card.
>>
>> I know Nvidia plays nice with Linux, but this is not for gaming, and I
>> don't want to spend $200.00.  But I'm nervous to go low end and find it
>> does not support the effects.
>>
>> Any recommendations?
>>     
>
> Actually, I'd be very surprised if I heard that even the lowest end Nvidia
> card didn't support all of the compiz effects.  The main thing I'd look
> for would be a video card that didn't require a fan [silence is a great
> thing] and just double-check that it supported OpenGL.  The compiz effects
> aren't very taxing as video effects go -- the "better" video cards do fast
> texture rendering and have good built-in pixel shaders, but I think none
> of those things are needed for what you're looking to do.  An Intel card
> should be fine too.  An ATi card would also work, but I'd make sure that
> it had an open source ATi driver, which is important because the older ATi
> cards went out of support for 3D drivers and became a relatively unhappy
> situation.
>
> IMHO the main thing 3D gets you is the ability to play 3D games.  A lot of
> people enjoy playing with Compiz Fusion because the effects are pretty,
> but I likewise tried it, played with it, and found it wasn't for me --
> tended needlessly distract me more than help me.
>
> Nvidia cards do have good Linux support, but things have gotten more
> complicated -- the driver now occasionally splits into "old" and "new"
> drivers, and the old drivers have to be hacked by other people in order to
> get them to work with newer kernels.  If you build your own kernels, you
> also have to taint the kernel with a open-source but proprietary driver
> that has to be built for each version of the kernel you install.  There
> are also other driver installation methods, but the other methods tend not
> to use package management, or deactivate the Ubuntu Nvidia drivers when
> installing new ones, leading to confusion (the 'envyng' method).  Oh,
> yeah, and avoid Nvidia G84 and G86 chips, because they have manufacture
> defects that cause failure due to heat because internal portions of the
> chip don't get cooled properly.  There's a good wikipedia page that
> explains which cards have those chips in them.
>
> And oh by-the-way, the Nvidia kernel driver is larger than the entire
> Linux kernel itself.  The Nvidia driver I have loaded right now is about 7
> MB.  Not a big deal because memory sizes are comparatively large today,
> but it's also not as memory efficient as it could be, and slowly grows
> until a new driver set is started.
>
> So there are benefits and drawbacks when it comes to performance vs
> openness and support.
>
>   -- Chris
>
> --
>
> Chris Knadle
> Chris.Knadle at coredump.us
>
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>   


-- 
Kenneth Downs
Secure Data Software, Inc.
www.secdat.com    www.andromeda-project.org
631-689-7200   Fax: 631-689-0527
cell: 631-379-0010

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