You know have the Nvidia driver successfully installed and get the full potential out of this card.
There are different ways to test the acceleration: Play a full HD movie, start a 3D application, like a game.

Tobi - this may seem square - but can you suggest how I play a full HD movie or start a 3D game. AH! maybe I put a DVD of a movie into a DVD drive? Understand, I'm a programmer, not a gamer. Or can I get a part of a movie from the internet?

I have program Totem Movie Player installed. Also Mplayer and Realplayer

Post Script: I found gnubik and it "works real good" - unfortunately I never tried it before so I dont really know how it is different - but I do have a f14 drive I can boot and try it on to see the difference.

Thanks guys - now this opens a new area I can mess with

I'll install a DVD drive and see what I can do with a movie.

DVDs are not HD movies, but you can get some excellent free HD movies from the Internet, like Elephants Dream or Sintel.
As a side note, both films were made using only free tools.

Unless you want to run gnome 3.X for some reason, I'd suggest trying a different desktop, like Xfce, Lxde (both avaible as default installs with the 'respin' versions) or even fluxbox/openbox.

One of the nice things about the clsoed nVidia drivers is VDPAU (Video Decode and Presentation API for Unix). More info here-

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VDPAU

If you have VDPAU, and are using VDPAU for playing HD content (or any video content that can be decoded with VDPAU) its easy to see the different compared to playing without VDPAU. Just check top, htop or any other CPU load monitor, you will seee CPU use is much lower with VDPAU when playing supported content.

I dont know if you have VDPAU installed (I guess you do from what I know of fedora and kmod) or what media player you prefer using- some of them are easy to use with VDPAU (most of the mplayer versions), some of them are a nightmare (VLC).

Super - I am starting to "get it" ie understand why did this. I thought it was to improve the things that I was doing -(like the minor improvement in Thunderbird) I now understand it was to increase the kinds of things I could do.

Again - thanks so much.

Cascade - thanks
If I install one or both can I easily switch back and forth between different desktops? For example, if I put both on my disk and then duplicate the disk - one for me and one for my wifes fedora system - can I easily bring up gnome on one computer and Xfce on the other?

On a related note, I see that the nvidia driver supports a bunch of cards. If I find a used nvidia agp card from that list on ebay, can I assume that I can install it on the older coputer and then have accelerated graphics on both system when running a duplicate copy of my disk on my wifes computer?

I understand the functionality would differ depending on the specs of the 2 cards.

Fascinating - I'll look into it.

Thanks

You can switch witch desktop to run in your login screen, if you have more than one installed.

Depends on which card you get and which driver version you are running. Nvidia just moved the cards from the 6000 and 7000 series into the legacy branch, I think it was with driver version 304.xx. So if you get such a card and you use a driver from that version it should work (you possibly have to use different config files), with newer driver it will not work. AFAIK, there are no AGP cards with 8000 series (or newer) chips.

Switching the desktop you are booting into is easy at the login screen.

While you might be able to put 2 different .isos on one disk (eg fedora 17, and fedora 17 'xfce spin') and then get the 'missing' desktop packages from the disc, its porbably not worth it.

Easier would be to just install whichever version you want, the get the other desktop from the net. .

BTW, in the past fedora dvd vesions came with multipule desktops (gnome, KDE, Xfce, Lxde) on the disc. If you want a single install disc with the ability to install multipule desktops, its probably a better option than putting 2 .isos on one disc.

You've probably looked at the latest nVidia closed drivers- they (currently) support cards from 6XXX onward.

The old FX/5XXX card use driver 173.XX. The even older Geforce 2-4 cards use driver 96.XX. The really old geforce 1 and 3 and earlier cards (riva, vanta, TNT, TNT2) use driver 71.XX.

The latest drivers are updated frequently to work with newer kernels and xorg versions. 173.XX can lag behind, 96.XX is further behind (and has now got its last release IIRC), and 71.XX just isnt updated to work with new xorg versions.

If both you and your wife are running fedora versions, you might find that 173.XX and 96.XX drivers wont work (as fedora tend to use the most current xorg version avaible).

If the 173.XX and 96.XX drivers wont work with a system, you should be able to use nouveau (open source nVidia drivers).

Nope, it will be from 310 onward. (OK, I think its from 310 onward based on the 306.23 windows drivers still supporting the 6XXX and 7XXX cards, but its still a bit of a guess)

http://www.geforce.com/drivers/results/48847

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Lots to research here
I'll probably be back later to ask questions
Thanks
Dick

I installed the driver for my nvidia card based on the directions at http://forums.fedoraforum.org/showthread.php?t=204752

instructions shown below
I assume that the result is that one of the drivers supplied by nvidia is installed on my system.

I'm curious to know which nvidia driver is installed.

Can one of you share the command that would let me see?

The easiest way from a GUI is to check nvidia-settings. The driver version used is on the startign page for nvidia-settings, system information-> NVIDIA driver version.

1 members found this post helpful.

Hi Cascade - thanks
I found it where you said
It says - driver: Ge Force 9400 GT/PCIe/SSE2

Went to nvidia page http://www.nvidia.com/object/unix.html

On the nvidia driver page i find drivers identified like this: 304.60
that particular driver does support the ge force 9400 gt

I see that I have 304.37
QUESTION 1: so can I assume I can use any board supported by the 304 driver on my wife's machine and swap drives between my machine and hers and have the video supported?

QUESTION 2:

I'm confused about nvidia model numbers

I see reference to nvidia Ge Force FX 5500
and
nvidia quadro Fx 5500

Can you help me understand their naming convention?

Hmmm, either you looked in the wrong place, or you've got a different nVida control panel.

It should look like this-

http://www.unixmen.com/wp-content/up...bkXuy7QsuJ.png

NoT my screenshot, found at random.

Yes.

Complicated, here is the most simple version.

nVidia started with the 'Riva' chips and changed to 'Geforce' a little later. They kept the Geforce branding from initial release through a few series (geforce 2, geforce 3 and geforce 4).

When they got to the next revision after geforce 4, nVidia decided to call the chips 'FX' or 'Geforce FX'. Those chips are NV3X.

Quadro chips are based on geforce chips, with a few minor driver and BIOS tweaks. After nVidia got the Geforce FX NV3X chips out, they changed branding on the Quadro to match, just like they had in the past. The naming is normally very close, obviously from the same marketing department.

Name- Chip revision

Geforce- NV10
Quadro- NV10GL

Geforce 2 MX- NV11
Quadro MXR/EX- NV11GL

Geforce 2 Ti/GTS/Pro- NV15
Quadro 2- NV15GL

Geforce 3- skipped, no quadro geforce 3 version

Geforce 4 MX- NV17/18
Quadro 4 3XX/5XX XGL- NV17/18GL

Geforce 4 Ti- NV25/28
Quadro 4 7XX/9XX XGL- NV25/28GL

Geforce FX- NV3X
Quadro FX 500/600/700 1000/1100/2000/3000/3000 G- NV 3XGL

nVidia dropped the FX naming for desktop/gaming cards as the FX series is one of the worst made by nVidia. However, the Quadro FX cards were better, and the Quadro FX naming didnt have the 'bad rep' of Geforce FX. So they kept the Quadro FX name for years after it had been dropped from the geforce range.

Final note, you really dont want quadro cards. They are nice if are using software with special quadro support (eg 3D studio max) but for normal desktop use, they are slower than normal geforce cards they are built off, and more expensive.

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I'm on Fedora 16 and I found it in Activities>Applications>Other>NVIDIA X Server Settings

And now that I found it - it looks just like yours. I previously looked in
Activities>Applications>System Tools>System Settings>System Info>Graphics
where I got the one liner. - F16 is a bit convoluted -- who would think to look for driver info in Other instead of in System Tools

I see that zotac has a pci board with the GeForce GT 520 for approx $60. where this hardware is supported by the 310 driver.

Thanks so much for your help

Dick
Post Script - and of course thank you for the detailed explanation of the nvidia line.

No problem.

Be sure is PCI not PCIe if you want to use it in your old Intel 865 system. I dont think I would spend that much on a video card for a system that old.