How to change the video card
 

Would like info on the proper way to do a video card upgrade. I did it once in win95 by changing to standard vga. When I set up my fedora core 1 system, it autodetected the card (sis6326 agp 1.0) but it has no openGL driver for it. The card I wish to install is a STB VisionTek nVidia 16mb agp video card that is going to be plugged into a fic va-503+ mainboard. Would also like to know if anyone has any prior experience with the nVidia. The mocel is: NV999 TNT 16mb (tnt-16). I researched video cards and selected it because it is agp 2.0 and agp 1.0 compliant. The mainboard also has 2 pci cards (soundblaster live and netgear lan cards) and irq sharing is enabled. Do tnt cards require their oun irq?
If so, can the pci cards share irqs and the video card have a fixed irq?

Re: How to change the video card
 

First thing to do is disable all devices or ports you never intend on using in your motherboard BIOS. Then you need the nVidia driver for the O/S and the X-Windows System. IF you ever update your kernel you have to redo the video driver or the X-Windows System won't place nice anymore frame rate wise.

As for IRQ sharing, I try to avoid that kind of thing myself because I have had heard of many people having problems, etc., and frankly I don't like the headache of finding out that some driver won't share with others.

The answer to whether the motherboard will supply the video card and IRQ is in the documentation for the mainboard. In many BIOS of new motherboards you can deny access to an IRQ for the AGP video card.

Before you embark on this upgrade to your system make sure you've backed up all the data on the system you hold dear.


There is a HOWTO at http://www.fedorafaq.org for nVidia video drivers and Fedore Core linux operating systems.

Thanks for the info. Does Fedora have the same support for ATI video cards? I have not investigated them because I read that the drivers are not well written for linux.

Well I have a Radeon 9200 and all I get is 2d acceleration with the radeon driver that comes with the X-Window System that FC3 comes with. For quasi-3d acceleration people are going for the radeon driver that comes from ATI.com. But you may be wondering, "quasi"?! Yep, ATI doesn't seem to be with it. Yes many people will tell you the latest ATI driver works better than the other one, etc. but they, ATI are planning another release soon, whatever that means. And as I stated, they haven't perfected the 3D part yet which is unbelievable since they make the cards!


If you want true 3D acceleration go for the DRI project. Which is what I went for.


Here the link for the Direct Rendering Infrastructure Open Source Project if you are interested:

http://dri.freedesktop.org/wiki/