Quote:
Originally Posted by merlinclark
i am having freezes on my fedora 21 running on an emachine model et-1831-05.it has integrated nvidia gforce 7050 grahics that ive been running the last coupla weeks since i got the box. lots of freezes so i want to go to ebay or somewhere and get another grahics card for it, hoping that will fix the problem.
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Hi...
Welcome to the forum
I would agree with Pearlseattle not to immediately assume that your onboard graphics is the source of the problem. There are a variety of things to look at here, let's start with these...
1. Memory. Try burning a copy of
Memtest86+ and see if there are any bad modules.
2. Overheating and/or motherboard issues. Are the systems's fans working correctly? If you are comfortable opening the case, take a look at the motherboard and the heatsink/fan assembly. Is there any dirt buildup or bad
capacitors? If the heatsink(s) are clogged up, take a can of air and spray it/them out. If you see any bad capacitors, there's your problem (or at least one of them) off the bat! You will need either a motherboard replacement or, if possible, the caps replaced, depending on the motherboard. The former can be pretty spendy. In most cases, it's cheaper to buy a new system unless you can replace it yourself.
3. Hard drive issues. Find out the manufacturer of your hard drive and download the utilities for that brand that scan the disk for any bad sectors or other issues. Hard drive failure is another possibility. If you don't know where to find the utilities, get the manufacturer's name and we can help you with that.
If getting this "technical" with your system is not for you, then you can always take your system to a local computer repair shop. Choose a firm that has experience with Linux.
In terms of a easy to install/use video card, I'm guessing Fedora comes with the latest Open Source Radeon drivers (for AMD Radeon cards.) Although for Ubuntu, I would imagine
this list is pretty equal to what Fedora offers. There is also
this list from Xorg which shows which features are supported in each class of chipsets. Get the best card that works for you. I noticed your
system comes with a PCI-E x16 slot for video cards. You would need to find out if there is any particular version to this port, such as 2.0, 2.1 or 3.0 (or none at all,) and purchase your card accordingly.
Hope this helps.