I'm planning to change video cards on my system and need your help. I want it to work easily on Ubuntu Edgy and be able to fully take advantage of AIGLX and Beryl, as it matures.

I need an AGP card. A PCI Express is not in my budget. I was going to jump to 2gb Ram first and then upgrade my video card, but because the ATI 9200 SE isn't playing well with Edgy, I need to do the video card first. I can't do both right now.

My specs:
AMD Athlon 64 XP 3000 (I only load 32 bit systems, though)
ASUS K8V SE Deluxe mobo
Compaq P1100 21" monitor
ATI Radeon 9200 SE video card (it's a cranky fellow)
512 Ram

I am leaning toward Nvidia, given its reputation in the Linux community. I am open to any suggestions or ideas, though.

BFG GeFORCE 7800GS OC AGP video Card w/256Mb

BFG GeForce 6800 GS OC / 256MB GDDR3

XFX GeForce 6800 Xtreme / 256MB GDDR3

XFX GeForce 7800 GS / 256MB GDDR3

EVGA GeForce 7800 GS / 256MB GDDR3

BFG GeForce 7600 GS OC / 512MB GDDR2

All suggestions, advice about the above and tips welcome.

Thanks,
Rory

I'm definitely not an expert in this field, but I know that Linux Journal recently picked this card for their "Extreme Linux" box. I have the understanding that it doesn't require the proprietary nVidia drivers. I'd like to be corrected if that's wrong.

you still need the proprietary drivers if you want the accelerated 3D unfortunately the nv OSS driver doesn't do 3D acceleration yet.. Definately needed to run AIGLX or XGL.

I made another mistake as well. LJ's pick was not the 7800 GS, but the 7900 GT ... article.

I am not sure about your budget. If you are a gamer, I suggest a video card that has the highest memory bandwidth. Also the largest video memory capacity is always better, but with out overclocking the memory. I suggest GDDR3 or better for its memory type because GDDR3 is better than GDDR2 and uses less energy.

Add XFX GeForce7 7600GT 256MB GDDR3 (PVT73AUDF7) to your list. From the pictures, it has two DVI connectors which are great for LCD monitors and HDTV. I recommend a very, very good power supply. I suggest power supplies brands like Eneramax, Power & Cooling, Zalman, Seasonic. If you are using an Antec power supply, throw that one in the junk box and buy a better one ASAP.

There is nothing wrong using nVidia's software. The Linux community is very stubborn when it comes to software. The Linux community wants open source software. When a company puts in their resources to support their products and provides only closed source, the Linux community are whinning brats. I have no trouble using nVidia software. We should appreciate nVidia for provide Linux support. However, nVidia's software is half open source and half closed source.

I really recommend people start using ECC memory because the computer crashes a lot less than non-ECC memory. ECC memory only costs 10 to 20 US dollars. I have switched to ECC memory and I only see little glitches.

These are all great suggestions. Thanks. Electro, I'll check out the 7600 and appreciate all your suggestions. Thx. What do other people think?

As AIGLX and Beryl are becoming more prominent, perhaps this is a good time to revisit which video cards are the best.

So far, it's either the 6800GS or 6800GT, although I'm not sure if the GT is much better than the GS. I'd like to do the 7800GS, but it's much pricier, so I'd have to really feel that it was a good jump up from the 6800 series. I will also look at the 7600 now, too.

In terms of power supply, I totally agree. I think I have a 420W Thermaltake ATX, but I need to double check that. Good point on power supply! This is so often overlooked in threads like this.

the GT series is deffinately beter i feel. also if you want decent gaming and everything compiz/xgl can throw onto you i would recomend the 7600GT as they are much beter value for money. also when selecting the company i would recomend EVGA. XFX apparently has some issues with its fans ( their big, noisy and not as effective in cooling as EVGA ) and BFG is a bit too pricy considering your getting the same video card, just a tad overclocked.
for XGL alone i am managing beautifully with a 6150GO on my laptop and a 6600GT on my desktop ( the 6600GT is also great for gaming ) but XGL really does not suck up that much. I have a friend who apparently got XGL/compiz to work on a system powered by a Nvidia TNT2 !!!!

The fan or blower on all nVidia and ATI based cards from every manufacture will eventually fail. If you care for a fan failing, you can look into passive cooling which does not have any fans.

I think the card that I suggested is much better bang because its memory and core clock is much greater than other video cards. OpenGL is more intensive than DirectX. OpenGL needs high memory bandwidth and a fast GPU/VPU core.

Actually, most any NVIDIA or ATi card will work. I have gotten XGL + Compiz up on my desktop's original NVIDIA 6200TC as well as getting XGL + Beryl (Beryl is nicer IMHO) on my current ATi Radeon x1900GT. Xorg 7.1's AIGLX extension and Beryl run nicely on my old laptop's ATi Radeon M9000 with the Xorg DRI "radeon" driver.

The only caveat to running XGL is that you can't run a spanned dual-monitor desktop with it, which is why my desktop does not run it but my aging laptop does.

>There is nothing wrong using nVidia's software. The Linux community is very
>stubborn when it comes to software. The Linux community wants open source
>software. When a company puts in their resources to support their products
>and provides only closed source, the Linux community are whinning brats. I
>have no trouble using nVidia software. We should appreciate nVidia for
>provide Linux support. However, nVidia's software is half open source and
>half closed source.

I think the stand taken by the Linux community for open source drivers is
not because it is being stubborn. It is for the simple reason that when there
is a bug/crash/issue with the system, when debugging and you find that the
issue is in the device driver, if it is closed, you are out of luck. You
are then dependent on the closed source device driver vendor to make the
necessary changes and make them available. You are also at the mercy of the
hardware vendor when they choose to EOL the card even though you are perfectly
happy with it. EOLing it is, in general, a revenue event that forces the
user to upgrade. If the code for the device was open, someone could take on
the role of maintaining it if there is a demand.

Harish

All NVidia cards are fine.
Whatever you do do NOT get an ATI. Their Linux drives a full blown nightmare.

I must have been out of the hardware scene for too long. I remember several years ago Antec was a quality brand.

As for cards, I can only recommend based on my experience. My laptop has a GeForce 7600 GO with 512 megs of dedicated ram (not sure what kind) and that system rocks. It has ran with ease any sort of accelerated graphics challenge I have thrown at it including UT2004 at 1920x1200,32b,2xAA,and normal or high detail settings without missing a step. I installed the drivers once using nVidia's proprietary dl and script and it worked beautifully. I installed the nVidia driver form the Ubuntu repositories, also worked beautifully.

My Other (Desktop) system has a Radeon 9600 PRO 256 MB. I'm not sure how it works under linux because for the longest time I couldn't get the ATI drivers to compile, despite hours of tinkering. I was running Slackware 10 at the time. Just installed Ubuntu on that system yeserday and I still had to fight the ATI drivers, but finally got them to take, sort of. Still having problems with dual-head.

So, go nVidia!

nVidia software is half open and half closed. Anybody can change the code.

...just not all of the code, thats the problem. Although I do support nVidia's effort to support the OSS/linux community at all, it would be more helpful to people who know what to do with the code if they had access to it all. I'm not sure how releasing the stuff would hurt nVidia's bottom line because they sell hardware (as opposed to M$ selling software). Then again, I have not had one bit of trouble with the nVidia drivers so far...