Currently, I have a NVidia card, the machine in the signature.

This is my opinion based on my experience. If I were to buy a new card, I would search about AMD cards.
I had an ATI (at that point it was ATI) Radeon 9600XT. I don't have it anymore, since it was an AGP slot.
That card would run Doom 3 at good enough graphics (but that was the CPU limitation, not the Radeon card).

The problem with ATI cards at that time was in Quake 3, the horrible lines in sky boxes.
That's why I changed to a NVidia card when I assembled a new machine (the one in the signature).

Now my problems with NVidia:
pros:
- native driver is excellent
- accelerated graphics are excellent

cons:
- hybrid suspend never worked
- suspend (to RAM) started not working at some point with 6.x kernel, regardless of kernel and NVidia driver version (hibernation (to disk) *still* recovers every time)
- I'm stuck now with NVidia 535.154.05 driver because any other more recent doesn't come back from a console.
In an X session, if I switch to a console (ctrl+alt+F2) and then back to the X session (ctrl+alt+F1) I get a black screen.
I tried those NVidia kernel options for frame buffer to no avail.

7 members found this post helpful.

Currently, I have a NVidia card, the machine in the signature.

This is my opinion based on my experience. If I were to buy a new card, I would search about AMD cards.
I had an ATI (at that point it was ATI) Radeon 9600XT. I don't have it anymore, since it was an AGP slot.
That card would run Doom 3 at good enough graphics (but that was the CPU limitation, not the Radeon card).

The problem with ATI cards at that time was in Quake 3, the horrible lines in sky boxes.
That's why I changed to a NVidia card when I assembled a new machine (the one in the signature).

Now my problems with NVidia:
pros:
- native driver is excellent
- accelerated graphics are excellent

cons:
- hybrid suspend never worked
- suspend (to RAM) started not working at some point with 6.x kernel, regardless of kernel and NVidia driver version (hibernation (to disk) *still* recovers every time)
- I'm stuck now with NVidia 535.154.05 driver because any other more recent doesn't come back from a console.
In an X session, if I switch to a console (ctrl+alt+F2) and then back to the X session (ctrl+alt+F1) I get a black screen.
I tried those NVidia kernel options for frame buffer to no avail.

7 members found this post helpful.

I can confirm no problems with 550.54.14 version of Nvidia driver on 6.6.22 Linux kernel.

I don't think they are trying to be sarcastic. Just trying to talk you into installing the NVidia drivers. The 1060 card is a good card. Once you get the drivers installed it'll run great and you don't have to buy a new card. And yeah installing the NV driver can get screwy but once done you will be glad.

I hate it too sometimes. First time I installed it I forgot to set runlevel 3 in /etc/inittab. It was a pain in the butt. I then read the howto better and it worked.

I apologize for the late reply and thank everyone for their input/suggestion.

I have installed native nvidia drivers (successfully) before; I know that I have to disable the nouveau drivers; i did runlevel 3; i answered those question in the blu-nvidia installation screen in runlevel 3; the installation seemed to proceed fine and the last screen was always the same error message (grr.... why can't i attach a screenshot anymore?).

Furthermore, i did not suggest that my card was a fake and I wouldn't insult anyone's intelligence by excpeting to be advised to buy a real one. It was only a last resort (frustrating) suspicion.

In the past and in this forum, I read many complaints of users not being able to install the native the nvidia drivers, or use its hardware acceleration, or other nvidia-related issues and, I also remember watching Linus Torwalds saying "F@#K nvidia" some years ago so, as a non-guru i was only trying to add pieces together based on my experience.

Despite that, i gather that most comments now point to 'stick-with-nvidia' so, I will follow the advice and perhaps get a newer model where native drivers are known to work.

p.s.: won't mind going over the budget a little.


Thanks

does anyone have comments on the nvidia Tesla GPU?
I read that they were/are discontinued bcos of the confusing (tesla) name but there are bargain of 8GB for less than 100Eur n eBay.

edit: silly querstion? if they are discontinued it means that there no upgraded drivers for it?

Good question. From what I can find on nvidia's website, latest linux driver for tesla gpus is version 440.95.01, release date 2020.06.24.

I guess you didn't follow the step-by-step instructions either!

Well, thanks for the honest input. My problem was similar except that neither older or newer drivers worked! The installation seemed to complete and then it left me with the error on runlevel 3

Turns out that with the NVidia driver options in kernel command line "nvidia-drm.modeset=1 nvidia-drm.fbdev=1", now suspend recovers OK.
I'm still stuck with the 535.154.05 driver, any newer version has the problems I listed (I just tested the latest 550.67).


I never saw the error message you mentioned when installing the NVidia driver.
(probably you already answered about the Slackware install, I have a full Slackware install)

What I do is blacklist nouveau manually in /etc/modprobe.d (at the first time), then reboot,
then run the NVidia ".run" installer. I do have multilib installed, so I install 32bit libraries.
Also, I have a xorg.conf with "Device" and "Screen" sections, although I think this is not strictly necessary.

Final update... with continuaiton!

So, i decided to buy a nVidia gtx1660 GPU from ebay (almost half the price of the service store where my computer was being 'fixed').

In the meantime, i had an old nVidia GeForce 4GB (dont remember the exact model) and i mounted it while i wait for the new card to arrive.

Something really weird happened and I am not sure it is normale so, i guess it's an entirely new thread.

Thanks everyone.