[SOLVED] Any suggestions for a newer video card?

frazelle09 · 09-18-2016, 05:02 PM

Thanks, seasons. Evidently that didn't work. After editing the file and running update-grub2 and rebooting, it finally produced it usual black screen with command prompt. Had to setup up display again with mcc, reboot into root and delete several Xauth files - i've done this several times before so i know i have to delete these files or it won't boot into my user again until they've been deleted.

So, we're back in vesa again.

i really appreciate all your help and am sorry that it didn't work out.

Have a wonderful afternoon and again thanks for helping!

Ztcoracat · 09-18-2016, 07:37 PM

My quad core AMD Phenom had a low grade AMD/ATI 3000 GPU crd onboard.
It originally had a 300 watt power supply.

Long story short, after speaking with several Tech's that build pc's for a living at Micro Center they advised me that the new AMD/ATI Radeon 7750 that I purchased would need at least a 550 watt power supply.

After installing the new GPU and installing the new power supply my old desktop was flying and the graphics were incredibly clear and crisp.

The kernel is suppling the proper module/driver for my new card under Slackware and under Voyager/Xubuntu 16.4 and I've had excellent performance.

I highly recommend frazelle09 to give nVidia a call and ask if you need a higher power supply for the new GPU you plan to purchase.
1-800-797-6530

I would very surprised if they say you don't need a higher power supply.

Ztcoracat · 09-18-2016, 07:44 PM

Looking at this page on that crd you want to purchase it says in plain english:
***

Quote:

Minimum System Power Requirement is 300 watt

***

http://www.geforce.com/hardware/desk...specifications

seasons · 09-18-2016, 09:08 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Ztcoracat

It originally had a 300 watt power supply. Long story short, after speaking with several Tech's that build pc's for a living at Micro Center they advised me that the new AMD/ATI Radeon 7750 that I purchased would need at least a 550 watt power supply.

BS. The RadeonHD 7750 has a 55W TDP max, so why would you need a PSU with an extra 250W rating? I've got a quad core PhenomII (95W) and a GTX 950 (90W) running just fine on 380W Seasonic PSU.

Again, they're covering their butts to some degree. We in the "tech business" pretty much assume your PSU sucks if you have something like a Dell..

Quote:

I highly recommend frazelle09 to give nVidia a call and ask if you need a higher power supply for the new GPU you plan to purchase.

LOL. Do you work for nvidia and get commission? Why do you think a new GPU would behave any differently on this install? The GPU needs more testing in other installs and LiveUSB environments before we conclude that it's faulty. The OP's install seems to have problems with X and/or home directory permissions, which is where I would look first.

seasons · 09-18-2016, 09:10 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by frazelle09

After editing the file and running update-grub2 and rebooting, it finally produced it usual black screen with command prompt.

Did you save the Xorg log and/or look at ~/.xsession-errors file?
"Black screen" doesn't tell us much.

Shadow_7 · 09-18-2016, 09:28 PM

I think... I believe... Maybe... How about checking a few logs. I have an older P4 laptop that can only do 1280x800 over VGA even though the monitor is 1600x900 and does that fine on anything modern, and even on vga. Which is NOT because of any vesa driver in play. It is the highest common denominator of what the video card can do and the EDID of the monitors capabilities.

/var/log/Xorg.0.log

$ xvidtune -show
(to show your current resolution / primary display only)

$ xrandr
(to show available displays and resolutions / might not play well with nvidia)

$ lsmod
(to see what video driver is being used)

Ztcoracat · 09-18-2016, 09:40 PM

My so called bs, didn't leave OP's distrubution, with an all black/blank screen.
Your instructions, and their end results, speak for themselves.

seasons · 09-18-2016, 09:44 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Shadow_7

I think... I believe... Maybe... How about checking a few logs. I have an older P4 laptop that can only do 1280x800 over VGA even though the monitor is 1600x900 and does that fine on anything modern, and even on vga. Which is NOT because of any vesa driver in play. It is the highest common denominator of what the video card can do and the EDID of the monitors capabilities.

Then I bet you had an i845G chipset or similar.

There's no reason an 8400GS can't physically do 1920x1200, even on a single link DVI cable. Like I said, I had this same card (including G98 chipset) and it ran 1920x1200 just fine.

seasons · 09-18-2016, 09:46 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Ztcoracat

My so called bs, didn't leave OP's distrubution, with an all black/blank screen.
Your instructions, and their end results, speak for themselves.

If OP had to use 'nokmsboot' (or 'nomodeset') to install/boot the system in the first place, then clearly, I didn't cause that. So fsck off...

frazelle09 · 09-18-2016, 09:51 PM

seasons, thank you for continuing to help. Here is the xsessions_errors file.

Have a great evening. i'll try and post the output from the commands Shadow_7 suggested in a little while...

Again, thank you for helping. Nothing like a friendly helping hand.

frazelle09 · 09-18-2016, 10:05 PM

BTW / hey guys. It's o.k. i knew i might get a black screen. i've gotten them before. No problem. This is Linux. It's fixable - that's what i like about OpenSource. It's so cool - lol. Besides, before posting here, i had this same problem and figured it out, even though i had to work through our black screens. It's not the system's fault - it's all mine. i get to own it and i don't have any problems with it since every time i bork it up, i can fix it easily now. It has been a great learning experience and i can live with vesa and a reduced screen all squished down until we figure it out or until we give up on it.

Thanks for all your input.

So, without further ado, here's the output of> xvidtune -show - "bash: xvidtune: command not found"

Code:

xrandr
xrandr: Failed to get size of gamma for output default
Screen 0: minimum 640 x 480, current 1280 x 1024, maximum 1280 x 1024
default connected primary 1280x1024+0+0 0mm x 0mm
   1280x1024      0.00* 
   1024x768       0.00  
   800x600        0.00  
   640x480        0.00

Code:

lsmod
Module                  Size  Used by
snd_usb_audio         119794  0 
snd_usbmidi_lib        16927  1 snd_usb_audio
snd_rawmidi            15596  1 snd_usbmidi_lib
nfsd                  192443  13 
nfs_acl                 2143  1 nfsd
auth_rpcgss            34989  1 nfsd
oid_registry            2307  1 auth_rpcgss
nfs                   108382  0 
fscache                30737  1 nfs
lockd                  50501  2 nfsd,nfs
sunrpc                150927  18 nfsd,nfs_acl,auth_rpcgss,nfs,lockd
grace                   1730  2 nfsd,lockd
af_packet              26585  4 
ipv6                  293891  66 [permanent]
binfmt_misc             6193  1 
dm_mod                 74689  0 
pata_atiixp             4846  0 
loop                   15077  0 
tifm_7xx1               4049  0 
tifm_core               4470  1 tifm_7xx1
vgem                    3307  0 
drm                   236437  2 vgem
firewire_ohci          26224  0 
firewire_sbp2          10447  0 
firewire_core          42328  2 firewire_ohci,firewire_sbp2
crc_itu_t               1531  1 firewire_core
fuse                   65423  3 
hid_logitech_hidpp     15796  0 
snd_hda_codec_realtek    52562  1 
snd_hda_codec_generic    44042  1 snd_hda_codec_realtek
snd_hda_intel          20226  3 
snd_hda_codec          70522  3 snd_hda_codec_realtek,snd_hda_codec_generic,snd_hda_intel
snd_hda_core           37706  4 snd_hda_codec_realtek,snd_hda_codec_generic,snd_hda_intel,snd_hda_codec
snd_hwdep               5267  2 snd_usb_audio,snd_hda_codec
snd_seq_dummy           1339  0 
snd_seq_oss            22840  0 
snd_seq_midi_event      4804  1 snd_seq_oss
snd_seq                41165  5 snd_seq_dummy,snd_seq_oss,snd_seq_midi_event
snd_seq_device          3098  3 snd_rawmidi,snd_seq_oss,snd_seq
snd_pcm_oss            30874  0 
snd_pcm                67200  5 snd_usb_audio,snd_hda_intel,snd_hda_codec,snd_hda_core,snd_pcm_oss
usb_storage            45397  0 
hid_logitech_dj         9179  0 
snd_timer              16802  2 snd_seq,snd_pcm
snd_mixer_oss          12219  1 snd_pcm_oss
ppdev                   5515  0 
ite_cir                13193  0 
rc_core                14947  1 ite_cir
parport_pc             17502  0 
parport                28770  2 ppdev,parport_pc
snd                    49318  21 snd_usb_audio,snd_usbmidi_lib,snd_rawmidi,snd_hda_codec_realtek,snd_hda_codec_generic,snd_hda_intel,snd_hda_codec,snd_hwdep,snd_seq_oss,snd_seq,snd_seq_device,snd_pcm_oss,snd_pcm,snd_timer,snd_mixer_oss
tpm_tis                 9248  0 
psmouse                89571  0 
tpm                    24746  1 tpm_tis
acpi_cpufreq            6409  0 
i2c_piix4               9060  0 
r8169                  56524  0 
mii                     3523  1 r8169
sp5100_tco              4864  0 
edac_core              33952  0 
serio_raw               4254  0 
soundcore               4463  1 snd
k10temp                 2978  0 
input_leds              2830  0 
ata_piix               22959  0 
ahci                   26707  3 
libahci                18915  1 ahci
ext4                  307851  2 
jbd2                   48868  1 ext4

Have a great evening!

mrmazda · 09-19-2016, 03:02 AM

My multiboot host g5eas with

Code:

0b:00.0 VGA compatible controller: NVIDIA Corporation G98 [GeForce 8400 GS Rev. 2] (rev a1) (prog-if 00 [VGA controller])

among older distros has installed (but only Tumbleweed updated since June) with working Xorg:

Code:

Mageia 5, 4.4.13 kernel, 1.16.4 server, nouveau driver, KDE4
openSUSE Tumbleweed, 4.7.3 kernel, 1.18.4 server, modesetting driver, Plasma 5
Fedora 25, 4.7.0rc kernel, 1.18.3 server, modesetting driver, Plasma 5
Debian Jessie, 3.16 kernel, 1.16.4 server, modesetting driver, TDE
Kubuntu 16.04, 4.4 kernel, 1.18.3 server, modesetting driver, TDE

If PCLinuxOS is anything like any of the above, the modesetting Xorg driver will load automatically, if not defeated by nomodeset or nokmsboot on the kernel cmdline, or overridden by /etc/X11/xorg.con*, and the nouveau driver has been uninstalled. In servers 1.17.0 and newer, the modesetting driver is not a separate driver package, instead incorporated into the server directly.

Shadow_7 · 09-19-2016, 08:09 AM

Code:

vgem                    3307  0 
drm                   236437  2 vgem

Never seen that one before. Improves MESA performance (3D in software) for kernels 4.1+. Perhaps you are doing VESA as I'm not seeing any nouveau or nv modules there. Or radeon, i915, fglrx, or whatever the newer crimson stuff uses for naming conventions. Although I am surprised that it goes up to 1280x1024, it always caps at 1024x768 when I end up in that mode.

If you don't start in a gui, you might try modprobing the video driver before starting X.

# modprobe nv
$ startx -- :0

Otherwise add the module(s) to the /etc/modules file so it load at boot. Which is kind of odd as most distros are pretty good at auto-detection these days.

It might be something simple like you didn't install the video driver. Therefor it defaults to vesa as it's the only known that is installed.

# apt-get install xserver-xorg-video-all
(or whatever applies for your distro)

frazelle09 · 09-19-2016, 11:01 AM

mrmazda - i'm afraid your comments pretty much went zipping over my head. i did recheck the grub (not grub2) file and removed the nomksboot. i don't know how it got there again but i'm pretty sure i deleted it yesterday - lol.

Shadow_7 - Yes, i never have problems with PCLinuxOS when i have installed it in the past as far as video is concerned. However, this time around the guys are working with KDE 5 Plasma and...

Anyway, i will check to see if Synaptic has xserver-org-video and maybe reinstall it. Perhaps one of the files has become corrupted.

Another thing i have found out is that in the drop down list in Control Center, Set Up Display (from the command line - mcc) that the default selection is for the "nVidia 8400 to xxx" driver and that at the bottom of the list is the nouveau driver (as well as the vesa one). Regardless, i've tried it with the nVidia one as well as the nouveau one and neither has responded.

Thanks a lot for replying, guys, and have a wonderful morning!

mrmazda · 09-19-2016, 12:15 PM

Check for the existence of /etc/X11/xorg.conf. If it exists, rename it or delete it. If /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/ exists and contains any filename containing "device", "monitor" or "screen", rename or delete. If after any of these files reappear after using the control center, use an editor to remove all content from them, then use chmod +r on all. This will stop possibly broken control center behavior and let Xorg perform its automagic configuration correctly.

To try the modesetting driver, uninstall the nouveau driver by whatever name PCLinuxOS gives it; xf86-video-nouveau, x11-driver-video-nouveau, xserver-xorg-video-nouveau and xorg-x11-drv-nouveau are among possible names.

There must be nothing on the kernel cmdline to prevent normal KMS (kernel modesetting) functionality if the nouveau or modesetting drivers are to be used in Xorg. The nomodeset parameter is ordinarily used only for troubleshooting when there is a problem with the appropriate Xorg driver.

Installation of a proprietary NVidia driver will disable KMS by adding a defeat parameter (usually nomodeset) to the Grub cmdlines, and create an /etc/X11/xorg.conf file that is incompatible with nouveau and modesetting. Uninstalling the NVidia driver improperly may leave such changes behind.

The rest of what I wrote amounted to proof that a GeForce 8400 GS can work with current kernels and Xorg servers if there is no interference from the bootloader cmdline or broken configuration in /etc/X11/.