Hi,

My old graphics card is broken . I would like to ask for an advice what graphics card to buy for good Linux support.

My motherboard has AGP x8 slot . I use mainly desktop application but my son likes to play some 3D games, so I need some better or worse 3D support (It would be good if 3D support is better for a reasonable price). I would like to have a good suspend / hibernation support.

My experience with an old card is that it had been supported well for some time on proprietary drivers then when my card becomes old there were some problems with strange artifacts on the screen on new KMS kernels and hibernation stopped to work.

So I would like to buy a card with a good 3D support with open source drivers. It would be good if there is a high efficient closed source driver, but I am sure that support for the closed driver is going to finish sooner or later, so the open source 3D support for now is a priority for me.

I am going to buy probably AMD/ATI card but I don't know. I am open for suggestions.

the only driver i know for a fact works is my VERY OLD nvidia Gforce 2 mx 400
it USED TO USE , no longer supported

used to use the 96 nvidia driver

it runs well with the open nouveau driver
for the OLD ati cards
DON'T

there was not much opengl support

there WAS a LOT of Microsoft ONLY Direct X support on the old ATI cards


for old AGP cards use nvidia
but be warned the gforce 5 and older are NOT in support any longer

1 members found this post helpful.

@John VV Thanks for the fast reply.

Do you use (you know) a NVIDIA card that has good supported closed drivers and open source drivers with 3D support ?

Actually I used an ATI R300 based card - that card was spoilt. It was good supported by open source drivers with 3D. If we mention NVidia gfx cards. I started to use old NVidia gfx card in home, and I have some artifacts while scrolling in KDE on the plasma desktop. Starting with SUSE 12.1 the suspend and hibernation stopped to work.

I have one rather new NViDia gfx card in my work [GeForce 6150SE nForce 430]. I had upgraded recently the Nvidia proprietary driver to x11-video-nvidiaG02-295.40-15.1.i586 and OpenGL stopped to work. I cannot easy withdraw the changes because the old driver was removed from Nvidia OpenSuSE repository. The X-server even before "the upgrade" once for a week had strange freezes. Nothing worked to unfreeze: I needed to restart whole computer. (Even remote chvt command did not manage to work)

Intel cards in desktop computer in my work sometimes left artifacts on the screen, and despite many driver upgrades, they still do.

So I don't have reasonably bad feeling about AMD/ATI, but maybe I am missing something .
The spoilt ATI card used to be very HOT, even I did not do anything that should utilize its power. Probably the power management of this card was poor on open source drivers.

on older cards nvidia was better supported
a lot of the older ATI cards did not support opengl 2 well .

nvidia still has support for gforce5 ( the fx cards) but for older Xorg
like rhel5 and 6 using the 173 driver

for say fedora 16 or 17
i do not know of any old agp that will work with the proprietary driver
and the OLD cards will not work with the opensource nouveau one and the NEW xorg

the old 10+ year old gforce5 and earlier cards are well 10+ years old
well the NEW 295.40 ( bug fix for 295.20)
IS causing problems for some
you can always use the 295.20 .run driver
see the opensuse wiki page " the hard way" ( it is NOT hard )
http://en.opensuse.org/SDB:NVIDIA_the_hard_way
--- i have been using the *.run for years and years - you just need to pay attention to system changes.

I have installed this card in one of my older computers: Sparkle 8400GS PCI with a NVIDIA 8400GS GPU.

Decent AGP cards are very hard to get nowadays. I installed this one because I needed hardware H264 decoding. Since the GPU is fairly modern, it should provide a decent 3D performance. YOu might want to check on that.

This card is PCI, so transfer speed is somewhat limited. I am not sure how much you need, most work is done by the GPU and I don't know how much this limit the bandwidth needed. It is more efficient than having the CPU calculating everything and send it over the bus.

The card is dirt cheap and well supported by the proprietary NVIDIA drivers.

jlinkels

1 members found this post helpful.

When I was talking about old card I was referring to eg. nVidia Corporation NV18 [GeForce4 MX 440 AGP 8x], but I have an Atari 65XE in a box in my cabinet (so maybe I am a little old fashioned ).


Thanks for the hit I'll try the shell installer.

Yes, I did not realize my hardware was so much gotten old. My computer (Athlon 3000+) just work efficiency despite the graphics in 3D and Flash games. It is really hard to find a AGP card that works good with Linux and without the risk that in next OpenSuse release it will still work correctly.

@ digital-infinity- what distro are you running,a nd what R300 AGP card were you running before?

Sorry, I'm no help with hibernate/suspend, I never use them.

As for cards, its pretty hard to find good AGP cards now (like jlinkels said). That varies with your location, and I'm sorry but I dotn know anywhere in poland that you could source a good AGP card from. So you'll probably be looking for 2nd hand cards. But I'd go looking for what is avaible and then decide what you want, rather than asking here and trying to find card XXXX-XX.

ATI/AMD is an option IMO. Pretty much all the ATI/AMD cards will be open source drivers only, even the few AGP HD 2XXX-> HD 4XXX cards with current closed drivers have no offical support from ATI/AMD (though it might be possible to get them running with those drivers, its not certain). They also have a PCIe-> AGP bridge, which can be a pain and is probably a good part of why they have no offical linux support with the closed drivers.

As for as nVidia goes, GF2-GF4 cards (using 96.XX drivers) and GF-FX/GF5XXX (using 173.XX drivers) can still run closed or open drivers depending on your distro. GF6XXX-GF7XXX AGP cards are suported by the open source and current closed nVidia drivers.

The fastest of the nVidia AGP cards are the 6XXX and 7XXX cards. I'd avoid _all_ the 'bottom of the range' AGP cards, like GF-FX 5200/5300, GF6200, GF 7100/7200/7300, they tend to be slow, eat some system memory, and crap overall.

GF6150SEs like in youir system at work is similar in quality to the 6200, and see how well that one runs (its not the 1st time I've heard of driver problems with the bottom end cards).

BTW artifacting can be caused by a lot of things- dodgy drivers, overheating, chip damage and really 'bad' video adapters are the most common causes.

173.XX works with xorg versions up to 1.10. 96.XX has also been updated to work with 1.10.

From what I've seen your a Red Hat/CentOS/Fedroa user John VV, and Fedora is one of the worst distros to try to run an older nVidia card with due to the 'upgrade xorg to the newest possible version' policy of fedora and the way that nVidia can be _very_ slow to get the 'legacy' drivers updated to work with newer xorg versions.

nVidia 6XXX and 7XXX AGP cards will.

Ummm...AFAIK nouveau do support prety much any nVidia AGP card worth looking at (TNT or better).

I think I'm going to have a go build a test system or 2, gawds only know I've got enough AGP cards still around here and systems to install them in.

GFFX/GF5 is only 9 years old maximum.

IMO the _only_ reason to get a PCI 8400GS over an older AGP card is because of VDPAU (hardware video decoding).

Some of the older AGP cards are faster than the 8400GS. The 6600GT is a little faster, 6800 is a little faster again, 7600GT+ is a lot faster.

I wouldnt call PCI 8400GS card dirt cheap, but I dont know how much you paid. The cheapest I've seen them go for recently is $75+ US, which isnt cheap in my book.

1 members found this post helpful.

You might be right about that. VDPAU+AGP seems to be not available, at least that is what I found when I purchased the 8400.
I checked that here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compari...ocessing_units and your statement seems to be correct. And those faster chips seems to be available on AGP cards as well. I am surprised that chips without VDPAU but with better 3D performance are available on AGP, while chips with VDPAU are not.
[/QUOTE]
IIRC I paid about $49 for my card at Amazon.com. I am not surprised seeing older PCI technology increasing in price.

jlinkels

1 members found this post helpful.

Yeah, no VDPAU with AGP cards. nVidia 'pure video 1' exists on GF6XXX and 7XXX cards, but nVidia didnt make 'pure video 1' work with VDPAU, it needs pure video 2+, GF8XXX or higher.

I wouldnt be suprised about the 'speed/feature set' thing. It always happens...'family' features like pure video/VDPAU tend to get introduced when that chip series comes in. As always there are faster chips and slower chips from every series of chips.

So a GF4 Ti 4600 will not have 'pure video' but will be faster than a FX 5200/5300/5500/5600 with pure video.

Heh, surprisingly, amazons prices for PCI cards are better than I've seen anywhere else. I'll remember that.

After a quick look though, I wouldnt get a 8400GS now, unless the budget was very tight, and VDPAU was a requirement. You can get newer, better cards like G210s (better for VDPAU features as well as power consumption an heat output) for not much more than the 8400GS. If VDPAU wasnt required, or someone didnt mind risking possible problems with XvBA (ATI/AMD hardware video decoding) I'd get a PCI HD 5450.

The HD 5450 is faster than a 8400GS, uses less power, and runs cooler. Win/win/win.

1 members found this post helpful.

I use OpenSuSE 12.1 but if a gfx card works correctly on any distro I can potentially recompile kernel or Xorg. Of course it would be nice the card work out of the box .

I am currently out for a few days and I cannot check what that ATI R300 AGP card were.

These are the new AGP gfx cards current internet shop offers in Poland from a price searching engine:

• Sparkle SF8855-DT/256MB (nvidia GeForce FX 5200, bus:128 bit, 256 MB GDDR)
• PNY G606200A8E49T-SB (NVIDIA GeForce 6200, bus:64 bit, 512MB GDDR)
• Vertex 3D VG3450 512MD2-V2 (nvidia GeForce GTX560 - the spec in search engine are probably incorrect. I found somewhere it has Radeon HD3450 chip. The price suggests the second could be true.)
• Sapphire 11129-06-20G (AMD ATI Radeon HD 3650, 512 MB GDDR2, bus:64 bit, memory freq:800 MHz, core freq: 725 MHz)
• Gigabyte GV-N62-512L (nvidia GeForce 6200, 512 MB GDDR2, bus:64 bit, memory freq:700 MHz, core freq: 350 MHz)

I don't know if the specifications are correct, because I found a lot of mistakes in the spec from this price searching engine.

Oh I did not know about this solution. Is this the PCIe -> AGP bridge a separate card ? Although using the bridge in Linux is not a best solution as you have written.

Do the open source drivers for GF6XXX-GF7XXX AGP cards support hardware 3D ?


It means for me if I choose an NVidia card I should rather find a second hand one (because in offerings above there are only 5200, 6200. I don't know anything about GTX560 (the price and big memory - is it a mistake in the specs? )


The efficiency of the card at work is OK for me, despite the recent problems...

I am aware that the AMD cards could be a good solution in long term (because open source drivers) despite maybe current not good 3D efficiency. The NVidia closed drivers are probably better for now in terms of 3D speed, but in the future they going to stop work with newest kernels/distros (Maybe I should just recompile the distro in the future or stick with compilation distro like Gentoo).

Yeah I know the artifacting of Intel cards in my work was checked at different computers so It looks like the drivers were causing it.

The artifacts of my current substitute old NVidia card at home looks like the same problem (the drivers), because only KDE plasma desktop widgets when scrolled leaves some traces of previous widget content on the screen.

No problem, I just didnt want to suggest a card that is slower than your current card.

No, its not a seperate card. The PCIe-> AGP bridge shouldnt be an issue, it just complicates things for driver development.

Yes. All the nVidia and ATI/AMD cards worth looking at will support hardware 3D from the open soruce drivers.

Ugh, compliing on a system with an AGP card isnt going to be much fun (slow CPU, slow RAM, slow HDDs, etc., it will make the job last a long time).

I've tried gentoo on low spec machines in the hope that it would increase perforamnce..and it did..a tiny bit. Not worth botherign with IMO.

The closed soruce drivers from nVidia should be supported for a while. Closed source drivers for ATI/AMD 2XXX-> 4XXX cards will probably be dropped in a year or two.

IMO its not a big problem, even with newer cards (8800GT, 9800GT) the nouveau drivers can faster, and in general the drivers arent that different in speed. I havent seen any testing comparing closed source and open soruce ATI/AMD drivers on 'older' cards like 2XXX-> 4XXX, but I wouldnt be suprised if they ended up being just as fast as the closed drivers as well.

'Artifacting' is different to 'ghosting' ('traces on the screen' is ghosting). Ghosting is far more likely to be caused by drivers than artifacting.

VG3450 is NOT a GTX560Ti, but the pic is of one as well as the specifiations. If it was, I'd buy one in a flash, the GTX560Ti goes for about $200 US, and that card is priced at about $50 US. It should be an ATI/AMD 3450 GPU. Not the only spec problem on that page, for example the 'Sparkle SF8855-DT/256MB' is listed as FX-5200, but according to what I can find and the model number is a FX-5500.

If it was just down to that list, I'd either get the FX-5200 or FX-5500, if you want to get the cheapest card you can.

The 3450 and 3650s would be the fastest cards there. Its possible that you would have power supply issues ith the 3650 or FX-5500, they use more power than the nVidia 5200/6200 ATI/AMD 3450 cards, or the GF-4MX440 you had before.

Maybe, depends on how hard you want to look, and where you will look. I've seen some great deals on full 2nd systems, in particualr on some of the hardware/overclockers forums. Sure, you probably dont want a full system, but if you can get a 2nd P4/Athlon with 512MB-1GB of RAM, HDD, CD/DVD drive, maybe a sound card and a replacement AGP video card for similar amounts to what you would pay for a video card alone, its worth thinking about.

BTW, I've run KDE 4.X with GF4-MX440, GF4-Ti4200, GF-6600GT, and later cards. The GF4-MX was peretty horrid, the GF4-Ti4200 was better, the GF-6600GT ran pretty much as well as the later 8XXX and higher cards I've used with KDE 4.X.

That was an early version (4.1/4.2 IIRC) so things may have changed a little.

1 members found this post helpful.

Hi,

@Cascade9, @jlinkels, @John VV thanks you for valuable discussion . Specially Cascade9 suggestions give me a great outlook at old AGP and GFX cards efficiency and their potential problems.

I decided to look for occasions to buy a second hand PCI-Express motherboard or system and to get an old inexpensive AGP card in the meantime.


To summarize whole discussion:

All current (one or two years old) graphic cards should have 3D support in Linux by open source drivers. To have a better 3D efficiency one should use closed drivers.
Old NVIDIA cards are supported longer by closed drivers then their equivalent (similarly old) AMD/ATI cards.
The low end old AGP NVIDIA cards could have some memory related problems on closed drivers while using 3D, so buying some 6XXX/7XXX card is recommended.

The cost of old AGP graphics cards could be even 2 times more then its equivalent PCI-Express card, so it is worth to have a PCI-Express motherboard.

Probably not a bad idea. I've seen PCIe systems thorwn out by the side of the road, in bins, etc.. I've a got a PCIe system mysefl that was going to be thrown out because 'its dead'...it wasnt, just the onboard video (GF6150SE) had died. I added a PCIe video card, she is still running.

All the AGP nVidia cards will have support from open soruce drivers, but not all current cards would.

I havent checked with AGP cards, but I have seen tests where older PCIe cards (8800GT/9800GT in particular) get better 3D with the open source drivers.

Hmmm....I'm not quite sure what gave you the idea that they will have 'memory related problems'. They just have problems, full stop, its not memory in particular.

Aside from dodgy 'low end' hardware the only issue with older nVidia AGP cards is that the drivers are updated very slowly, if they are updated at all. The 173.XX drivers (GF5/FX) and 96.XX drivers (GF2-GF4) are at least 6 months behind xorg releases. So once a new version of xorg is released, it will take at least 6 months for the cards to get newer drivers that support the newer xorg. 71.XX drivers (Vanta, Riva, TNT/TNT2, GF1, GF3) are not updated for newer xorg versions at all, and havent been for several years now.

all i know is the old box i have with a nvidia gforce2 mx 400 will NOT run using the 96.run on cent/Scientific linux 6
xorg on it is TO NEW
the nouveau is the ONLY one that works

now on CentOS 5.6 (and 5.8 should also work)the 96.run worked fine
NVIDIA-Linux-x86-96.43.20-pkg1.run
the last one and it is dated "07/20/2011"
ftp://download.nvidia.com/XFree86/Linux-x86/96.43.20/

Actually you did . You said in one of the previous post that they "eat some memory".

The second reason I think so is because a NVidia in my computer at the work. When the composition by "Open GL" are switched on (no "XRenderer" composition) and I use desktop for a long time without logout and login again, once for some time the inner part of the big windows tends to be black (without any contents). The contents of small windows are all right. To fix the problem I need to switch off the composition in KDE and switch on again (or relogin).

I think it is something related with graphics memory fragmentation or something like that. It happens on my workstation computer with a NVidia card . It happens on other computers in my job with such cards.

The openGL on this card works again after some recent OpenSuSE updates.


Yeah I know that if I stick with some kernel/Xorg combination that works, it could work quite long. Although I am a little a security chaser, so I update/upgrade if there is any security consideration. Maybe it is too strong strategy for my home desktop computer, but I have a Unix server administrator manners .