Hey,

I am a moderate newbie user to linux. I have installed many different linux distros before. However, when I built my own computer from scratch, I have encountered some serious issues in dealing with the graphics card and modem.

*The distro that I am currently running is RedHat Linux 9.
*I have a P4 SOYO DRAGON LITE mobo.
*P4 processor 2.4 gig
*5 PCI slots in the mobo.


The graphics card I was using was the nvidia e-geFORCE2 MX 400. When I ran some games to test out the graphics card, the games ran very slow in a jerky motion. I checked my cpu status, and found that it was using the maximum capabilities of the cpu. Is this because it didn't properly support Open-GL?
What is a good graphics card you would recommend that is under $50?

The modem was a US ROBOTICS WIN MODEM. Oh, and of course that didn't work, because I was foolish enough to listen to the people from tigerdirect.com that recommended it for linux. Good grief. Anyways, the modem hasn't even worked when I tried it with windows, so I know that there is something wrong with it.
What is a good internal/external modem that you would recommend that is under $40?

You help will be appreciated greatly.

Thank-you,

just_a_nobody

Welcome to LQ. If you CPU was pegged at 100% and the video motion was jerky, then your video card is not handling the graphics processing. I'm not familiar with that card, but in all likelihood there would be no need to replace it. Instead, you would just want to enable agpgart and DRI support. As for the modem, you might want to check the hardware compatibility list (HCL) here at LQ for recommendations. Winmodems generally don't play well with Linux, but it should not be hard to find one that will. -- J.W.

Thank-you. You're the nicest guy ever. You are the only guy who has actually helped me. I have tried 5 other forums, and nobody could help me. They just said that my graphics card was weak.

I'm guessing that I would find the agpgart in the kernal. But I'll have to check in more about the DRI support issue. Right now I am using this link as a guide:http://gatos.sourceforge.net/dri-debug.php

I post a reply if I have any more problems.
Thanks again,
Machewy

You're welcome. More info here: http://dri.sourceforge.net

and in case you haven't already seen it, there's tons of good info here: http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...NVIDIA+Drivers

If you haven't already done so, definitely check out the Search function here at LQ, you would be amazed what you learn. Lastly, as you probably have figured out, configuring your system to get the maximum performance out of your video card often can take a fair amount of work. Don't be discouraged if he hit a few dead ends along the way to success. Good luck with the project -- J.W.