Hi Friends,

I am using the "AM2 AMD 690G Micro ATX AMD Motherboard " , with a " AM2 64 bit Triple Core 2.2 Ghz Processor - 8450 " . and 2 GB DDR2 RAM.

My motherboard has an inbuild Video card of "ATI Radeon Xpress 1250 Display card ", it steals 256 MB from my main RAM .

I am Using Fedora 9 and There is no drivers for ATI that supports in Fedora 9 X server, the fglr driver from livna-testing repo is not functioning with FC 9 .

I am planning to buy a display card of NVIDIA with RAM of 256 or 512.
Which one will be ideal for me to get, i am looking for a card around $100 , I am not a gamer but still i play some 3D games at times . I use my machine mostly for running JBoss Server .

Can anyone please recommend a good Video card for me .

Thanks
Peeths

If you pick pretty much any new Nvidia card the software will work. Nvidia has a well packaged driver that works pretty much identically on all its newer hardware.

I would be more careful about picking a card that doesn't make too much noise (fans) and doesn't have overheating problems. Lately Nvidia has been having some problems with certain chipsets. Google for 'overheating nvidia chipset'. I think it was G84 and G86 (and some newer chipsets).

Can you please suggest a good NVIDIA card , with 256 or 512MB Video RAM . i have around $50 - $60 for this .

I would say 8500gt or 8600gt. The newer 9500gt is not much faster than either of those while the 9600gt is but then it also costs about twice as much.

Hey .....

I got a new nVidia 8500 GT 512 DDR2 RAM . Its working perfectly fine and functioning well .

I installed the driver kmod-nvidia . is there any other driver that i should install for performance boosting ... ???

Thanks
Peeths

No, that should be all. Just run
glxinfo | grep direct (should return "yes")
and
glxgears
to make sure that everything is running properly.

Yup .. they are working perfectly fine .. i got yes for glxinfo | grep direct and also saw the glxgears ...




I think thats awesome ... thank you soo much ....


Regards
Peeths

But my see this ....

[root@localhost ~]# lspci
00:00.0 Host bridge: ATI Technologies Inc RS690 Host Bridge
00:02.0 PCI bridge: ATI Technologies Inc RS690 PCI to PCI Bridge (PCI Express Graphics Port 0)
00:07.0 PCI bridge: ATI Technologies Inc RS690 PCI to PCI Bridge (PCI Express Port 3)
00:12.0 SATA controller: ATI Technologies Inc SB600 Non-Raid-5 SATA
00:13.0 USB Controller: ATI Technologies Inc SB600 USB (OHCI0)
00:13.1 USB Controller: ATI Technologies Inc SB600 USB (OHCI1)
00:13.2 USB Controller: ATI Technologies Inc SB600 USB (OHCI2)
00:13.3 USB Controller: ATI Technologies Inc SB600 USB (OHCI3)
00:13.4 USB Controller: ATI Technologies Inc SB600 USB (OHCI4)
00:13.5 USB Controller: ATI Technologies Inc SB600 USB Controller (EHCI)
00:14.0 SMBus: ATI Technologies Inc SBx00 SMBus Controller (rev 14)
00:14.1 IDE interface: ATI Technologies Inc SB600 IDE
00:14.2 Audio device: ATI Technologies Inc SBx00 Azalia
00:14.3 ISA bridge: ATI Technologies Inc SB600 PCI to LPC Bridge
00:14.4 PCI bridge: ATI Technologies Inc SBx00 PCI to PCI Bridge
00:18.0 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] Family 10h [Opteron, Athlon64, Sempron] HyperTransport Configuration
00:18.1 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] Family 10h [Opteron, Athlon64, Sempron] Address Map
00:18.2 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] Family 10h [Opteron, Athlon64, Sempron] DRAM Controller
00:18.3 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] Family 10h [Opteron, Athlon64, Sempron] Miscellaneous Control
00:18.4 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] Family 10h [Opteron, Athlon64, Sempron] Link Control
01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: nVidia Corporation GeForce 8500 GT (rev a1)
02:00.0 Ethernet controller: Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd. RTL8111/8168B PCI Express Gigabit Ethernet controller (rev 01)


if i am using nvidia , why is it taking ATI Drivers again ..i am sure for Video my machine is using nvidia card and i can also feel the difference ... but ATI is still there .. why is it that ... ? how can i reconfigure my USB drivers ......

after using nVidia .. my Microsoft LifeChat Lx-3000 ( USB headphone with mic ) is not working ( i cannot hear sound from that ) but by normal out it is fine ....

is there any work around ?

You may need to disable your onboard graphics chip in BIOS.

As for the sound card, check the options in the sound control center (right-click on the speaker icon).

How can i disable them in BIOS , i cant find any option to disable them .....Please help ....and also i did a small R & D and what i got is when i install a new PCI Display card then the MOBO will automatically disable the onboard display card ...

You should check the motherboard manual. But who says it is using ati drivers? lspci only lists devices, not drivers. Check the output of lsmod to find out whether it is using radeon or fglrx . If not, no problem.

But still i am having the issue in the BIOS .

The installed memory shows 4096
The Usable memory shows 3839 .

And in the BIOS i can nowhere see the option to disable the onboard video card.
in the manual it is said that if i use an additional Video card then it will automatically disable the onboard card .

What will i do , i am loosinh 257 MB from the main memory .

Before when i have installed the nVidia Card and when i had the onboard card ATI 256 MB Shared , and had 2 GB of RAM . The usable Memory was 1.87 . Which means 128 MB is not usable . and Currently with 4 GB of RAM the total Usable is 3.75 so 256 is not usable . if i again install another 2 GB RAM Stick will it again loose 128 MB . Where can i get the 256 back so that i can use them ??

The curmudgeon in me asks if you've ever seen an instance where you were actually using more than 500MB of your ram.

I used to have a board without onboard graphics and 4GB of RAM and I got the very same behaviour. After replacing my 256MB nvidia7600 with a 512MB 9600 videocard, "free" does show all 4GB. Don't ask me why, but this quirk clearly has nothing to do with onboard graphics.

At a guess, I'd say review page 2-25 of your manual, "Primary Display Adapter", and set it either "PCI Slot" or "PCIEx".

There's also the "UMA Frame Buffer Size" on page 2-23 which can be cut down to 32MB if the above doesn't work.