I am considering a Radeon HD 4760 card for a system running Slackware, and I am wondering if someone has any thoughts on issues particular to this card or any general issues I might consider. (I'm looking for a FAQ if one exists.)

My primary reason for the card is to support dual headed monitors. I will not be gaming.

Thanks.

Any particular reason you are looking at a 3 year old video card?

Unless you've got some reason to use older hardware (eg, OS support or motherboard incompatibilities) get a newer card. A 5450/6450 will use less power, run cooler and might even be cheaper than the 4670.

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The primary reason is low cost. I'll check into your suggestions. Mostly, I just need to drive two monitors, with text and light duty graphics.

Oh, and the rest of my hardware is 3 or 4 years old.

I'm trying to do something in the $10 to $20 line.

Thanks.

I've a 4650 and it's aboiut the first ATI card that gave half decent performance under linux. That's what you're getting - ½ of decent performance. They are good as regards opengl2, etc. My 4650 has a bigger fan than the cpu. Shades of the WOM! (Note the section on 'cooling').

http://www.national.com/rap/files/datasheet.pdf

And, yes, they were extracting the urine :-P.

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My recommendations in the low cost sector would be:
- Nvidia Geforce G210
- Radeon HD 5450
Both are pretty cheap (20-30$), for your purpose more than sufficient and most of the are using a passive cooling solution, so no noise added to the system.
By the way, I don't think there is a 10-20$ range for graphics-cards, except may be used ones.

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Thanks for the help, but I am looking for a dual monitor board. The boards you mention are Black-Friday'd at about $10. Any suggestions for a dual-monitor card?

Ha Ha on the WOM.

How will a Zotac zt-40704-10L work? It appears to handle dual-dvi, and has a HDMI (for audio?).

I'm searching for compatible drivers for linux.

What makes you think that these cards can only handle one monitor? Any modern card can at least handle 2 monitors.

O.K., I'm more than a little confused now.

$10-20? For a 4670? Not that bad, IF you give a damn about gaming (a 4670 should be a lot faster than a 5450/6450, or G210, or even GT220). For desktop only use? Meh, dont bother. Even if you can get a 4670 cheaper than a G210, 5450/6450 its going to end up costing more due to power costs.

+1 TobiSGD. Though there is almost a market with $10-20 cards, I picked up a HD5450 for 20something ($27 IRC) a few weeks ago, and that wasnt even on sale. I've seen very 'old stock' 'low end' cards get even lower, but I'd wouldnt suggest them.....newer low end cards are better in a lot of ways IMO.

I dont know why you would be looking at $60 cards when you said you want to spend $10-20.

It will work, but could be a pain with some linux distros. The GT440 drivers for linux have only been out since april 2011, lots of distros wont have drivers in the repos that work 'out of the box' with a GT440.

BTW, the GT440 nVidia should work with version 270.41.06 (or higher) closed drivers. Checking which versions of 'nouveau' work with the GT440 isn't my idea of fun... :|

BTW, HDMI can have audio, but it can also be used to output to DVI, with a HDMI-> DVI adapater. So if you are worried about the G210, or 5450/6450 only having 1 DVI output when you want 2, it should be fine (as most of them have 1 x DVI 1x HDMI 1 x VGA).

4650s have a rated TDP of 48watts (real power consumption and heat output will be lower, well, unless you have a overclocked card).

I dont recall seeing many 4650s with huge heatsink and fans....I'd guess in most cases the CPU an will be bigger. That would depend on exactly which card and which CPU you had though, I spose its possible that you could have a CPU fan bigger than the GPU fan.

LOL, @ 6 'ft fan', LMAO @ 'in such cases more air is recommened'.

Thanks for your comments. The Zotac card is $29.99, which is outside $20. But it was close.

Thanks for clarifying...I thought when I saw a card with one DVI and one VGA connector, it was sending the same video to both interfaces. If not, then that gives me lots of options.