Video Card Recommendation

By Gerowen
in Hardware Hangout

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Grand Master

Gerowen

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So I'm running Ubuntu 12.10, and I use Linux exclusively on all my machines because I prefer it, and don't really have a need to have Windows installed.

Lately, especially since the release of Steam for Linux, I've been using my Ubuntu desktop PC for more and more gaming on Linux, but I've had one issue. For most of the games I have, including a lot of older 3-D games, my on-board AMD graphics card with the open source drivers works fine, however it is old enough and low-end enough that AMD doesn't support it any more with the Linux version of their driver.

I'd like to pick up a more powerful video card that actually has Linux support from the vendor. I don't play anything that really needs the latest and greatest video card in production, and I'm not really interested in spending a week's pay on a video card, although I do have some games, like Penumbra: Overture, that I'd like to be able to play with particle effects and stuff enabled. I don't really care whether it's NVidia or ATI, as long as it has native drivers for Linux and works well in Ubuntu.

Anyway, I can build a PC, and I'm pretty handy with installing and configuring any piece of software you give me, but when I talk to some of these, what I call "hardware geeks", and they start throwing numbers at me, I feel like a noob all over again, so I'm fishing for suggestions from all you hardware gurus out there.

What do you think would be the best video card for my situation? Let's assume there's a $100 limit on price, what would give me the most bang for that buck? Here's some information on my current setup.

Processor: AMD Athlon? II X2 220 Processor (Dual core, 64 bit, 2.8 Ghz)

Memory: 4 GB RAM

Graphics: ATI RS880 (Radeon HD 4200) <-----On-board

OS: Ubuntu Linux 12.10 64 bit

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Grand Master

Gerowen

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For your On-board that you say AMD doesn't support it any more isn?t these the drivers?

http://support.amd.c...deon_linux.aspx

The HD 7750 1GB with GDDR5 could be your other option.

I'll give that a shot thanks! Last time I looked I found a huge list of supported cards, and mine wasn't on it. Hopefully this will help me out a bit, :-)

Grand Master

Gerowen

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  • Author
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For your On-board that you say AMD doesn't support it any more isn?t these the drivers?

http://support.amd.c...deon_linux.aspx

The HD 7750 1GB with GDDR5 could be your other option.

It's not compatible with the newer version of the X display system. If I was running an older version of Ubuntu, or a distribution that uses an older version of X, I'd be fine. :-(

So I'll upgrade and get a better card. Thanks for the help though!

Grand Master

Gerowen

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So in the interim, I went ahead and did a backup and replaced Ubuntu with Debian on this desktop since Debian 6 actually uses an older version of X that works with the AMD proprietary drivers. While Gnome 2 may look a bit "dated", I have to admit I really forgot just how snappy it is compared to Unity, lol.

Anyway, I'll mark this thread as solved since I have accelerated graphics on Linux now, :-)

Edit: Is there a way to mark a thread as solved???

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