Moving to Nvidia for Linux......Recommend card?

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Dr. Righteous

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A while back I came to the conclusion that the hit and miss AMD support was a loser for linux (for now)
Mainly because one version of -buntu would work, but if you upgraded the to a new version that may change drastically. That last go around with this was with a Kubuntu upgrade that rendered my work system non booting. This really sucked because the previous of Kubuntu worked fine with the on board video.
So I'm going to move to a Nvidia card. No gaming here; just need excellent 2D support as well as support for NLE video software.
So I do not need an expensive card. A MUST is dual DVI output.
I'm not really familiar with the Nvidia cards as far as what level of performance they will provide. You may ask since I'm not interested in gaming why should I care? Well, I would like to know what I'm buying. Also I would really like to spend less than $50 on this.
Here is what I am looking at:

http://www.amazon.com/ZOTAC-NVIDIA-...e=UTF8&qid=1392904817&sr=1-23&keywords=nvidia

Gforce GT610. 1GB DDR3. Any ideas how this card ranks?
 
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Which AMD drivers did you try?

If you don't need 3D you might be better off with the open source ATI drivers than the binary NVidia ones.
 
uOpt said:
Which AMD drivers did you try?

If you don't need 3D you might be better off with the open source ATI drivers than the binary NVidia ones.
Click to expand...

I have gone down this road so many times and it leads to heartbreak.
I have tried different AMD Radeon cards, distros, FGLRX drivers, X.org, etc, usually to poor or disaster for results. I can't wait on AMD anymore to get their act together with proper Linux support. Open source suffer because they tend to work good on certain version of the hardware and poorly on others, and not at all on some. And rarely is there anything telling what kind of support you can expect. It is a crap shoot. I don't have time to dick with it anymore. I just need it to work and work reliably.
With Nvidia you don't hear about upgrading a version and it hosing to a no boot. Nvidia has much broader support. Sometimes it may not be perfect but usually you are not left dead in the water.
Support for AMD is spotty and differs not just from distro to distro but from distro version to version.
I really do not know what the answer is here. I have one old HD5750 card that worked great with linux.
But I decided to put it in my son WinXP gaming box for a bit of a boost over the card he had. And that was a fairly new card at the time, a HD6570.
Well, that card should have more than enough to do what I need for linux.
I tried for 2 days to get that card to work with linux. I tried 4 different linux distro, even different version of those distros; NONE would even boot to the GUI with that card. I finally came to the conclusion the card must be bad. I reinstalled it under windows. Works fine. :rolleyes:
 
NVIDIA driver support is pretty good but sometimes I find boot issues tend to be with distro problems when installing the driver.

The NVIDIA driver is also notorious for having poor 2D performance in some apps. Though it's something you never notice in ordinary use in composited desktops, if you need some kind of special 2D support you might want to look into that.

On one machine I've got a cheap fanless $10 GeForce 210 and it's never given me any troubles. But it's not dual-DVI and you might need something better. But the 610 should probably give you what you need. Maybe wait for a sale or something though if you can.
 
Have to say I'm impress.
I found a MSI Geforce 210 with dual DVI for $24 on Amazon.

I installed the card, and booted to the BIOS to disable the onboard video.
The Nvidia card works GREAT.
First thing I noticed is how much faster this thing boots to the GUI.
Instantly it supported my dual monitor setup no hicups. 2D graphics are MUCH faster.
Hmmm, I don't plan to game any on this system but now I'm curious. I started Steam up and played Bastion. This is a pretty light weigh game but it was unplayable on my AMD embedded graphics. It plays GREAT now.
I should have made this move years ago. For all the pain and suffering trying to get AMD to work and this being such a smooth and trouble free solution.
 
Yeah I hate Nvidia and their overinflated prices but I've seriously been considering to get their card only for linux use.
 
dekard said:
Sounds like a case of getting what you pay for.
Click to expand...

Nope on my main use for graphics card which is windows gaming, ATI has provided plenty of bang for buck. It's just not suitable for toying around with linux gaming.
 
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