Linux Format forums

Re: Graphics card

dhester — Mon Dec 10, 2012 10:52 pm

Author: dhester

Posted: Mon Dec 10, 2012 10:52 pm

Thats the board I have with my Intel i5 3570K, great at overclocking. I originally put an AMD HD7770 in the machine but had trouble with the drivers so put that card into one of my kids machine and then put a Nvidia GTX650 ti in. Very pleased with motherboard, processor and graphics card.

Only problem now is I can't decide which I like more my super fast Intel based machine with 8gig of memory or my new Raspberry pi v2 with 512mb!!

I now use the Intel machine to edit video and digital photos and it handles everything fine.

I would recommend the Gigabyte Z77-D3H motherboard with Intel i5 3570K CPU to anyone.

Re: Graphics card

nwdeveloper — Mon Dec 10, 2012 7:46 pm

Author: nwdeveloper

Posted: Mon Dec 10, 2012 7:46 pm

Crikey - nearly five months has passed between thinking about it and actually doing something. Although eventually I was tipped into it by getting more and more crashes on the old hardware. So, I ended up buying

Gigabyte Z77-D3H motherboard
with
Intel i5 3570K CPU

Absolutely cracking for an ease of setup point of view. I connected one monitor via a DVI-D port (it doesn't do DVD-I) and the other via VGA.

Installed Fedora 17. By default, the monitor displays are mirrored (same content on each screen), but a one click in the display applet turns mirroring off, and you can switch the left/right order of the displays.

I remember doing it with the Matrox card all that time ago and the setup took a few days of kernel building, module inserting and Xorg.conf-ing.

So, if anyone wants a dual head setup, I can recommend one of these boards. Hope that's worth necro-ing a thread for, but thought it was polite to come back on it....

Re: Graphics card

reklan — Fri Jul 27, 2012 10:41 am

Author: reklan

Posted: Fri Jul 27, 2012 10:41 am

Paradigm Shifter wrote:

nwdeveloper, if you want a 'AMD' built card, buy a Sapphire, that's the closest thing nowadays - Sapphire are the company that have built all of the old "Built by ATi" cards.

The "reference" design will be the same regardless of the sticker stuck on the top... the only ones that may not 'just work like any other' are non-reference designs where they can either be over-the-top designs for quiet/cooling/overclocking (pick one) or where they've cut corners on the power circuitry to make manufacture cheaper (XFX are particularly keen on the latter, so I don't recommend them)...

I agree... mine is a sapphire card and works like a dream.

Re: Graphics card

wyliecoyoteuk — Mon Jul 23, 2012 2:02 pm

Author: wyliecoyoteuk

Posted: Mon Jul 23, 2012 2:02 pm

It all depends on the vendor.
I have an AMD based motherboard that supplies VGA and DVI simultaneously, but I have had motherboards that don't, even though they have both connectors.
Most PCIe cards support 2 outputs these days, DVI, or HDMI and VGA usually. Some also offer TVout, some will output DVI and VGA from one DVI port with the correct adaptor cable.
Some will actually support 3 monitors.
So you need to read the manual.
The best way to get the specs is to download the manual from the vendor's website.

Re: Graphics card

Paradigm Shifter — Mon Jul 23, 2012 1:06 pm

Author: Paradigm Shifter

Posted: Mon Jul 23, 2012 1:06 pm

nwdeveloper, if you want a 'AMD' built card, buy a Sapphire, that's the closest thing nowadays - Sapphire are the company that have built all of the old "Built by ATi" cards.

The "reference" design will be the same regardless of the sticker stuck on the top... the only ones that may not 'just work like any other' are non-reference designs where they can either be over-the-top designs for quiet/cooling/overclocking (pick one) or where they've cut corners on the power circuitry to make manufacture cheaper (XFX are particularly keen on the latter, so I don't recommend them)...

Re: Graphics comparison

nwdeveloper — Mon Jul 16, 2012 10:37 pm

Author: nwdeveloper

Posted: Mon Jul 16, 2012 10:37 pm

dhester wrote:

jonrob wrote:

Hey all,

Just to give you a heads up, we're actually doing a hardware comparison as the cover story for 161... I believe we've got three or four graphics cards, including integrated Intel, nvidia and ATI/AMD. We've also got several processors/motherboards and some SSDs to test.

Hopefully we'll cover a range of budgets and performance requirements, so you might find something useful when that comes out!

Best of luck with your search

Little bit disappointed, was hoping the article might help me choose a new graphics card. Still not sure what to go for.

Just like to echo this post. Long time subscriber, longer time Linux user and long time lurker too. For about 6 or 7 years I've had a Matrox Parhelia graphics card. My biggest requirement was/is two monitor support. But I need to go 64 bit and more ram nowadays so I've been thinking about how to go about it.

So I was pleased to see the review on the cover, but slightly disappointed when I actually read it. A few points

1. Motherboards just get a mention, but surely there's potential for incompatabilities between certain boards and the peripherals

2. Graphics cards. Probably need to read this section again as it's the bit I'm most interested in. But the thing that struck me was that it mentioned "AMD Radeon HD 6670". But searching for that, the first few hits are for ASUS , then PowerColor . Reading Wikipedia, it says that AMD don't sell retail cards directly anymore, but instead sell the GPU to third parties. Of course, that might be rubbish. But if there are multiple cards using the same GPU, I could see the same potential for one to work perfectly on Linux and another being a washout. So some actual model numbers and links to some retail sites would be a good addition.

I did find some info on the AMD site about the cards, but I also wasn't clear if I got a motherboard with integrated graphics, can that provide dual output on its own, or do I need one port from the motherboard and a card to provide the other port? The cards with 6670 GPUs seemed to be two ports (at least). So if I get one of those, do I then get 3 ports (crossfire?) or do I disable the motherboard graphics port?

Anyway, I'm not that bothered about turbo charged performance - just two monitor support really.

Sorry - sounds like I've hijacked the whole thread there. Bit cheeky for a first post.

Graphics comparison

dhester — Sat Jul 14, 2012 6:20 pm

Author: dhester

Posted: Sat Jul 14, 2012 6:20 pm

jonrob wrote:

Little bit disappointed, was hoping the article might help me choose a new graphics card. Still not sure what to go for.

Re: Graphics card

nordle — Thu Jun 21, 2012 1:17 am

Author: nordle

Posted: Thu Jun 21, 2012 1:17 am

If you want basic mpeg2 acceleration with not much more, the ATI driver in the kernel is now fairly good
Yes, I said it, the ATI driver is OK. That is, the Open Source driver. I use it on my MythTV box. No tearing, no juddering, no crashing, no weird blue effects on flash video. etc etc

If you plan on doing any gaming, nvidia. My main PC is nvidia, those drivers have been fairly consistent over the years.
While Linus may be a bit shirty with them, nvidia have at least produced a binary driver that more often than not would work. ATI can only dream of achieving that accolade.

�100 will get you a decent card, NVIDIA GTX 550 Ti 1GB or ATI/AMD 6850 1GB

I would go Nvidia.

Re: Graphics card

Rhakios — Wed Jun 20, 2012 9:47 pm

Author: Rhakios

Posted: Wed Jun 20, 2012 9:47 pm

jonrob wrote:

integrated Intel

Given how well most Intel cards work in laptops/netbooks I have tried (I have been spared the Poulsbo nightmare), I sometimes wish they'd make a PCI-E card I could stick in a normal PC, but there's no sign of one.

Re: Graphics card

jonrob — Wed Jun 20, 2012 12:11 pm

Author: jonrob

Posted: Wed Jun 20, 2012 12:11 pm

Hey all,

Just to give you a heads up, we're actually doing a hardware comparison as the cover story for 161... I believe we've got three or four graphics cards, including integrated Intel, nvidia and ATI/AMD. We've also got several processors/motherboards and some SSDs to test.

Hopefully we'll cover a range of budgets and performance requirements, so you might find something useful when that comes out!

Best of luck with your search

Re: Graphics card

reklan — Tue Jun 19, 2012 6:00 pm

Author: reklan

Posted: Tue Jun 19, 2012 6:00 pm

I have a ATI 5770 in my desktop and never had any problems (ok well I did with the initial gnome 3 release..).

Works great with the open source driver as well as ATI's (even Ubuntus restricted drivers are fine)

Had Ubuntu,Xubuntu,Mint and opensuse all working fine..

Re: Graphics card

Rhakios — Mon Jun 18, 2012 10:19 pm

Author: Rhakios

Posted: Mon Jun 18, 2012 10:19 pm

AndyBaxman wrote:

Linus isn't too happy with NVidia:-
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/06/18/torvalds_curses_nvidia/

Ah yes, which shall I choose, the nasty, unfriendly Nvidia card with the drivers that work, or the warm cuddly AMD card where the computer locks up five minutes after I install the drivers? Decisions, decisions.

Perhaps Linus has never had to get a Via graphics card working in anything other than frame buffer mode?

Re: Graphics card

Dutch_Master — Mon Jun 18, 2012 2:37 pm

Author: Dutch_Master

Posted: Mon Jun 18, 2012 2:37 pm

I forgot to mention: you need the kernel source for the running kernel in place. That may be a PITA for your distro, I circumvent it by building a new kernel from the latest source release at the kernel.org website. That way my distro doesn't run havoc when it updates its own, older kernel...

Re: Graphics card

AndyBaxman — Mon Jun 18, 2012 9:59 am

Author: AndyBaxman

Posted: Mon Jun 18, 2012 9:59 am

Linus isn't too happy with NVidia:-
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/06/18/torvalds_curses_nvidia/

Re: Graphics card

lok1950 — Mon Jun 18, 2012 5:48 am

Author: lok1950

Posted: Mon Jun 18, 2012 5:48 am

And you will have to do that again when ever your distro of choice updates the kernel several distros have the ability to rebuild the driver interface automatically with each kernel update they differ depending on whether they are RPM or Deb based.

Enjoy the Choice