Re: [Hampshire] What Graphics Card?

[mark]

On 2013-02-09 13:38, Jack Knight wrote:

On 9 February 2013 13:13, Michael Daffin  wrote:

If you are using the open drivers then neither ati or nvidia have 
problems

with dual screen. But then game performance might suffer.

The property nvidia drivers work well with dual screen here, no
configuration is needed any more except switching the displays around 
and
nvidia now supports the randr protocol so you can do this from the 
normal

desktop utilities for your de rather than the nvidia utilities.

It might also be worth noting that nvidia driver are improving quite 
allot

of late partly thanks to valve working with nvidia to improve them.



Ahh, that explains a lot - last time I looked (admittedly way back 
last

year) the lack of randr support was a clincher for me.


Great, sounds like either are a pretty safe bet then, in which case 
it'll probably be down to what gives me the best bang for my buck when 
pay day arrives! Thanks for your input everyone.


Mark

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Re: [Hampshire] What Graphics Card?

[Jack Knight]

On 9 February 2013 13:13, Michael Daffin  wrote:

> If you are using the open drivers then neither ati or nvidia have problems
> with dual screen. But then game performance might suffer.
>
> The property nvidia drivers work well with dual screen here, no
> configuration is needed any more except switching the displays around and
> nvidia now supports the randr protocol so you can do this from the normal
> desktop utilities for your de rather than the nvidia utilities.
>
> It might also be worth noting that nvidia driver are improving quite allot
> of late partly thanks to valve working with nvidia to improve them.
>

Ahh, that explains a lot - last time I looked (admittedly way back last
year) the lack of randr support was a clincher for me.
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Re: [Hampshire] What Graphics Card?

[Michael Daffin]

If you are using the open drivers then neither ati or nvidia have problems
with dual screen. But then game performance might suffer.

The property nvidia drivers work well with dual screen here, no
configuration is needed any more except switching the displays around and
nvidia now supports the randr protocol so you can do this from the normal
desktop utilities for your de rather than the nvidia utilities.

It might also be worth noting that nvidia driver are improving quite allot
of late partly thanks to valve working with nvidia to improve them.

I don't have any experience with ati cards but I have heard allot of people
having problems with their closed drivers
On 9 Feb 2013 13:03,  wrote:

> On 2013-02-09 12:55, Jack Knight wrote:
>
>> On 9 February 2013 10:35, 
>> >
>> wrote:
>>
>> I'm using one of these:
>> Sapphire HD6450 1GB Flex
>> http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/**product/B006GTDSC6/ref=wms_**ohs_product
>>
>> It's driving 3 (yes, 3) 24" iIyama monitors at 1920x1080, using the AMD
>> open source drivers and the Unity desktop extends over all 3 wonderfully
>> with none of the messing about with xinerama/twinview you have with the NV
>> kit.
>>
>
>  You don't say you have multiple monitors, but should you ever want to go
>> that way it's a great card for that, and it should certainly perform well
>> under 12.10 with a single one - also the price is within your margin.
>>
>
> Very good point, I use 2 monitors.  I've never had an Nvidia card in a
> multi-monitor set up, so I'll have to take that into consideration.
>
> Mark
>
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Re: [Hampshire] What Graphics Card?

[mark]

On 2013-02-09 13:10, Paul Freeman wrote:

On 2013-02-09 13:03, m...@barrenfrozenwasteland.com wrote:

On 2013-02-09 12:55, Jack Knight wrote:

On 9 February 2013 10:35,  wrote:


You don't say you have multiple monitors, but should you ever want 
to go
that way it's a great card for that, and it should certainly perform 
well
under 12.10 with a single one - also the price is within your 
margin.


Very good point, I use 2 monitors.  I've never had an Nvidia card in
a multi-monitor set up, so I'll have to take that into consideration.


I have used the Nvidia drivers in a multi-head setup with X both on
desktop more recently, and a laptop back in 2006 without any issues


Excellent, thank you.

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Re: [Hampshire] What Graphics Card?

[Paul Freeman]

On 2013-02-09 13:03, m...@barrenfrozenwasteland.com wrote:

On 2013-02-09 12:55, Jack Knight wrote:

On 9 February 2013 10:35,  wrote:


You don't say you have multiple monitors, but should you ever want 
to go
that way it's a great card for that, and it should certainly perform 
well
under 12.10 with a single one - also the price is within your 
margin.


Very good point, I use 2 monitors.  I've never had an Nvidia card in
a multi-monitor set up, so I'll have to take that into consideration.


I have used the Nvidia drivers in a multi-head setup with X both on 
desktop more recently, and a laptop back in 2006 without any issues


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Re: [Hampshire] What Graphics Card?

[mark]

On 2013-02-09 12:55, Jack Knight wrote:

On 9 February 2013 10:35,  wrote:

I'm using one of these:
Sapphire HD6450 1GB Flex
http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B006GTDSC6/ref=wms_ohs_product

It's driving 3 (yes, 3) 24" iIyama monitors at 1920x1080, using the 
AMD
open source drivers and the Unity desktop extends over all 3 
wonderfully
with none of the messing about with xinerama/twinview you have with 
the NV

kit.


You don't say you have multiple monitors, but should you ever want to 
go
that way it's a great card for that, and it should certainly perform 
well

under 12.10 with a single one - also the price is within your margin.


Very good point, I use 2 monitors.  I've never had an Nvidia card in a 
multi-monitor set up, so I'll have to take that into consideration.


Mark

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Re: [Hampshire] What Graphics Card?

[Jack Knight]

On 9 February 2013 10:35,  wrote:

> Hi All,
> I've just upgraded by desktop to Ubuntu to 12.10 and come across the
> wonderful fact that AMD/ATI now consider my Radeon HD 3000 series graphics
> card "legacy" and dont provide drivers for the Xorg version that 12.10
> uses.  As such, I'm now running an odd setup with a downgraded Xorg and
> patched driver, which is far from ideal going forward. Time for a new
> graphics card.
>
> I don't buy stuff like this very often, so I'm hoping someone who has done
> so recently can point me in the right direction.  I do a fair bit of
> gaming, but I'm not die hard. Skyrim is the most recent game I have, and
> I'm happy with the performance I get on that out my current card.
>  Something mid-range would suit me, around the £50 mark.
>
> I also have no particular loyalty to AMD or NVidia.  The reason I ended up
> with an AMD card is that when I built the PC, Nvidia cards had problems
> with KWin's compisting (I've since switched to Unity, so this is no longer
> a consideration).  Are there any pitfalls regarding common issues with a
> manufacturer's drivers that I should be aware of?
>
> My current investigations have led me to consider the NVidia Geforce
> 630[1].  If anyone has good or bad experience with this in particular, or
> would recommend a different card with a similar spec, I'd be very grateful.
>

I'm using one of these:
Sapphire HD6450 1GB Flex
http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B006GTDSC6/ref=wms_ohs_product

It's driving 3 (yes, 3) 24" iIyama monitors at 1920x1080, using the AMD
open source drivers and the Unity desktop extends over all 3 wonderfully
with none of the messing about with xinerama/twinview you have with the NV
kit. I ended up going for this card after a lot of research then some trial
and error to refine things. This card "just worked" out of the box, all I
had to do was rearrange the displays in the settings then tweak Unity to my
desired configuration so it only displays the menu on the leftmost screen
etc. It also drives a 3x2 desktop arrangement (more if you have the RAM to
spare, but that seems a little excessive given the screen estate here
anyway) with no bother, allowing me to switch between virtual desktops at a
keypress, and drag windows between them all.

I found I could also drive 3 monitors with the cheaper Sapphire HD5450
which can be picked up for about £25, however the performance is a little
laggy. The 6450 doesn't seem to have that problem so I'd say the extra £20
is well worth it aesthetically. I'm very pleased with the card in terms of
both performance and cost.

You don't say you have multiple monitors, but should you ever want to go
that way it's a great card for that, and it should certainly perform well
under 12.10 with a single one - also the price is within your margin.

However, YMMV.

/jfk
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Re: [Hampshire] What Graphics Card?

[Paul Freeman]

Hi Mark,

On 2013-02-09 10:35, m...@barrenfrozenwasteland.com wrote:


I don't buy stuff like this very often, so I'm hoping someone who has
done so recently can point me in the right direction.  I do a fair 
bit

of gaming, but I'm not die hard. Skyrim is the most recent game I
have, and I'm happy with the performance I get on that out my current
card.  Something mid-range would suit me, around the £50 mark.


I have been running an Nvidia GeForce GTX 560ti (Asus card, I know not 
a £50 one!) without any issues for ~12 months now and other Nvidia cards 
in years previously. I'm on Gentoo but use Ubuntu now and again too. I 
Gnome 3 on both without any issues (no Unity fan here!). now and again 
I'll also boot into Windows 7 to play the odd game (tends to be Settlers 
7 atm :)



I also have no particular loyalty to AMD or NVidia.  The reason I
ended up with an AMD card is that when I built the PC, Nvidia cards
had problems with KWin's compisting (I've since switched to Unity, so
this is no longer a consideration).  Are there any pitfalls regarding
common issues with a manufacturer's drivers that I should be aware 
of?


Despite the minor issues (lack of KMS/native console) the Nvidia 
proprietary drivers are pretty good on the whole and still outstrip the 
Nouveau open source Nvidia driver in the OpenGL department - although 
things are progressing and hopefully we'll see further improvements with 
kernel 3.8+. I my experience Nvidia tend to get fixes pushed out pretty 
quick for the linux driver and often have beta's available on their 
forums if you like to tinker!




My current investigations have led me to consider the NVidia Geforce
630[1].  If anyone has good or bad experience with this in 
particular,

or would recommend a different card with a similar spec, I'd be very
grateful.


Anything in the 500/600 series is pretty good to be honest, you can get 
a run down of relative performances on Nvidia's GeForce site:

http://www.geforce.co.uk/hardware/compare-buy-gpus

Paul

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Re: [Hampshire] What Graphics Card?

[Ally Biggs]

I'm running a radeon HD 5770 These can be picked up relatively cheap off eBay. 
Game wise it handles anything I have thrown at it Skyrim on highest detail, 
Battlefield 3, Farcry 3 both on highest detail. But this is of course through 
Windows 7 I don't use Linux for gaming. 

Might be worth researching into what the Linux support is like. But from a 
Windows point of view for the money the card kicks ass. I don't tend to bother 
with Compiz or any of that fancy GUI animation stuff, I usually run Centos or 
Debian headless. So wouldn't know if the card is capable of doing all that 
fancy graphical GUI wizardry. Infact it has been a few years since I have seen 
Compiz and such effects last experience was with a older Ubuntu release before 
they implemented Unity. I remember It used to be a right pain in the ass to 
configure. 

Sent from my iPhone

On 9 Feb 2013, at 10:36, m...@barrenfrozenwasteland.com wrote:

> Hi All,
> I've just upgraded by desktop to Ubuntu to 12.10 and come across the 
> wonderful fact that AMD/ATI now consider my Radeon HD 3000 series graphics 
> card "legacy" and dont provide drivers for the Xorg version that 12.10 uses.  
> As such, I'm now running an odd setup with a downgraded Xorg and patched 
> driver, which is far from ideal going forward. Time for a new graphics card.
> 
> I don't buy stuff like this very often, so I'm hoping someone who has done so 
> recently can point me in the right direction.  I do a fair bit of gaming, but 
> I'm not die hard. Skyrim is the most recent game I have, and I'm happy with 
> the performance I get on that out my current card.  Something mid-range would 
> suit me, around the £50 mark.
> 
> I also have no particular loyalty to AMD or NVidia.  The reason I ended up 
> with an AMD card is that when I built the PC, Nvidia cards had problems with 
> KWin's compisting (I've since switched to Unity, so this is no longer a 
> consideration).  Are there any pitfalls regarding common issues with a 
> manufacturer's drivers that I should be aware of?
> 
> My current investigations have led me to consider the NVidia Geforce 630[1].  
> If anyone has good or bad experience with this in particular, or would 
> recommend a different card with a similar spec, I'd be very grateful.
> 
> Cheers
> Mark
> 
> [1] 
> http://www.amazon.co.uk/Asus-GeForce-Graphics-Express-Dust-Proof/dp/B0084LE1XY/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1360404970&sr=8-1
> 
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[Hampshire] What Graphics Card?

[mark]

Hi All,
I've just upgraded by desktop to Ubuntu to 12.10 and come across the 
wonderful fact that AMD/ATI now consider my Radeon HD 3000 series 
graphics card "legacy" and dont provide drivers for the Xorg version 
that 12.10 uses.  As such, I'm now running an odd setup with a 
downgraded Xorg and patched driver, which is far from ideal going 
forward. Time for a new graphics card.


I don't buy stuff like this very often, so I'm hoping someone who has 
done so recently can point me in the right direction.  I do a fair bit 
of gaming, but I'm not die hard. Skyrim is the most recent game I have, 
and I'm happy with the performance I get on that out my current card.  
Something mid-range would suit me, around the £50 mark.


I also have no particular loyalty to AMD or NVidia.  The reason I ended 
up with an AMD card is that when I built the PC, Nvidia cards had 
problems with KWin's compisting (I've since switched to Unity, so this 
is no longer a consideration).  Are there any pitfalls regarding common 
issues with a manufacturer's drivers that I should be aware of?


My current investigations have led me to consider the NVidia Geforce 
630[1].  If anyone has good or bad experience with this in particular, 
or would recommend a different card with a similar spec, I'd be very 
grateful.


Cheers
Mark

[1] 
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Asus-GeForce-Graphics-Express-Dust-Proof/dp/B0084LE1XY/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1360404970&sr=8-1


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