The "best" video card for Knoppix.

Hey group...

I've spent the last 45 minutes researching this board and have come to the conclusion that I have no conclusion. I have a generic soyo board w/a 1.8 gig intel chip. I am currently running a radeon 9200 se (ATI) video card and it does ok...no 3d of course but thats cause I am a complete noob and have not tried to load the drivers. Being a noob isnt really the entire reason either. This board and others is full of horror stories of kernel hacks and the such that have gone terribly wrong when compiling/installing ATI video drivers. Screw it, I would just as soon just go spend a little money and buy a good card. I am completely window-less now because...well because windoze sucks on just about every level. I am not a gamer, but I would like 3d just to have it.

What are your recommendations on the perect video card for knoppix. I have 3.6 hd install on hda and yoper 2.1 on hdb. whaddaya think?

helios

IMHO you can hardly go wrong with nearly anything from nvidia.

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Originally Posted by mzilikazi

IMHO you can hardly go wrong with nearly anything from nvidia.

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Exactly, infact nvidia even provides drivers for linux. Can't get to much more friendly then that.

I ignored advice from others and got a new laptop with the latest and greatest ATI mobility and the official drivers for it DO suck.

NVidia, definatelly NVidia...

Even though, I am probably the "major" person to have had the "problems" with this video card, some of them were my issues, and not the cards ( I have a serious phobic reaction to compiling my kernel from source, which is unfounded, and really, not that hard, or bad, to do )

You can find LOTS of documentation here on the "Forums" on the process, and even post for help, as I did ( many times :( ) on the process... You can download everything you need; kernel sources, "Knoppix" patch sources, NVidia "specific" card sources, and then compile your kernel to include NVidia... After the kernel compile, it tells you in a readme file, or maybe in the installer, what changes you need to make to take full advantage of the video card -=- considering that I have over three figures in my FPS ( frames per second ) in glxgears ( between 300 and 350 FPS ) -=- it sure makes for nice video intensive game playing :D

My previous system had a ATI "All In Wonder" card, it worked, but NEVER as good as the NVidia, and definately, not without as few a headaches :D

If I was going to get another video card, it would have to be a NVidia ( even with the pains I have had with them, it wasnt that bad, compared to the outcome )

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Originally Posted by Cuddles

glxgears ( between 300 and 350 FPS )

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Really? I'm getting a constant 274 with just an integrated i810 chip. I thought you're supposed to get >1000 with a newish graphics card of almost any sorts.

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Originally Posted by Cuddles

NVidia, definatelly NVidia...

Even though, I am probably the "major" person to have had the "problems" with this video card, some of them were my issues, and not the cards ( I have a serious phobic reaction to compiling my kernel from source, which is unfounded, and really, not that hard, or bad, to do )

You can find LOTS of documentation here on the "Forums" on the process, and even post for help, as I did ( many times :( ) on the process... You can download everything you need; kernel sources, "Knoppix" patch sources, NVidia "specific" card sources, and then compile your kernel to include NVidia... After the kernel compile, it tells you in a readme file, or maybe in the installer, what changes you need to make to take full advantage of the video card -=- considering that I have over three figures in my FPS ( frames per second ) in glxgears ( between 300 and 350 FPS ) -=- it sure makes for nice video intensive game playing :D

My previous system had a ATI "All In Wonder" card, it worked, but NEVER as good as the NVidia, and definately, not without as few a headaches :D

If I was going to get another video card, it would have to be a NVidia ( even with the pains I have had with them, it wasnt that bad, compared to the outcome )

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I'm getting about 150-200 with out tweaking my card on armgetron.(sp)

Thats a pretty graphic intense game. I was only getting about 5-15 on my old i810

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Originally Posted by Markus

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Originally Posted by Cuddles

glxgears ( between 300 and 350 FPS )

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Really? I'm getting a constant 274 with just an integrated i810 chip. I thought you're supposed to get >1000 with a newish graphics card of almost any sorts.

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I am not sure about this Markus, but, I think they were looking at the "5 second timings" and not the FPS, glxgears uses an "average" of a five second timing scheme... It will give the amount of frames displayed in 5 seconds, and then calculate the frames per second from the five second timings - yeah, if I go off of my "5 second" timings, I get about 1500 to 1800 frames per 5 seconds...

Someone once posted they were getting around two thousand in glxgears, but I think they were looking at the "5 second" timings - I cant imagine that as a FPS, that would be something around a CRAY, I would think :)

Now, for a nice "intensive" video game, try Chromium, if you dont got enough FPS for "that" game, it plays slower than doggie doo doo -=- Mouse response is laggy, playing is almost imposible, without having the acceleration and FPS behind it... But, I agree with Armagetron - get it going with FOUR players, each with a screen view, all four of them playing as AI players, and you can still get around 30 FPS - which is pretty cool :)

Nope, had the right numbers:
markus@fujibox:~$ glxgears
1065 frames in 5.0 seconds = 213.000 FPS
1348 frames in 5.0 seconds = 269.600 FPS
1376 frames in 5.0 seconds = 275.200 FPS
1375 frames in 5.0 seconds = 275.000 FPS
1397 frames in 5.0 seconds = 279.400 FPS
1398 frames in 5.0 seconds = 279.600 FPS
1314 frames in 5.0 seconds = 262.800 FPS

Isn't due to a crappy resolution either:
markus@fujibox:~$ xrandr |grep \*
*0 1280 x 1024 ( 361mm x 271mm ) *85

I don't play that many games needing 3D so I haven't bothered with better acceleration, tuxracer works just fine with i810, as does chromium.
As a sidenote, although I'm running Kanotix BH5 the XF86config-4 is from Knoppix 3.7.

AHHAAA! Running glxgears while playing chromium gives:
root@fujibox:/home/markus# glxgears
212 frames in 5.0 seconds = 42.400 FPS
147 frames in 5.0 seconds = 29.400 FPS
138 frames in 5.0 seconds = 27.600 FPS
141 frames in 5.0 seconds = 28.200 FPS
150 frames in 5.0 seconds = 30.000 FPS
150 frames in 5.0 seconds = 30.000 FPS

... and the game is sluggish (which it isn't when the gears aren't running).

Just for ref here Markus, this is the same output that you showed, but with a 1.7 GHZ AMD, 512 MB RAM, Knoppix v3.4 w/ 2.6.6 experimental kernel, and a NVidia GeForce 4 MX 440 w/ 8 GB RAM, newest device drivers from NVidia compiled into kernel :

-=- glxgears running on its own -=-
cuddles@Morpheus:~$ glxgears
1514 frames in 5.0 seconds = 302.800 FPS
1659 frames in 5.0 seconds = 331.800 FPS
1660 frames in 5.0 seconds = 332.000 FPS
1660 frames in 5.0 seconds = 332.000 FPS
1658 frames in 5.0 seconds = 331.600 FPS
1664 frames in 5.0 seconds = 332.800 FPS
1666 frames in 5.0 seconds = 333.200 FPS

-=- resolution -=-
cuddles@Morpheus:~$ xrandr | grep \*
*0 1280 x 1024 ( 433mm x 347mm ) *75

-=- glxgears running along with chromium "Intro / Main" screen -=-
cuddles@Morpheus:~$ glxgears
143 frames in 5.0 seconds = 28.600 FPS
150 frames in 5.0 seconds = 30.000 FPS
163 frames in 5.0 seconds = 32.600 FPS
159 frames in 5.0 seconds = 31.800 FPS
154 frames in 5.0 seconds = 30.800 FPS
162 frames in 5.0 seconds = 32.400 FPS
147 frames in 5.0 seconds = 29.400 FPS
cuddles@Morpheus:~$

I play tuxkart too, fun game :D ( if you like to play "air hockey", you might look at tuxpuck )

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Originally Posted by Cuddles

NVidia GeForce 4 MX 440 w/ 8 GB RAM

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Well, that explains it then. Not a lot of memory on that one. I've set aside 16 MB for video.

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I play tuxkart too, fun game :D ( if you like to play "air hockey", you might look at tuxpuck )

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Heh, tuxkart IS fun as is tuxracer. Never did manage to win in tuxpuck so I've just left that to my godson when he's around. Supertux (supermario clone) and Pingus (lemmings clone) are other one's he like (me too but he keeps beating me at them :( ).

O M G -=- I have all of those games installed too - I completed all the levels in SuperTux, now I'm into the "bonus levels"... Great game!

Pingus is fun too, I'm currently stuck on the level where you have three choices to get them saved - I get the "floaters" fine, but havent worked out if I should "bridge" the gaps, or attempt to "jump" them across the three gaps :?:

Trick on TuxPuck - if you are playing against Arcania [sp] - when you are serving, wait till her paddle is going away from one side, and then serve your shot to that side - she cant move her paddle back to the "undefended" side very quickly... I still havent figured out her "spinning" serve, I keep thinking that it must have a "trigger" to show which side the serve is going to be "randomly" served to, but, I think its a "true random" decission though -=- she "usually" ace's me when she does the "spinning" serve...

If you like SuperTux, I got a hold of Gold Runner, nice, named kgoldrunner... Some other fun games: monster masher, neverball, neverputt, galaga, trackballs, defendguin... and for the logic: mirrormagic, fish fellets, ksokoban... tetris like: petris and crack attack

Did I say, I play lots of games, sometimes nothing more relaxing ( and nerve racking ) then a nice game ( grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr ) [giggle]

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Originally Posted by Markus

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Originally Posted by Cuddles

NVidia GeForce 4 MX 440 w/ 8 GB RAM

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Well, that explains it then. Not a lot of memory on that one. I've set aside 16 MB for video.

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Oops, its a 64MB memory, its the 8X accelerator chip, my mistake - had to look at the box again - after installing it, getting the drivers going, didnt have much need to look at the box much after all of that, sorry :(

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w/ 8 GB RAM

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aaawh, why did you say that cuddles. i was just going to ask where you bought a 440 with 8GB 8 gigabyte wooooooooo.
64M is not as cool.

Really, thats for sure...

I think it was taken as a typo, for MB, but, yeah, if I had a 8 "GB" video card, sheeesh, thats like 800 times more memory than my SYSTEM RAM - heck with running my video card ram from my system memory, get my SYSTEM to use the VIDEO instead ( ha ha ha )

8 GB video ram - I think I'd want to have VIDEO shared RAM then 8) that would be kewl :D