Which video card should I buy

I'm looking for a decent video card that runs out of the box with Knoppix Version 3.2-2003-04-15 and windows 2000. I finally upgraded my system from a 400MHz K62 to an 1800 Athlon XP. Please keep in mind I don't really play games (maybe tux racer on occasion), and I?d like to keep the price around $50 (under $100 for sure). Clones and off brands are acceptable choices to me (some might argue that?s my problem).

Things I've tried:

1) Creative Labs clone of Nvidia TnT2 Ultra (worked flawlessly w/Knoppix but Windoze never liked it)

2) S3 Savage 2000 which mostly works with windows 2000 (text is doing screwy things) and won't work with knoppix (yes i tried the cheatcodes, but it just crashed the system)

I'm ready to give up and put my old 4MB pci video card in, but that seems rather self defeating since everything else is upgraded...

I've been going through the forums on the web that used to address these issues, but I keep seeing things like this isn't really a problem anymore (eg linuxhardware.net), or they can only recommend what works with red hat vX.Y. Hard to find a good debian review.

Any and all suggestions are appreciated.

soap

Anything by nVidia is good. They support their cards under Linux, and I've found their drivers to be one of the best around.

Get the Geforce MX line of cards (GeForce2 MX, GeForce4 MX), etc should be quite cheap right now.

I agree. nVidia is the way to go. It works out of te box without 3d acceleration and nVidia has had ful linux drivers and support for them for some time now. Most of these cards even bost linux compatability on the box. I would personaly reccomend anything fromt he GeForce2 line as it's now a couple lines old, and works flawlessly.

I should clarify, once you install the linux drivers, 3d support does work fantasticaly. And, they just realeased self installing drivers.

IF you decide to go new, I HIGHLY reccomend http://www.newegg.com

I take it ATI and S3 are not the best ways to go.

Thanks for the input so far. With nVidia, do they make the boards directly, or just the chips like s3?

That creative nvidia tnt2 (although flawless in linux) was a pain in windows. Bought it used (w/o drivers) and couldn't get any drivers to run it (in windows), nvidia's nor creative's. I do hate the plug and pray. Maybe I'll give nvidia another shot with something new out of the box (drivers included). As to the used card VeeDubb, thanks, but I'm getting this done today. I've been w/o a home system for about a week now...



soap

NVidia makes the chipsets. I don't know why I did it but I spent almost 4 hours yesterday, installing, rebooting, removing, installing in different order, downloading, etc. in Win98SE before my tnt2-M64 card would work. Of course it worked without any problems in linux. Go figure. And of course it was given to me without drivers.

BTW I've had a couple of ATI cards and they were worse, they wouldn't work correctly in windows or linux. I would definately go with an nVidia card.

And people think that linux is hard...

rock

I'm surprised that there is this much preference for Nvidia over ATI. I have a moble radeon on my laptop and everything worked perfectly. 3D acceleration worked without me doing anything (although I can't remember if this was with mandrake or knoppix and the laptop is in the shop right now for other repairs.) Since I didn't have to do anything to get 3D working, I figured that I would go with ATI in the future. X 4.3's better support for ATI cards coupled with the fact that ATI is more open on releasing the specs for their cards also leads me to think that ATI is a better choice. Am I wrong on this one? If so, please feel free to let me know and why. Thanks.

I don't know about everyone else, but the first PC I bought prebuilt had an nVidia and it worked great, so when I upgraded, I got a new nVidia, still worked great. By the way, that first nvidia was a tnt2 under Win98, never a problem, so I thinkk your problem was the card, not the model of card. ANyway, I just always used them becauset they always worked well for me, both in terms of setup and in terms of performance.


I can't say nVidia, is better than ATI, because I don't use ATI. All I know is that Vidia is realy realy good.

As for copatability with the Geforce2 and newer, under ME and XP, it's auto dected, no additional drivers required, though updates are available. Win2K is a hunk of junk for gaming, but if you insist, it should work fine in VGA mode untill you can download the drivers, whitch ARE available. As for linux support, some distros do include proper nVidia drivers, some don't, but drivers are available for all of them.

No mention of Matrox? Although I've never had one and couldn't give an opinion one way or the other I seem to hear alot of good things about them. I can find them for fairly cheap too.

I went with an nVidia Geforce 4 MX 440-SE. Works like a champ. Installed the nvidia drivers a couple hours ago.. Wooo Hooo. I can almost see the scales on the Herring in tux racer. :D

As posted b4, I'm not a gamer, but then again I've never had a system so new and quick (by my standards). if anyone knows some easy games to install that I should try, let me know.

As always, thanks for the valuable advice.

soap

I'm new to linux gaming, so I can't suggest anything specific, but I'm glad to hear you went nVidia and it's working well for you.

Hi soapee01,

did you try FrozenBubbles (KMenu/Games/Tetris-like)? I's a simple game that gives hours of fun. My little daughter likes it also very much.

Ciao Martin

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I'm surprised that there is this much preference for Nvidia over ATI. I have a moble radeon on my laptop and everything worked perfectly. 3D acceleration worked without me doing anything (although I can't remember if this was with mandrake or knoppix and the laptop is in the shop right now for other repairs.)

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I don't like the radeon drivers (specifically DRI) in the current XFree86 4.3. They don't work with games like Neverwinter's Nights (display artifacts) and UnrealTournament 2003(display artifacts,crashes), but above all, if I use any program that makes use of DRI, I can't logout/shutdown. Screen just goes blank, and my computer keeps on running. Hitting the power button or reset now could corrupt my filesystem. Something I don't need. So while they are more open with their drivers, I'd stick to nVidia for now.

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As posted b4, I'm not a gamer, but then again I've never had a system so new and quick (by my standards). if anyone knows some easy games to install that I should try, let me know.

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UnrealTournament2003 has a demo for Linux http://www.unrealtournament2003.com and Neverwinter's Nights. I know, these are commercial games, but seeing as these companies do bother with a Linux port, we should support them.