[TriLUG] Recommendation for a video card?

Maxwell Spangler maxlists at maxwellspangler.com
Thu Oct 3 18:19:54 EDT 2013


On Thu, 2013-10-03 at 14:22 -0400, Ed Blackman wrote:

> I currently have Radeon 9200 PRO (eg RV280, on AGP) and Radeon 7200 (eg 
> R100, on PCI) connected to dual displays.  The secondary display hasn't 
> worked since I upgraded.  I'm planning on replacing the whole system in 
> a year or so, and don't want to spend too much.
> 
> Does anyone have a recommendation for a new card?


I use an ATI/AMD Radeon 5450 "Cedar Pro" based PCIe card.  They're
available for $29-39 from many places like MicroCenter, Amazon and
NewEgg.

I've used it with 5-6 versions of Fedora Linux including Gnome 2.x and
Gnome 3.x environments.

Your needs sound like mine: I have a dual monitor desktop using a single
workspace enabled with the open source radeon  driver.  I need windows
to appear and move quickly and smoothly but I'm not looking for high end
3G for games, modeling or anything else.  For getting work done, which
mostly means accessing high power servers doing the actual work, this 3
year old desktop with this card feels nearly as good as the HP Z800
workstation I had on my desktop at HP.

As my 2010-era desktop that I use and which brought this card to me
becomes older, I occasionally look for a similar replacement.  But I'm
stuck on not wanting to spend a lot of money and wanting a card that's
got a very quiet fan or no fan at all.  So I haven't made the jump to
anything else.  Were I in a position to need another card and want low
cost and a guarantee that it would work, I'd recommend a 5450 based
card.

PS. You mentioned AGP and PCI for your legacy PC, but I'm not sure if
you have PCIe slots.  If you don't have them, then I'd suggest upgrading
the whole system as even 2013 year embedded graphics will feel better
than what you've got now.  Your cpu, memory and disk will also combine
to make the whole experience much more enjoyable.

HTH

-- 
Maxwell Spangler
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