[SWLUG] New build

[Dave Cridland]

On Thu Nov 12 15:26:07 2009, Marcus Davage wrote:
> Basically, I want a Quad-core 64bit 12GHz, 8GB DDR3, 1TB SATA, but  
> as I
> don't play games, I'm not bothered too much about the gfx card. It  
> also
> has to be < £500. What I *will* be doing is running Ubuntu 9.10  
> (with
> Windows XP for iTunes, under VirtualBox), and maybe some  
> CPU-intensive
> server apps.

That's basically what i built about 6 months ago, now.

For a graphics card, I've gone with a Radeon HD 4650, basically  
because it was the cheapest card I could fine that gave me twin DVI.

I run it with the stock open-source "radeon" driver, primarily  
because I don't need anything fancy, I can live without the desktop  
effects that the ATI driver gave me, and I can't live without the  
"radeon" driver's ability to suspend and hibernate cleanly. The  
driver claims:

(WW) RADEON(0): R600 support is mostly incomplete and very  
experimental

... but actually I don't think it's ever crashed, unlike the "proper"  
ATI one.

FWIW, it's good enough to reboot (via a hibernate) into Windows and  
play games really quite well, too. (Yes, yes, I could play games  
under Linux/Wine or something, but that would need the flakier ATI  
drivers).

The machine cost about 600 all told, and my disk is only about 500G,  
but disks have come down in price and the need for twin DVI really  
pushed up the cost of the graphics card - really any old Radeon would  
have done, otherwise.

Dave.
-- 
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