[Wolves] Printers and Graphics card

Ron Wellsted ron at wellsted.org.uk
Fri Aug 13 20:21:45 BST 2004


On Fri, 2004-08-13 at 18:34, Philip Moore wrote:
> On Friday 13 August 2004 14:34, Adam Sweet wrote:
> >  --- Jayne Heger <jayneheger at yahoo.com> wrote:
> > > I have in mind an Epson of some sorts for my
> > > printer, which would you go for? I only want to
> > > spend about £100ish pounds on one
> >
> > Epson printers are nice for photos, we have an Epson
> > Photo printer at home (model number eludes me off
> > hand, might be 910 something), wasn't too expensive I
> > don't think and the replacement cartridges are cheaper
> > than HP, but I dunno about Linux support, it's my
> > dad's. HP are pretty much guaranteed to work though as
> > Bruce Perens was their Linux guy for some time, they
> > are reliable and certain to be good quality. It's up
> > to you really.
> >
> > > What graphics card would you guys go for? I would
> > > want a 128MB one.
> > > Radeon or Nvidia?
> > > My current one is an Nvidia. Elsa Erazor III -
> > > brilliant card, I really like it.
> >
> > About 18 months on, I'm still waiting to get an ATI
> > driver working (took a year to get one in the first
> > place), so I'd say nVidia on that score as the support
> > and drivers are much better. I've been VESA VGA driver
> > since I got it and it cost me £130 or for the
> > priveledge of having bog standard VGA
> >
> > Ad
> >
> > =====
> 
> Hi
> 
> I could be wrong but I seem to recall reading in a report on SuSE 9.1 pro 
> distribution that Nvidea drivers are not bundled with the distribution.
> 
> They are in includedin 9.0 pro didtribution (I use a Nvidea card which works 
> in 2D -  I have had problems getting 3D to work - currently it is disabled).  
> This is no problem to me but if games are your thing then it may well be an 
> issue.
> 
> I found out that Nvidea drivers for SuSE 9.1 pro are available from SuSE 
> support.

This is a workaround.  You install the nvidia installer package which
downloads the nvidia drivers and the relevant kernel interface then
configures X to use the nv driver with 3d support.  See
<ftp://ftp.suse.com/pub/suse/i386/supplementary/X/XFree86/nvidia-installer-HOWTO> for detailed instructions.  Unfortunately, they are usually behind the release of patched kernels, so if you want to run the most upto date kernel, you need to build the kernel modules by hand, a really simple process.  I have an nvidia GeforceFX 5700LE which glxgears benchmarks at about 3400 fps in the default startup window and about 600 fps full screen.  Prices for the GeforceFX series start at about £40 for the 5200 up to over £300 for the latest 6800 series (don't event think about the Quadro which start where the Geforce series finish).

A couple of important point about all GPU based graphics cards:
1/ they are power hungry. you NEED a minimum of a 300W PSU
2/ as a result, they get hot.  They have a fan on the heatsink of the
gpu for a very good reason.

Overall I recommend the nvidia Geforce fx series.

-- 
Ron Wellsted
http://www.wellsted.org.uk
ron at wellsted.org.uk
N 52.567623, W 2.137621
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