Tested
|
| Author | Content |
|---|---|
| azerthoth Dec 21, 2007 6:36 PM EDT |
Just installed the new 169.07 nVidia drivers.
Using a 7950GX2 in SLI
can now switch VT's and consoles while running a compositing desktop without locking up
visibly improved framerate on desktop
nearly double frame rate for me playing WoW
-- visible improvement in texture rendering Must say, this is a gold standard driver so far in my book. |
| tuxchick Dec 21, 2007 7:08 PM EDT |
Azerthoth, as the resident Nvidia guru, do you have any recommendations for a medium-good nvidia-based card for casual gaming and digital photo editing? I'll be upgrading my system and probably have to get a PCI-e card, since AGP appears to have been left behind. In my experience a good video card makes a noticeable difference for these tasks, and as there zillions to choose from I seek a bit of guidance. |
| dinotrac Dec 22, 2007 2:12 AM EDT |
azerthoth - I have tried installing the new driver on my Opensuse 10.2 box running 2.6.23. Currently up with the 100.14.23 driver. Keep getting a symbol missing error when I tried to load the module. I seem to remember this problem from before, and it not being hard to fix, but...I cannot remember what I did. Any suggestions? |
| montezuma Dec 22, 2007 5:23 AM EDT |
Same driver and video card here (169.07 and 7950GX2). Works like a dream with the new 2.6.24 kernel (Ubuntu hardy alpha 2). No more lockups and nice frame rate in Sauerbraten |
| Sander_Marechal Dec 22, 2007 7:16 AM EDT |
Quoting:Azerthoth, as the resident Nvidia guru, do you have any recommendations for a medium-good nvidia-based card for casual gaming and digital photo editing? Not an Nvidia guru, but the 6600GT and 6800GT are dirt cheap these days and pretty good. Make sure you get a GT and not a regular one. |
| theboomboomcars Dec 22, 2007 8:08 AM EDT |
TC- I am not sure what your meaning of medium good is, but for the sub $50 area you can get an 8 pixel pipeline 128 bit 7300GT, which is comparable to a 6600GT. For the $50 - $100 range you can get a 7600GT which has 12 pixel pipelines. There is also a 7600GS which has 12 pixel pipelines but runs at a slower speed that the GT. It would perform between the 7300GT, the one I described you need to pay attention to the 7300GT the range from 4 pixel pipelines and 64bit memory interface to the one I described, which all the different combos available, and the 7600GT. One advantage to the GS is you could get a passively cooled one for about the price of a GT, if you like that sort of thing. Having just taken a look at the 8 series it seems that the 8500GT may be worth a look, I haven't researched the 8 series because I am happy with my 7300GT. But for less than $100, and pretty close to $50 with MIR you can get one, they have 128 bit memory interface and 16 stream processors, which is basically the new pixel pipelines. The 8600GT starts coming in at just about $100 and runs faster with 32 stream processors. I am not sure how well supported the 8 series cards are in the current drivers, but if they are as well supported as the 7 series that would be the way to go, if they aren't then you may want to look at the 7 series cards. |
| azerthoth Dec 22, 2007 10:01 AM EDT |
TC, sorry for the delay in response, friday night and the start of a week off ... I honestly wasnt capable of coherent thought last night. Cost wise I'm with Sander, the 6600 and 6800's are good bang for the buck. Performance wise the 7800 and 7900's while more expensive are wonderful. A word of warning though about the 7950GX2, as it is a dual card in a single PCI-E slot, there are some mobo's that have issues with it. Even with the most recent drivers they wont pick up the second card and about 5 minutes after booting you'll get an IRQ error. After that if your computer shuts down the monitor for any reason you have to reboot to bring the card back to life. Mostly I have found that issue with boards using the 590i chipset. Hope it helps. |
| tuxchick Dec 22, 2007 10:15 AM EDT |
Thanks, that's a lot of helpful information. The price I'm willing to pay is always wobbly; I start out thinking "$X.00 and not a penny more!" And then I end up spending a lot of pennies more. I don't overclock or obsess on framerates- I want real-world good performance :) I have a 7600 GS on one machine that I've been happy with. I forget what it replaced, some cheap thing, but it improved system performance noticeably. |
| hkwint Dec 23, 2007 5:20 AM EDT |
Azerthoth, you made that driver run on Sabayon Linux I assume? I couldn't make it work on Gentoo since I suffered from the same symbol errors as Dino probably had. I used the nvidia-driver from the nvidia-site, but couldn't get it to compile, even after manually unpacking etc. and trying to alter an old nvidia-driver ebuild (that's rather hard!) How did you do it? Also, I'm in the same position as TC: I will probably switch to something PCI-e in the near future. That will be because an upgrade to DDR2, new mobo, new PCI-e graphics card and low-TDP CPU (AMD BE family, recommended by Wolfgang a while ago) costs only a tiny bit more than doing only a DDR1 RAM upgrade. Coincidentally, yesterday I was looking at what graphics card I might want to buy. I watch some not-very-high resolution vids from time to time, some youtube, the occasional game (sauerbraten mostly), but on the other hand I might want to do some CAD - since that's my job (maybe I have to use Windows - sigh. I hope I can use virtualization), and I want to make some 2D-animations using 'synfig'. I also have been looking at ATI - since AMD is 'opening up' and I feel I need to reward them for doing so. But since all I ever looked at is nVidia, I don't know much about ATI-cards. I'm looking in the €45-60 range. If the 6800GT is good 'bang for the buck', which ATI card does compare? I thought an X1650 would be comparable, would that be true? |
| azerthoth Dec 23, 2007 9:15 AM EDT |
hkwint, actually when I looked found the driver already in repository still with the testing flag though and a custom 2.6.23.1 kernel. Compiled for me without a glitch. I dont know how you have your system set up, but I'm thinking package.keywords would clear nvidia for you. Also for ATI cards, I really couldnt say. I have had good luck with nVidia cards ever since Voodoo went belly up. I will say that when I'm hanging out doing IRC support that ATI issues crop up about twice as often as nVidia. |
| hkwint Dec 23, 2007 10:07 AM EDT |
OK, thanks. Last time I looked, the new driver was not in the repository, will look again. |
| azerthoth Dec 23, 2007 10:28 AM EDT |
oops, hkwint, it looks like it's in the sabayon overlay. |
| hkwint Dec 23, 2007 4:46 PM EDT |
Explains a lot, thanks again. I don't know how those Sabayon-people managed to get the newest and greatest again, but seems they just did. |
Posting in this forum is limited to members of the group: [ForumMods, SITEADMINS, MEMBERS.]
Becoming a member of LXer is easy and free. Join Us!