School a bro - GeForce, ATI card support and Linux

[N8YX]

I'm looking at upgrading a couple of the shack systems and going to a later-model video card in each. Given that darn near anything made works in Windows XP/Server 2003, I want to narrow my choices a bit.

Card must support dual-head mode in Linux and use the PCI 2.0 (and earlier) bus. I also have an AGP slot available. Dual DVI ports a definite plus, and a minimum of 512MB video RAM preferred. Passive cooling also preferred though this isn't a deal breaker.

What works best? Debian Lenny and Ubuntu 9/10 are the preferred flavors at the moment though I'm not opposed to installing Fedora 12 either.

[n6hcm]

getting dual-head mode in linux with an ATI card pretty much requires using their proprietary driver (as opposed to the generic, reverse-engineered driver that you will get with many versions of linux). i'd be surprised if you could buy anything new that supported AGP.

why do you want to change the video card? is the video you have not supporting dual-head with spanned desktop?

[N8YX]

why do you want to change the video card? is the video you have not supporting dual-head with spanned desktop?
The current cards in these systems are old ATI Radeon 64MB (7000 series) and I would like to get something that's a bit more capable in terms of hardware acceleration and display resolution. The AGP side of things is currently handled by an on-board Intel i815 device; an upgrade here would also help.

Dual-head is currently supported (as it were) by the existing devices but they are a mite slow.

I found a couple NVidia AGP cards which have a VGA and a DVI connector. Anyone know if such an arrangement mirrors the video on each connector or is it actually spanned?

[KC2UGV]

The current cards in these systems are old ATI Radeon 64MB (7000 series) and I would like to get something that's a bit more capable in terms of hardware acceleration and display resolution. The AGP side of things is currently handled by an on-board Intel i815 device; an upgrade here would also help.

Dual-head is currently supported (as it were) by the existing devices but they are a mite slow.

I found a couple NVidia AGP cards which have a VGA and a DVI connector. Anyone know if such an arrangement mirrors the video on each connector or is it actually spanned?

With the NVidias, it does mirror and spanning. And that DVI connector can NOT use a splitter (The kind to give you two heads on a single hardware port). You have to have one DVI monitor, and one VGA.

[n6hcm]

With the NVidias, it does mirror and spanning. And that DVI connector can NOT use a splitter (The kind to give you two heads on a single hardware port). You have to have one DVI monitor, and one VGA.

exactly. we use these on our older systems which appear on imaging tech desks.

[N8YX]

I'm looking at an NVidia GeForce 6200; 512MB VRAM. The AGP interface is claimed to support both 4x and 8x modes - anyone have any experience with this card?

[N8YX]

FWIW, I took a chance and ordered one from CDW last evening.

Seems a certain eBay parts seller won't ship USPS to a PO box and they won't let you choose the carrier (:roll: :wtf:) so the purchase price of a 4-port Siig serial card was refunded to me last evening.

CDW had the card for $20 more (natch). They also had the video card I wanted for $30 less than the Fleabay crowd.

This, folks, is what's known as a zero-sum game.

Big question is whether or not the card will work in my mobo, -and- whether or not the mobo will actually support 2GB RAM as Intel claims.

Should the above work, I have to buy 8 more "sets" of these components to run Win7 on all the various systems in the shack. If not..I'm looking at some serious mobo/CPU upgrade money.

[n6hcm]

Seems a certain eBay parts seller won't ship USPS to a PO box and they won't let you choose the carrier (:roll: :wtf:) so the purchase price of a 4-port Siig serial card was refunded to me last evening.


newegg?

[N8YX]

newegg?
No - I'll look the info up then post it. Ebay storefront. "We're working on shipping to PO Boxes...".

Go ahead and work on it all you want; you just cost yourself northwards of $5k in business with that policy.