[PLUG] Choosing an nVidia card
Derek Loree
drl at drloree.com
Fri Oct 21 05:33:18 UTC 2011
On Wed, 2011-10-19 at 13:55 -0700, Richard C. Steffens wrote:
> My desktop machine croaked on Sunday. On Tuesday I visited that fine
> emporium of well priced, used equipment -- The Free Geek Thrift Store --
> and acquired a "new" machine. It has most of what I wanted, and I
> upgraded most of the rest. The Sony VAIO box includes:
>
> Intel D915GRO motherboard
> Pentium 4 3.00 GHz
> 4 GB RAM
> 500 GB SATA hard drive
>
> Ubuntu 10.04 is up and running.
>
> Unfortunately Free Geek didn't have any nVidia cards yesterday so I'm
> now looking for that upgrade.
>
> The motherboard includes an "Intel Graphic Media Accelerator 900, 224MB
> Max. dynamically allocated shared video memory. It also has "One PCI
> Express x16 slot" and "One PCI Express x 1 slot". My old machine had an
> AGP slot into which my old nVidia card went.
>
> I have not kept up with video card technology so I'm not sure on what to
> focus as I look through the nVidia options. I'm guessing that PCI
> Express x 16 is better than x 1. Beyond that the only other thing that
> may be important is that I also got a ViewSonic VG2030wm monitor that
> has both an analog input and a DVI-D input. From that I'm assuming that
> I need to be looking at nVidia cards that are PCI Express x 16 and have
> a DVI-D output.
>
> Anything else that I need to know?
Not really, you could look for two DVI outs for a little more
flexability.
>
> Second question: Is it possible to use both the on-board video and the
> PCI Express at the same time (going to different monitors, of course)?
I can't vouch for that particular board, but I have gotten Intel
Motherboards to run both on-board and PCI-express video at the same
time. With two on the PCI-express slot, you could do three at once.
>
> Thanks for all advice, tips, pointers, etc.
>
Good Luck,
Derek Loree
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