Blake's7

Hi! I don't know much about video cards, so here goes. I saw a post on a site about nvidia and AMD/ATI. Did AMD but ATI? Are the cards as good as Nvidia---I mean the ATI, either before or after AMD bought them, if they bought them? I know that fedora doesn't support ATI, so I wondered if there was something wrong with the ATI cards. Also, can a 2 X 16 pcie card work on a motherboard with a pcie 1 X 16 slot? Where can I go for a comparison between ATI and Xvidia 7000, 8000, and 9000 series? Actually, I don't think I need the 8000 or 9000 series, since I won't be doing any gaming. Any and all responses willl be greatly appreciated. Thanks.

Phædrus2401

ATI's quality is just as high as Nvidia's, AMD or not. ATI offers excellent cards, and though Nvidia usually have one or two cards that top ATI's best, ATI is very competitive in the $100-$300 market and are sometimes cheaper for the performance than Nvidia when it comes to low-cost cards.

Fedora does support ATI cards. It turns out that Fedora 10 will not work with ATI Radeon 4800 series cards because of some funky driver thing, but I have Fedora 11 running on this machine with my Radeon 4870 and it works just fine.

The ATI and Nvidia series numbers don't match up. The Nvidia 9000 cards are quite good modern cards, while the ATI 9000 cards are several years old and horribly dated. Also, the series of the card doesn't determine the power, the specific model does. An Nvidia 7900 will outrun an Nvidia 9100 any day of the week, hands down. The Nvidia GeForce GTX200 series and ATI Radeon HD4800 series are currently the higher-end series, with more cards geared towards gaming. If you're looking for something mid-range for watching videos and maybe light gaming you'll want to look at the GeForce 8500/8600/9400/9500/9600, or the Radeon 3650/3670/3830/4650/4670/4770 (not exact comparisons), whichever you think will fit your budget and your needs.

I don't know what you mean by "2 x 16". Currently modern graphics cards use PCIe x16 1.0 and PCIe x16 2.0 slots. Any PCIe x16 card will run in any PCIe x16 slot. It's backwards compatible. The difference is that PCIe x16 2.0 has a higher data bandwidth. With very high end cards you have to use 2.0 to reach the card's full potential, but for what you're looking at 1.0 vs 2.0 doesn't matter.


I hope I've helped you out some. Did I answer your questions?

Blake's7

Thanks for the response. My specs are:

ASUS M2V-MX SE
AMD Athlon 64 X2 4200+
Super Talent 2048MB DDR2 800MHZ
Western Digital WD800JD 80GB SATA2
Lite-on 20X DVD-RW
Okia A-Power 500 Watt Power Supply

I want to get a new card, but I figure I can spend $40 on ebay for an older new card. Fedora said it didn't support my card, an ati x600 pro, so maybe it's just older cards.And the pcie I meant was the 2.0 spec. Thanks.

Phædrus2401

This might be a good fit for you:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16814131133
PowerColor Radeon HD 4650 512MB GDDR2 - $57.99

Nice mid-low-range graphics card, not too expensive, about right since you say you won't be gaming, but what something new. This is a big step up from the x600 (and no, the x600s probably aren't supported by ATI for Linux now). If you want something in the $40 range...
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16814102726
Sapphire Radeon HD 3650 512MB GDDR2 - $39.99
Also this one:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16814102845
Sapphire Radeon HD 3650 512MB GDDR4 - $37.99
The GDDR4 version is the faster of the two, and it's cheaper, but the sale will probably end fairly soon, so keep that in mind.

Blake's7

Thanks for the response. I'll check that out.

ebackhus

That brand of power supply is bad. before you invest in a new card invest in a quality PSU.