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On 08/05/13 15:52, bad apple wrote:
I had a GEforce 7x - thats the one that fried itself. I don’t want anything particularly flashy - just something that would work faster than my CPU could do it! This things got a GeForce 7025 / nForce 630a on board and now its working it seems to be fine. Re my 4 core - it used to run fine until the 12.04 upgrade. I used to run folding@home all the time and get 13Gflops out of it but after the upgrade to 12.04 I cant get the fan to spin up when needed. Pre 12.04 still works but its the 'family' computer and until I get a stable replacement must not be taken out with fiddling!On 08/05/13 15:13, tom wrote:I would add that the anecdotal advice comes from problems with all 5 of my Nvidia based machines - every one has given me problems that googling/ubuntu forums has not solved. It could be just ubuntu but then I've not had problems with ubuntu on intel/amd. And I do run the proprietary Nvidia drivers. I've even installed other OS (Suse/RH/Mint) and still had problems. They are, admittedly, mostly low end graphics engines often on motherboards. The only one that functioned well burnt out. I found I could often get improvements by running 'software' acceleration - but alas if I use all 4 cores of this machine it overheats.... that is an ubuntu problem but I dont play games so I'm generally happy if I can just drag a few shapes around. I'm not inclined to shell out for a high performance card given the problems I've experienced with their bog standard product, which used to run fine under windows but screws up even with their proprietary drivers in linux. Not that I've tried windows for 4 years or so on the machines in question. Tom te tom te tomSounds like you've been phenomenally unlucky - I will happily concur that the low end products from all three main manufacturers are generally absolute crap on any system (including windows) with the exception of Intel's current HD series graphics, built into modern Core I systems, which are excellent for light use. The HD4000 on-die GPU on the better Core I CPUs are the cream of the crop, allowing even medium weight gaming for windows dudes and perfectly acceptable 3D performance on any system, plus the only truly OSS Linux drivers. It's all I use on my monster i7 workstation which is compute-intensive, not graphics intensive. But, yeah, other than recent Intel, all onboard graphics are absolute shite and should be avoided at all costs. Word to the wise: get on Ebay and buy an old generation card, frequently for well, well under £50. Particularly, any old Nvidia GeForce 7***, 8*** or 9*** series discrete card, any AMD 6*** discrete, particularly the 6850/6870 models. These cards are faultless and will run Linux, Windows, BSD, Solaris or Hackintosh like a champ with zero effort on your part. If your motherboard can provide enough voltage you don't even need to bother plugging in the 4 or 6 pin power leads, they'll draw all they need straight from the PCI-e bus. Which is why I'm particularly annoyed that 13.04 doesn't gracefully handle my 8800 GTX, which is the first time ever *any* system hasn't. That GTX has survived through 4 or 5 workstation upgrades and has driven pretty much every x86/64 OS that exists at one time or another (including Plan9, Haiku and an experimental VMS clone) and 13.04 is the only OS that hasn't worked perfectly. Unbelievable. Incidentally, I just checked Ebay and there are tons of 8800 cards for well under £50 - the GTX model with 768Mb RAM is the one to go for. The only model above it was the Ultra but they're only a tiny bit faster and not worth the premium price they still go for - conversely, the 512Mb GTS model is also essentially flawless (I've got one of those too) and can be had for even less, the performance dip is barely noticeable. Saying all this, I'm currently saving my pennies for a very major graphics upgrade: I need a workstation card (Quadro/FirePro) for 10bit displayport output, full colour gamut, CUDA, etc and at least one equally top end monitor for it to drive. I'm not looking forward to it because it's not only going to make me very poor, but the driver packages for these monsters are famously picky (I'll almost definitely have to switch to RHEL or a supported clone). So lots more graphics-related pain is in my immediate future, I fear. Regards PS: your machine overheats if you use all 4 cores? Are you sure that's an Ubuntu problem, especially if you haven't tested Windows on the same hardware? Sounds like something hardware related is the cause to me, although it could just be Ubuntu screwing up lm-sensors and thermal control perhaps...
Tom te tom te tom -- The Mailing List for the Devon & Cornwall LUG http://mailman.dclug.org.uk/listinfo/list FAQ: http://www.dcglug.org.uk/listfaq