reasonably working low-mid range video card?

[jfboogie]

I've been using the integrated graphics of my i5 sandy bridge up til now happily, but now I want to play some games - emulators like dolphin-emu and pcsx2, steam games that will be coming out, maybe something under wine, but nothing *too* demanding, I don't really care about playing latest and shiniest games or high resolutions. So I'm looking into buying a dedicated video card, low-mid range.

I've been doing some research and it seems a real jungle - starting from the code numbers of the chipsets, couldn't the just have implemented a "the higher the better" numbering policy? It still confuses me that an HD 5830 is better than a 7750...

Anyway, what I'd like to find (in order of importance):

1) between 0 and 100 ? maximum
2) gddr5
3) good driver support
4) low wattage consumption

I was about to go with a sapphire 7750 but read that the 7000 series has bad driver support.... more generally, it seems that many times the catalyst driver is not reliable - not always, there are success stories, but if I put this money in it I wanna be damn sure the thing will work more ore less flawlessly for a few years at least.

I'm ok with reading documentation and fine tweaking configuration files, less ok with having to take "special measures" on every driver update (like downgrading X) and totally not ok with driver bugs that make me hunt the internet for days in search of a solution (or aren't solvable at all).

The nvidia propietary driver seems more solid, but their cards more expensive (and I haven't researched them as much ATM).


So, any advice? Am I asking too much?

I'm running Archlinux 64 bit, have an intel i5 2500k CPU and 4gb of ram

[JS987]

Asus/Gigabyte Geforce GTX650 (TDP 64 Watt) should cost about 105 Euro.

[jfboogie]

thanks, seems an option, though a bit too expensive and probably overkill for my purposes.


The sapphire 6670 seems appealing - someone knows how good are catalyst drivers for it?

[crazycheese]

thanks, seems an option, though a bit too expensive and probably overkill for my purposes.


The sapphire 6670 seems appealing - someone knows how good are catalyst drivers for it?

Anything nvidia - look at nouveau supported or nvidia blob supported. AMD is a twitched crap. GL.

[Panix]

Anything nvidia - look at nouveau supported or nvidia blob supported. AMD is a twitched crap. GL.

Then how come you keep promoting AMD in all your other posts. Make up your mind.

Is it just me or are any others tired of the BS promotion of AMD and their poseur / phony open source nonsense. They ARE NOT open source and they DO NOT SUPPORT open source. They let all this legal crap as an excuse (DRM blah, blah etc. etc.) and they don't do anything worthwhile with the blob either. For crying out loud, they're just borrowing the Windows driver but they're either inept or don't invest enough on the Linux side.

I think Nvidia sucks as a company but at least, it seems to work better in comparison. I see some complaining about the Nvidia driver not working but then there is a fix listed on their Nvidia Linux page from time to time. AMD/ATI doesn't even have such a page. You have to hunt around for where you download it and there's few if any comments.

There's a recent thread asking whether the new Catalyst driver supports the newer XServer version and they had to test to find out. So pathetic.

AMD and Nvidia are both pro-Windows and Linux is an afterthought. So, just buy a cheap card (some people are buying $300+ cards; that makes me laugh) if all you use is Linux. Imho.

[archibald]

They ARE NOT open source

Apart from the source code that's available under an open license in openly-accessible git repositories.

and they DO NOT SUPPORT open source.

Apart from the full-time developers they employ and the documentation they release.

Imho.

I wonder what a not-so-humble opinion would sound like.

[Calinou]

So, just buy a cheap card (some people are buying $300+ cards; that makes me laugh) if all you use is Linux. Imho.

I only use Linux, yet the graphics card I bought was more than $300 when I bought it (if I want low end, I use the Intel IGPs, not NVIDIA graphics cards). Also, this doesn't really sound like an humble opinion, it's "IMHO", not "Imho".

[Panix]

I only use Linux, yet the graphics card I bought was more than $300 when I bought it (if I want low end, I use the Intel IGPs, not NVIDIA graphics cards). Also, this doesn't really sound like an humble opinion, it's "IMHO", not "Imho".

It can be 'In My Honest Opinion,' also. I have the right to laugh at buying expensive gaming cards in Linux if I want to. I'm not stopping anyone from buying them.