The Most Innovative ~$50 Graphics Card For Linux Users

[timrburnham]

Bookmarking in case I need a GPU for SiFive's upcoming RISC-V PC. I haven't seen whether it's shipping with graphics output or nah.

[piorunz]

GeForce GT 710! 👍😁 Passively cooled - that's what I've been using in my Debian server for many months now. It was a good choice, with it my UPS estimation time without AC power went from 50 minutes to an hour and few minutes, all thanks to getting rid of old AMD Radeon HD2400 Pro 256MB and replacing it with GT 710 2GB. 😊 It's using less power so server can live longer within AC.

[Paradigm Shifter]

This is of interest, thanks Michael. Now, I wonder if I can find one in Japan...

I would rather just use the integrated graphics on a Intel CPU. The drivers are open source and very stable and good quality.

Funny, I've had the exact opposite experience of Intel drivers in Linux, with multiple kernels (from 4.18-5.3) being unusable because the Intel driver would cause soft locks (and resets) of the iGPU at random intervals.

[oleid]

Thus you can have a 100% free software solution with the Kepler GPU unlike newer NVIDIA GPUs on Nouveau or even newer Intel and AMD GPUs also requiring firmware blobs for hardware initialization.

This Nvidia GPU does load firmware. The only difference is, that the firmware isn't signed. So once could as well use an AMD GPU with a similar number of outputs and power specs and be done.

APU is a solid choice, too. The following board has four display outputs:

https://www.asrock.com/mb/AMD/A520M-HDVPDASH/

[t.s.]

GeForce GT 710! 👍😁 Passively cooled - that's what I've been using in my Debian server for many months now. It was a good choice, with it my UPS estimation time without AC power went from 50 minutes to an hour and few minutes, all thanks to getting rid of old AMD Radeon HD2400 Pro 256MB and replacing it with GT 710 2GB. 😊 It's using less power so server can live longer within AC.

IMO, you'll better served with 25watt gt1030.

[t.s.]

This is of interest, thanks Michael. Now, I wonder if I can find one in Japan...


Funny, I've had the exact opposite experience of Intel drivers in Linux, with multiple kernels (from 4.18-5.3) being unusable because the Intel driver would cause soft locks (and resets) of the iGPU at random intervals.

Haswell iGPU here. i5-4300M and i7-4800mq. No problem with soft locks/resets. But after multiple sleep-resume, sometimes the iGPU slow down (Dota2 ~60FPS down to ~30FPS).

[andrei_me]

Michael awesome article, I liked how it highlights all the effort from nouveau developers, how the perf approaches/surpasses nvidia, unfortunately nvidia crippled nouveau efforts 😔

Congrats for the devs involved (listed the ones that I remember their accounts)

imirkin karolherbst MuPuF

[Paradigm Shifter]

Haswell iGPU here. i5-4300M and i7-4800mq. No problem with soft locks/resets. But after multiple sleep-resume, sometimes the iGPU slow down (Dota2 ~60FPS down to ~30FPS).

The only system I have currently that only has an Intel GPU is an i7-8559U NUC, using an Iris Plus 655. And until kernel 5.4 it was happening all the time on that - it was so bad I stuck with 4.15 branch. So maybe it's an issue for the newer ones? My i7-4000 laptop (I forget exactly which CPU it has in it, but one with the Iris Pro iGPU) also has an nVidia 980M, and spends its life running with the 980M - thus if the iGPU locks up, I don't see it.

[Setif]

Manual reclocking.

[t.s.]

The only system I have currently that only has an Intel GPU is an i7-8559U NUC, using an Iris Plus 655. And until kernel 5.4 it was happening all the time on that - it was so bad I stuck with 4.15 branch. So maybe it's an issue for the newer ones? My i7-4000 laptop (I forget exactly which CPU it has in it, but one with the Iris Pro iGPU) also has an nVidia 980M, and spends its life running with the 980M - thus if the iGPU locks up, I don't see it.

Maybe because Iris Plus iGPU? I've heard that Iris still problematic in linux. For what I know, non-Iris Intel iGPU rarely has problem.