Best card for under $100

[grege]

G210 v GT520

@deanjo

I got the G210s as the best value at the time. I can now get a Zotac G210 with 1gb for $28

But, yes, the GT520 is a better card and my local shop has them for $44 for a Gainward with 1gb.

Depends what you need. I will not be pulling out my G210 to put in a GT520, but would consider one if I needed a new card.

If your budget is tight then a G210 is still very good value. And it is very power efficient. I have no experience with the power draw of the GT520, but I would guess they are in the same ballpark.

cheers

[deanjo]

I agree with letocha.

It is hard to go past an Nvidia G210 for general purpose Linux work. I have three and all are Gainward GeForce 210 with 512mb. I paid a measly $40 each for the cards. They are passively cooled thus absolutely silent. If you run 32bit they also support hardware flash acceleration with the Nvidia driver. The Nvidia driver also supports power saving functions. I have a Mini-ITX motherboard with an Intel i3 2120, 8GB DDR3, the G210, an Antec 80Plus certified power supply and a WD Green 2Tb HDD. For 98% of the time the whole box only pulls 44w. The power draw is the same using the onboard Intel Graphics HD2000 so the Nvidia board is very efficient.

And the G210 runs Gnome3 without any issues.

The G210 suits my purpose perfectly and is definitely worth consideration.

You might as well go with a GT-520 then. They come in passive versions as well and a better vdpau implementation.

[grege]

G210

I agree with letocha.

It is hard to go past an Nvidia G210 for general purpose Linux work. I have three and all are Gainward GeForce 210 with 512mb. I paid a measly $40 each for the cards. They are passively cooled thus absolutely silent. If you run 32bit they also support hardware flash acceleration with the Nvidia driver. The Nvidia driver also supports power saving functions. I have a Mini-ITX motherboard with an Intel i3 2120, 8GB DDR3, the G210, an Antec 80Plus certified power supply and a WD Green 2Tb HDD. For 98% of the time the whole box only pulls 44w. The power draw is the same using the onboard Intel Graphics HD2000 so the Nvidia board is very efficient.

And the G210 runs Gnome3 without any issues.

The G210 suits my purpose perfectly and is definitely worth consideration.

[letocha]

What card are you talking about?

nvidia geforce 210 (as mentionned in the title of the post)

[DanL]

Thanks to VDPAU sets C, this Card allows viewing full HD movies with nvidia binary driver, and it's a passive card, so enjoy the silence.

What card are you talking about?

[letocha]

nvidia geforce 210

Thanks to VDPAU sets C,

This Card allow viewing full HD movies with nvidia binary driver

And, it's a passive card, so enjoy the silence.


It's my card before i buy the quadro 600 (for better opengl support)

[DanL]

So to answer the question at this point in time, you can get a GTS 450 or RadeonHD 6750 (Turks core) for a c-note. If you count mail-in rebates and you have a few extra dollars, you can get a GTX 550 Ti or a RadeonHD 6790 (Barts core).
(Used newegg as price reference.)

[AlbertP]

I heard people complaining about 4xx/5xx in linux due to driver quality. I don?t know if its sorted out.

With the binary driver it's working well on the newest Ubuntu version, and with Nouveau it's working fine from the 3.1/3.2 kernel on (except 410M and 520 series).

[Richard Wolf VI]

The experience with the GTS 250 has been fantastical, with the HD Graphics 2000, Minecraft was running at 20 fps at most and with an awful antialiasing glitch we couldn't fix. The GTS 250 gives at least 300 fps.

Other games, like Cogs, look equally improved. There haven't been any X crashes nor image corruption like it happened with the Intel graphics. It also gave the correct resolution without workarounds. In all, we can recommend the card, no matter its age. It works and it works greatly, given no card can match it in price at the moment.

[crazycheese]

I think you're right!

Its my point of view. If you buy discrete card, driver feature-side nvidia tops, application compatibility/bugs nvidia tops(still had to work with pixbuf in xorg.conf for kde4), card binary driver support frame nvidia tops.
AMD seems to have near values, but not exceeding. The only things where AMD binary is better is some 3D performance (where their linux driver is faster than windows driver, barely case for nvidia) and multimonitor support.

Open drivers, you better go AMD. But this means you will be cutting on card actuall performance. No top performance with opensource AMD. Whats the reason to buy discrete card, then ...

I can't decide whether to get a GTX 460 or Radeon 5850 ($139) if I go ATI.

GTX 460 = 2x speed of GTX 260sp216
GTX 560Ti = ~GTX470
No idea about radeon, I decided against amd route in the end.

It seems there's too many problems or bugs if you want all features since you have to use catalyst.

Catalyst does not provide all features and/or @optimum performance as far as I know.

Edit: GTX 560 is $139 w/ rebate... good price? How much power/temps is it compared to a 460? Is this too expensive a card for Linux? I guess Nvidia drivers will eventually mature with some bugs or issues but probably less than fglrx & 5850, right?

Why not used on ebay? Sometimes you can spare money, of course there is RISK.
I heard people complaining about 4xx/5xx in linux due to driver quality. I don?t know if its sorted out. Still no fan/speed control though.

There is no such thing as "too expensive card for Linux" mate. There can be "crappy drivers to use the card" though.