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
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
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