Linux and the NVidia GTX 660?

[tuke81]

Mostly I am using kdenlive to render 1920x1080 videos, and occasionally use other applications such as handbrake, avidemux, h264enc and xvidenc (where the latter two are based on mencoder, where I believe mencoder support has stopped).

Well in that kind of tasks you don't really need discrete graphics card(there's no app using nvidia' s nvenc or amd video codec engines). Integrated intel and quicksync should be enough, alltough I'm not sure is there yet quicksync support for linux in handbrake.

[oldcpu]

What kind of rendering are you doing? If you are using blender geforce can speed up rendering.

Mostly I am using kdenlive to render 1920x1080 videos, and occasionally use other applications such as handbrake, avidemux, h264enc and xvidenc (where the latter two are based on mencoder, where I believe mencoder support has stopped).

[peppercats]

I have the GTX 660 card with proprietary drivers and it works perfect. I have had zero issues with it, play many steam/Wine games.

[tuke81]

Thanks ... I think that a good suggestion (to use the integrated Intel-Core-i7-4770/motherboard HD 4600 graphics).

I'll also make certain the PC I purchase has a good sized power supply, so to be able support a GTX 660 in the future , if I so decide to add such a 2nd graphic device.

What kind of rendering are you doing? If you are using blender geforce can speed up rendering.

[Kano]

@oldcpu

If you mean tearing while watching a movie with KDE it helps to disable KDE fx (alt+shift+f12) and use OpenGL for output in case of huger problems, best something like XBMC.

[oldcpu]

Using HD4600 is a good idea

For your use case, I don't think the discrete GPU will give any benefit at all over the integrated HD 4600 in the Haswell i7 you mentioned. It should be fast enough for anything but serious gaming. You can always buy the gtx 660 later if you deem it necessary.

Thanks ... I think that a good suggestion (to use the integrated Intel-Core-i7-4770/motherboard HD 4600 graphics).

I'll also make certain the PC I purchase has a good sized power supply, so to be able support a GTX 660 in the future , if I so decide to add such a 2nd graphic device.

[tuubi]

For your use case, I don't think the discrete GPU will give any benefit at all over the integrated HD 4600 in the Haswell i7 you mentioned. It should be fast enough for anything but serious gaming. You can always buy the gtx 660 later if you deem it necessary.

[josipva]

Ah yes, forgot about kwin, new kwin is also tear free by changing to opengl compositing in settings.

[josipva]

Both 600 and 700 generations of nvidia gpu-s have tearing on linux (except some lower end 600's if i remember correctly). Other than that nvidia proprietary driverts work fine. Good news is, tearing can be solved and is mostly dependant on which compositor you are using.

I've done alot of experimentaion with my gtx 770 and I've found "compton" compositor to work best. The downside is compton has no "hot corners" funcionality. So if you don't need that then you just need to learn how to implement it in your distro of choice (not hard). Other than that, compiz on ubuntu can be made tear free by adding triple buffering in xorg config, elementary luna compositor is good by adding CLUTTER_PAINT=disable-clipped-redraws:disable-culling to the file: /etc/environment (probably works with gnome compositor also, although I'm not sure about that).

P.S. Tearing is X servers fault, so if you don't want to experiment with all that stuff you can wait 6 months - 1 year for distros to implement wayland which should solve much problems including tearing.

[oldcpu]

What are current views wrt nVidia GTX 660 and proprietary binary driver ?

What are current views/experience wrt nVidia GTX 660 and nvidia proprietary binary driver (or similar priced nVidia graphic hardware with proprietary binary driver) ?

I note on some of the GNU/Linux forums, users are struggling with the nVidia GTX 660 driver, complaining of significant tearing when using the nvidia binary/proprietary graphic driver with this card. There are various proposed fixes but not all fixes appear to work for all - and even when the fix mostly works, users still complain of a ~30% performance hit (and its unclear to me how serious is a ~30% performance hit give the competing nvidia hardware with the proprietary GNU/Linux driver).

Do any of the forum members have any current views on this, or on similar priced nvidia graphic cards ?

I ask because I am close to purchasing a new desktop PC and I want to select a graphic card. My budget is around the cost of the GTX 650 or GTX 660. Initially the GTX 660 read to be the ideal fit for my budget, until I started reading the complaints of tearing. Still, the GTX 660 still tempts me.

The GTX 760 pushes that budget of mine a bit too much and is likely over kill for my requirements, BUT if it has significantly superior graphic driver support (ie no tearing nor other hiccups) I would consider it. The lower performance GTX 650 is also a viable consideration. But on those two cards (GTX 650 and GTX 760) I have also read of users complain of tearing.

My use is mainly play back of high definition (HD) video and also video editing of high definition (HD) videos. I like to have special desktop effects (under KDE) enabled where feasible without too much of performance hit. I do a LOT of rendering. I don't play video games (other than chess which has no demanding video requirements). I will likely purchase socket 1150 motherboard with Intel Core i7 4770k CPU and ample RAM.

Thank you in advance for anyone who takes the time to provide me input/suggestions.