Graphics Heaven and Hell

English Open Chat
#1

Due to some family member doing some upgrades I had reason to try 2 different nVidia cards in my 12.2 box the last few days.
With the aim of replacing my 8500GT with a slight improvement.

  1. GT220
  2. 9600GSO

So I swapping them around and testing them. It’s as easy as that in Linux.

But I had to boot to windows to try them in a Game… Well, what a load of messing around that was. Windows throws a Hissy Fit, every time you swap a card over, even though the graphics driver is the same.

All I could think of was the familiar saying: ‘Windows just works’ LOL, OK maybe, but what Pain in the rear!

I detailed the cards in HCL too;)

#2

So there is no doubt that the nVIDIA proprietary or open source drivers just adjust to the new video card, back and forth with ease. Changing the video card in Windows result in dropping back to VGA, then the new driver gets loaded, automatically and/or manually and then you get to restart again. It is a pain, but I also would add that most chaps are not constantly switching back and forth either. For a comparison on performance, here is what I see. You did not indicate the amount of memory on any of the cards.

GeForce 8500 GT vs GeForce 9600 GSO 384MB – Performance Comparison Benchmarks @ Hardware Compare

AND

GeForce 8500 GT vs GeForce GT 220 GDDR3 – Performance Comparison Benchmarks @ Hardware Compare

AND

GeForce 9600 GSO 384MB vs GeForce GT 220 GDDR3 – Performance Comparison Benchmarks @ Hardware Compare

For Power:

**8500=45W**
 220=58W
9600=84W

Memory Bandwidth:

8500=12800
 220=32384
**9600=34400**

Texel Rate:

8500=3600
 220=10000
**9600=26400**

Pixel Rate:

8500=1800
 220=5000
**9600=6600 **

Based on my quick comparison, the 9600 seems to be the winner but uses more power and is an older design.

Thank You,

#3

I decided to use the GT220 because it’s much quieter.
My 8500GT, I had modified to be fanless, so I’m easily bothered by noise.

Thanks for the input James, very useful.

#4

My wife has a GT220 in her Core i7 desktop PC (back in Germany) and her openSUSE-12.1 works well with it with the proprietary nVidia graphic drivers. She also has Windows7 (and Windows XP) running on same PC. I may update her PC to openSUSE-12.2 next year, but if I do so I will likely chose to keep the old grub. I still have not wrapped my head around the new grub enough to use it on a PC with multiple partitions, multiple hard drives and multiple OS (which is the case for my wife’s PC).

#5

Hi oldcpu,

Thanks for all your help in the past and now… maybe we can help you. We too have a triple boot system. The original setup was back with Grub in version 10, we believe. Anyway, at that time you and some other chaps were discussing these multiple boots and your words of wisdom helped us get straight at that time. We also were concerned in our switch over from 11.4 to 12.2 and our multiple boot setup. We were using legacy Grub.

In the changeover, we decided to jump into Grub2 and then figure out how to do the triple boot afterward. We had two 300GB hard discs. One has recently failed and we now have a 500GB and a 300GB. The 300GB is an HTFS drive just used for Data with a 16GB FAT section that is a ‘common ground’ for times when we need communication between Windows and Linux. More from the ‘old’ days than now -but- still comes in handy at times. It has always been a data drive.

We partitioned our old 300GB drive and now our new 500GB drive to hold the 3 Operating Systems. The first one being the default that came with the machine… Windows Media Center, the second our Main SuSE (at this time 12.2) and the third for checking out the newest SuSE (at this time 12.3).

Now then, recently, when 12.2 went public, we changed from 11.4 to 12.2 on our main. We let Grub2 install with the defaults -and- it found ALL three operating systems. We did not have to do anything. Course at that time 12.2 was still on our third partition because of our prior testing -but- it found all three and listed them in the Boot Selections. Looks good too. It has Windows Flags for the two Windows partitions (one is for recovery) and then has the Lizard for the Main Boot.

So, since the PC already is set for dual boot, you should be able to create a third partition for 12.2 and then using Grub2 defaults it should find them itself during the install. There are two commands to be familiar with after the install:

# grub2-mkconfig -o /boot/grub2/grub.cfg

which is primarily for Partition setups and

# grub2-install /dev/sda

which will write to your MBA.

That is all I have for now. Hope that it helps and you have a lot of fun,
Chuck