Hello
I am looking to get a new video card. I am not happy with the one built into my motherboard.
The only requirement is that is fully support dual monitors for my work & light gaming (steam games) for my son. Proprietary drivers are ok.
Which cards are best supported by opensuse right now, and the easiest to install?
Budget is under $150.
thank you
JOhn Kilbert
I personally like NVIDA but AMD cards are also ok . I’m running a NVIDIA 630 based card from Asus. Chosen because it does not require a fan. Works fine. Cost was about $65.
In the past I have always found the sweet spot was $50-$100 with perhaps a card about to go out of production so selling cheap. Had a 6800+ that lasted 5+ years until the fan died. Thus the fanless card 
Bought it for about $70 when it was going out of production. Wonderful card maybe one of the best NVIDIA made. (not the fastest but adequate)
Would you say NVIDEA cards are more supported than AMD? Which would be easiest to install eg. does not require kernel compiling etc…
thanks
On Mon, 27 Apr 2015 17:57:35 +0000, kilbert wrote:
> Would you say NVIDEA cards are more supported than AMD? Which would be
> easiest to install eg. does not require kernel compiling etc…
> thanks
For proprietary drivers, both are going to require some ‘build’ from
source, but the installers for the packages generally take care of all
that for you.
(Note that “kernel compiling” isn’t necessary - though kernel module
compilation usually is with the proprietary drivers).
Jim
–
Jim Henderson
openSUSE Forums Administrator
Forum Use Terms & Conditions at http://tinyurl.com/openSUSE-T-C
NVIDIA cards and AMD are both supported as well as Intel. The problem is quantifying the amount of support that you get. Both have proprietary binary blob drivers (ie closed source) Both have open source drivers available . You do understand that the proprietary drivers come from the card makers not the open source community. In either case the cutting edge shiny newest of the new cards may not immediately be supported . So I’d stay away from any card that has been just released, though they will eventually get a driver that works with them. But also they tend to be the most expensive card you can buy.
Some times NVIDIA has given better Linux support and at others AMD. Neither I would rate over a C or C+ though. Linux is not high on their radar
In general you want to find a card that is quite (fewer fans, smaller fans, no fan) The more memory on the card the better. I have found that the really cheep cards <$50 usually don’t last to long.
Note the OS drivers that come may at time not run right with certain hardware. But there are workarounds to allow installing and getting a proprietary driver installed
I have to say that my experience with the nvidia blob has been consistently better than with amd’s, specially when dealing with changing multimonitor setups, i.e., attaching/disconnecting an external monitor to a laptop (Intel is quite good at this too, FWIW).
Also the nvidia blob is usually (always?) available as an installable RPM sooner than amd’s, and if installed through Yast it’s pretty much a non-issue when updating the kernel.
I’m currently running oS 13.2 64-bit with a three-monitor setup (2 1920 x 1200 + 1 1280 x 1024) connected to one gtx650 nvidia card in my main desktop. Nice for games with a one or two-panel display and the third showing the manual/walkthru/whatever.
There are some minor annoyances, but nothing that you can’t deal with easily.
I haven’t dealt with dual-card setups, however, I do light gaming only, so the gtx650 is more than enough.
I am not AMD guru (never dealt with AMD cards), I am more of NVIDIA, I have i7 4770k in my machine with built in GPU. I would recommend going for add on card, much better picture quality and better performance. I am running 3 monitors on gtx 960 by EVGA all of them are 1920x1080 works fine. CPU considerably cooler when playing HD videos.
Before I bought this card I read that AMD is better suited for Linux but I got a deal on this card so I was f it I will manage to get it to work, worked out of the box. I do recommend propitiatory driver though nuevueu (what ever is it called) crashed on me few times.
It has always been a toss up between AMD and NVIDIA. Sometime one or the other has better support. For full honesty neither gives great support for Linux. I understand that in the future NVIDIA is going to require signed binaries to run a NVIDIA card. (apparently they have problems with knockoffs) in any case this may cause problem with the open source drivers in Linux. At this time I don’t know if anything has been resolved.