im gonna upgrade from my old ati radeon 9600 what do you guys recommend also its older computer so all i have is a agp slot… thanks…
nVidia please
HCL/Nvidia Video Cards - openSUSE
I recommend you take a good look at these two threads
- Looking for compatible video card - 11.2 - openSUSE Forums
- Looking to upgrade video card - openSUSE Forums
IMHO you should limit your selection (for an AGP slot) to either nVidia or ATI.
Do you also use MS-Windows on same PC about 40% or more of the time? If so, then my recommendation is to let MS-Windows functionality drive your graphic card selection and NOT Linux functionality. I’ll explain that later.
IMHO you need to sort your requirements for this older PC. What is most important? Snappy 3D graphics ? (ie cube rotation, etc … ). Or playback of HD videos ?
To the best of my knowledge, there are no nVidia AGP cards that provide the VDPAU/Pure-Video capability needed to play back smoothly HD videos on an older PC on Linux nor on Windows . There are ATI AGP cards that provide the capability to play back HD videos on Windows (using AVIVO standard/technology), but NOT on Linux. Hence if you use Windows a LOT on this PC, I recommend you get an ATI card for the AGP slot so that under MS-Windows you can play back HD videos. And with an ATI card in the AGP slot you will likely get good 3D graphics in Linux.
Now if you wish to stick with Linux, and you wish to play back HD videos on this older PC, you need to go to an old PCI slot (and not the AGP slot). There are nVidia cards that will go in the old PCI slot, and allow play back of HD Videos in Linux using VDPAU. VDPAU will off load the decoding of the HD video from the CPU to the graphic card GPU, and that is seriously fast (for video decoding). I have done this on my old 32-bit athlon-2800 with a PCI (not PCI-e) nVidia GeForce 8400GS (w/512MB on card RAM), using the proprietary nVidia graphic driver and the VDPAU technology/standard. With the nVidia PCI 8400GS graphic card I can play back HD videos with this old 32-bit PC, that even some dual core PCs struggle with. One needs lots of RAM on the PCI graphic card, so as to minimize any PCI bus traffic, as that bus has slow throughput compared to the AGP and PCI-e bus. And wrt to my old athlon-2800 and the nVidia 8400GS PCI card, when it comes to 3D effects and basic window drawing, this PC with the PCI bus nVidia 8400GS card is SLOW!! The old AGP card that I replaced was faster for basic window drawing. Why ? It was the difference in the bandwidth of the bus.
Now if play back of HD videos are NOT important and you are only interested in 3D graphic effects, then I recommend you go with a nVidia AGP card. I recommend that because the timelinenss of the release of the proprietary Linux nVidia graphic drivers tend to be superior to the timelineness of the release of the proprietary ATI graphic drivers (wrt new kernel/new-openSUSE releases).
A key factor to check is the state of the power supply on your old PC. What was the rated power, and how much has that power supply degraded over the years. The PC power supply could indeed limit what sort of graphic card you can get, and you may need to apply lots of margin.
For example, on my nVidia 8400GS PCI (not PCI-e) card, I put it in my old 32-bit athlon-1100, which has a power supply with a higher power output rating than my old 32-bit athlon-2800. But the athlon-1100 is older than the 2800, and its power supply while having a higher rating, does not have the same “quality” recommendation, and it is older. Thus the athlon-1100 could not reliably power the graphic card. BUT the 32-bit athlon-2800 with a power supply with a lower rating (but higher quality recommendation) was able to power the graphic card.
So tracking the power output of your graphic card is a key consideration.