Which Video Card should I Buy for Open SUSE 12.1?

English Hardware
1

I’m building a new machine just to run OpenSUSE 12.1. The CPU is an i5-2500K so it has the Sandy Bridge 3000 video through the mobo, and I want to add two more monitors, so I want to add a video card, but I’m not sure which one to buy. I’m looking to spend up to $50 to 100. I’m looking for recommendations. I watch movies, and do A TON of web browsing with auto scroll. I don’t do gaming.

It appears that nvidia cards are more problematic for OpenSUSE than ATI/AMD/Radeon. Is that true?

Usually I try to get the right driver for the card, but in this case I’m looking for the right card to best match the OpenSUSE drivers.

What card should I get? Should I choose or avoid a certain brand? Should I look for a certain chipset or GPU?

Any ideas?

Thank you.

edit: … Oh, and if it matters, I want run a total of three 24-inch monitors, running at 1920 x 1200, one in landscape, two in portrait, extended desktop (not cloned). So the add-on video card needs two ‘outs’ (DVI or HDMI).

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On Thu, 01 Dec 2011 17:26:02 +0000, susequint wrote:

> It appears that nvidia cards are more problematic for OpenSUSE than
> ATI/AMD/Radeon. Is that true?

My own personal experience recently has been the reverse of that. I’ve
got two HP systems, one with an nVidia 6150 LE controller that’s been
pretty solid on the proprietary nVidia driver for years (running 11.4
now), and a new HP system with an ATI Radeon 4200HD controller that the
Catalyst driver just doesn’t work with at all. The OSS radeon driver
works, but I don’t get full acceleration out of it (not that that card
has much acceleration to begin with), but Catalyst+GNOME 3.2+12.1 is so
chronically unstable I had no choice but to use the radeon driver.

I’ve got ATI X300 controllers in two laptops as well (Dell D610s) and the
Catalyst driver no longer supports those. The radeon driver is the only
choice - on the opensuse-users mailing list, another user mentioned that
ATI seems to drop cards very quickly from the Catalyst driver, so for
longer term support, it seems nVidia is a better choice.

Jim

–
Jim Henderson
openSUSE Forums Administrator
Forum Use Terms & Conditions at http://tinyurl.com/openSUSE-T-C

3

I too find Nvidia pretty non-problematic for Linux, been using the proprietary drivers for a bunch of years and wouldn’t switch - though I only have a single monitor so I can’t address your exact situation. I would think if you Google’d (or searched this forum) you’d see that it’s a question often asked and answered https://www.google.com/search?client=opera&rls=en&q=best+linux+graphics+cards&sourceid=opera&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&channel=suggest but like much in Linux different people have differing experiences and preferences.

What I think you should specifically be concerned with is how well the card deals with 3 monitors and if certain de’s deal with them better than others.

There is at least one site that tests gpu’s for linux [Phoronix] Linux Reviews & Articles on Graphics Cards](http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=category&item=Graphics%20Cards) and graphic drivers graphics drivers - Google Search

4

yeah, wow, after a lot more reading and going to Microcenter and talking to a salesman and a customer, Nvidia is the way to go. I ended up with the Geforce GTS 450 by EVGA, at $130. It’s more than I wanted to spend, but I don’t want to choke my system with a weak card. I’m hoping the integrated Sandybridge will continue working, so I’ll have three video-outs, but the salesman was guessing the Sandybridge will be deactivated. Well, we’ll see.

5

So, my integrated video won’t seem to work alongside the video card. I’ve rebooted and fiddled with BIOS settings 20 times, trying different things, but no good. I can’t get the integrated card to work at the same time as the GTS 450. So I have only two outputs, not three or four like I wanted.

The card itself, the GTS 450, is just ‘okay’. Auto-scrolling is smooth, but during auto-scroll (which I do ALL DAY LONG) there’s a diagonal screen tear that keeps going past. I presume this must be when the memory gets paged out or something. It’s not horrible, but it’s definitely not ideal.

So, I went out and got another card, an AMD Gigabyte HD 5770. This should do three ‘outs’ (three monitors). There is no screen tearing, but the AMD card is jumpy/twitchy/nervous. The auto-scrolling is not smooth at all, it’s NOT like a long piece of paper is being pulled by constantly and smoothly, it’s more like it’s sitting on a sub-woofer and while it’s being pulled by it’s twitching. If you get back far from the monitor (like 10 feet) the AMD looks to be scrolling smoothly, but up to the normal 18 inches it’s too jittery and twitchy. I’ll take the nice smooth nVidia with the rolling screen tears over the twitchy/jumpy/vibrating AMD output.

So I re-installed the nVidia card and loaded the nVidia drivers instead of ‘nouveau’. That didn’t make any difference to the screen tearing. So, I guess I have an answer to one of my questions – yes, it takes a bit of horsepower for the video card to do auto-scrolling.

And now I’m looking for a video card suggestion again.

Test your own card. In Firefox, go to Wikipedia.org, search for WWII, or click here. Make sure Firefox is set for auto-scroll and smooth-scroll, middle-click on the WWII page, and try scrolling. Is it super-smooth like a piece of paper is being pulled past, or do the sentences twitch, or does the screen get re-painted in blocks, or are there screen tears. Try it fast and slow. And notice what your resolution is.

Mine is 1920x1200. If I do it in portrait (1200x1920) the tears (GTS 450) go from right to left (physical top to bottom of panel). If I do it in landscape the tears are from top to bottom (also physical top to bottom of panel.)

So I guess I need to go buy yet another card. Can anyone recommend one that works great in Linux, OpenSUSE? I really wanted AMD to work because I want to plug in three or four screens, but, phew, that twitchy-ness is a put-off. Now I’m starting to think I’ll have to upgrade the motherboard to one with two PCIe x16 slots, and use two nVidia cards. I might go try another AMD card today.

Thank you.

6

After reading the humungous review posted above (thank you google01103), and a bunch more reviews, I’m going out to get a AMD Gigabyte 6950. It does about twice what the 5770 does on the benchmarks. I hope the drivers are available and good for Linux (OpenSUSE).

It looks like I should be able to do 4 monitors easily, and 6 if I get one of those MST hubs, which I’m not sure even exist yet.

7

AMD 6950 VIDEO CARD 2 GB

So, I got the 6950 for $305, installed it, and re-installed OpenSUSE 12.1 64-bit KDE again from the DVD, with all the defaults. I found two problems with the 6950. Odd colors appeared under buttons, usually pink – clearly some video defect, probably in the driver. The scrolling screen stutter was more regular, but still there. The stutter was not a whole lot better than on the 5770. It was a little better, but with the color defects, this card was worse than the 5770.

Here I thought this nitro-burning super card was going to kick some butt, but it did not. In fact, since I got the same stutter problem from a different line of AMD cards (5xxx and 6xxx) I have to assume that AMD cards are to be avoided.

AMD MICRO-CODE

Actually, I had an AMD CPU back in 2000 and I remember thinking it was a jittery experience (calculating spreadsheets, pulling up pictures, anything really) and that Intel CPUs definitely seemed smoother, and I would never get another AMD CPU. Then a buddy of mine saw some tech show that said that AMD swapped microcode in and out of active memory, whereas Intel used static instructions, and to me, this explained the jerky feeling of the AMD CPU. I believe it was how AMD got around some patent issue, too, but don’t quote me.

Now, I don’t know if AMD is swapping in and out microcode on their GPUs as well, but the bottom line is that the scrolling screen presented by AMD was jerky and twitchy, but had no screen tears. The scrolling screen presented by nVidia was silky smooth, but had screen tears. I can live with the screen tears, but the twitchy effect would give me a headache pretty quick. It’s too darn bad I can’t put three or four monitors on an nVidia card, and my motherboard only has one x16 PCIe slot. I think I would need a second x16 for a second nVidia card to perform well enough.

HUGELY DISAPPOINTED – SUPER-CARD FAILED

I never would have expected that auto-scroll smooth-scroll was going to be such a tough nut to crack. But I spend 10 - 12 hours per day scrolling through web pages and it would be worth the $300 or whatever to get it smooth.

8

You might want to try the AMD proprietary driver.
This article gives a pretty good walk through the installation
http://forums.opensuse.org/content/46-ati-driver-atiupgrade.html
I don’t use multiple monitors but the Catalyst control center should allow you to configure them easily.
I have an older HD5570 card and the factory drivers give very good 3D performance and I have NO issues
with smooth scrolling using an AMD GPU and AMD Phenom II processor.

9

Strangely, I installed OpenSUSE 12.1 again, and now I’m very satisfied with the nVidia GTS 450 video card.

This time I just added the repository, clicked the nVidia G02 entries, installed them, rebooted. Something was different this time because I had to go into XORG.CONF under ROOT to rotate the second monitor to ‘portrait’.

Anyway, I’m happy now with auto-scroll, yay!, but I have only the two screens because the Sandy Bridge one won’t come up. I think I might go buy another GTS 450 for a third monitor.

A SIDE-NOTE ABOUT MULTIPLE MONITORS

After adding a second monitor about 10 years ago, I was amazed how much better it was, and I wanted more. I got a third then a fourth. I ran with four for about three years, then moved one of them to a different computer, and worked with three for a few years. My final comments on multiple monitors are:

  1. people give you sh** until they try it, then they love it (it’s a coping technique, against temptation)
  2. Two monitors make you want more
  3. Three monitors is great and you wonder about four
  4. Four monitors is good, but can actually be a bit much in terms of desk space.
  5. UltraMon is indispensable for Windows,
  6. OSX is retarded with only one menubar and nothing like UltraMon that actually works without bugs
  7. Linux KDE is okay, you can add a panel and taskbar to the bottom of the extra screens, but they show ALL tasks from all screens

Three monitors (one horizontal, two vertical) is really the ideal number for most techies, and two or even just one for just non-techies