[ubuntu-uk] Recommend a graphics card.

[Rob Beard]

javadayaz wrote:
> can someone recommend a cheapish (£10-25) graphics card that will 
> display/upscale to hd quality? I would like to display on 40" screen.
> pref on ebay.
>  
> Easily set up on Ubuntu will be a plus!
>
> -- 
> Regards
>
> Javad
Do you want PCI express, AGP or standard PCI?

I'd suggest looking at the NVidia cards, I gather the 8400 or 9400 offer 
HD acceleration with VDPAU (which is supported as far as I know by 
MythTV and MPlayer).  VDPAU offloads some of the decoding of HD video to 
the graphics card...

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=nvidia_vdpau_gpu&num=1

NVidia have released a new range of Geforce cards, I believe the 
cheapest is the Geforce 210 although these seem to be going for about 
£30 to £40 at the moment.

If you wanted a card about £20 you'd probably be looking at a Geforce 
8400 or something along those lines.

Saying that, if you have a reasonable spec CPU (Core 2 Duo, Athlon X2) 
and a recent ish graphics card you should be able to play HD video 
anyway, it just might have a higher CPU usage.

Rob


Rob