Silent inexpensive graphics cards

[Rashkae]

On 10-11-29 09:34 AM, David Fletcher wrote:
> For a new build for my son, I think I have my choice of motherboard. But
> which graphics card to go for? The thread subject states what I need and
> I don't particularly care whether it has an nVidia or ATI chip so long
> as it works properly.
>
> As far as I can tell, the current choice is
> a) ATI Radeon HD 4350
> b) nVidia GeForce 210 or GeForce 8400GS
>
> This approx. 3 years old PC has an nVidia card installed for which I
> paid about GBP20. lspci produces
> VGA compatible controller: nVidia Corporation NV44 [GeForce 6200 LE]
> (rev a1)
>
> It has never given me any problems at all. When I recently installed
> Maveric the installer offered to install proprietary drivers. I accepted
> and it "Just Works".
>
> As far as I know ATI chips are now getting open source drivers so of
> course it would be nice to use them but I can't confirm with Google
> searches that the HD 4350 chips play nicely with Maveric.
>
>    

The ATI works and plays nice very very well with Open Source Drivers.  
However, the ATI binary drivers are very very crappy, and I say, best 
avoided.  Unfortunately, this makes the answer to your question more 
complex.

If you want a 3D desktop that works out of the box with good Video 
support (ie, movies, and what not), Go with the ATI.  Personally, for 
the cost effetiveness, I buy Mobo's with an ATI G chipset.  Works great, 
either way.

On the other hand, if you want to experiment with gaming, either through 
Wine or native linux games, and possibly high end 3D modeling (I've 
never tested performance with Blender and open source drivers) then 
Nividia is still the only good choice, with Binary drivers.  They 
generally work and Nivdia supports them well, at least, for a while.  
Older cards get the cold shoulder from Nvidia, and with no Open source 
support, eventually become problematic.  (I have 2 notebooks, for 
example, with 6100 mobile GPU's that I've had to retire since they just 
don't work anymore with newer distros anymore)