video card for new computer

[Stuart McGraw]

On 12/16/2017 05:05 PM, Jared Norris wrote:
> So it has been a while since anyone spoke to the actual question posed -
> does anyone have anything useful for the OP?

Just for the record, I personally don't mind topic drift, it is often 
useful to others and very often interesting to me too.
 
> In my experience Nvidia cards perform well in Ubuntu using the proprietary
> drivers, with the caveat that they don't support them forever so you might
> find yourself on a legacy driver which means it will still work, but
> without some of the bells and whistles.
> 
> I haven't used an ATI video card since I was using Fedora Core 1.
> 
> I use a lot of intel onboard graphics on many laptops - they always work
> great for my needs.
> 
> I would point out though, that all of those video cards seemed to be built
> for specific purposes, not everyday desktop use:
> * Firepro - designer workstations (CAD, digital design, etc)
> * Quadro - designer workstations (CAD, digital design, etc)
> * NVS range - multiple displays (commercial graphic displays)
> 
> I think you might be looking at a desktop that is specifically designed for
> a particular purpose rather than a normal home user's desktop. If that's on
> purpose than you might be best asking some people who are using it for a
> similar reason.

You are right.  The machine (an HP Z440) is marketed as an engineering
workstation, not a general business PC.  However I would not be running
any commercial CAD software on it -- just (potentially) open source or
free-beer things like Blender or DraftSight.  (No games beyond Tetris,
sorry Xen :<)

The earlier post from Ralf on the hardware requirements for production
use of Blender were rather eye-opening. :-)  Luckily my use would be 
much more modest.

> Most of the feedback received from this list will only
> apply to the Nvidia/ATI desktop range, which are completely different from
> what you're asking about.

I would think that any problems related to drivers and kernel compatibility
might be similar though.

One other use for the machine will be as a host to VMs for playing with
other OSes which raises a question I forgot to ask originally:

Are there any special issues that come up with Nvidia or AMD video cards
in a VM environment (VirtualBox in my case) beyond those the come up on 
bare metal?