Hardware advice, Linux related Ok as many of you know I stupidly purchased a Motherboard one night at 2am, not thinking clearly. I wound up with the BioStar TF720 A20+ board which has a nVidia 8100 integrated into the North-Bridge chip. I have had little to no success in getting Linux to run as workstation on this MB, it will lockup randomly which X needs to be re-cycled. The other problem came when I upgraded to a new Acer 21.5" LCD ( 1920x1080 ) monitor. Now in any OS mkv and DVD peg the cpu at 100% and will drop frames ( this on a dule core AMD 2.4Ghz with 4Gb of memory ). Lastly the HDTV tunner card I have ( Linux only one http://www.pchdtv.com/ which I will eventually give a full talk on ) can not seem to display at full 1080p, it's shutters badly now since I can display all the pixels.
In my case gaming in not an issue, This system is mainly and foremost my personal "HDTV" and Linux server. It's second role is family email, word processing and homework station, video is not critical for it's other uses. Thus I don't want to waist the money I put in the MB, it is stable and other then the Video issues it's fine. My idea is it shutoff the MB video chip and use a new ATI video card. This will allow the North-Bridge to map all 4Gb of memory for the CPU and not have to steal cycles for whatever the hokey 8100 / nForce720a was doing. Also the ATI is better designed for HD and can do upscaleing of DVD's on the GPU. So I think the Radeon HD 4670 512MB 128-bit GDDR3 PCI Express for about $60 should solve my issues, since it has the following: Selling points: 1) Support for DVI and HDMI out with native 1920x1080 resolutions and above. 2) Linux 32 and 64 bit drivers 3) H.264 rendering ( aka MKV ) acceleration 4) DVD upscaling on the GPU, no hit to the CPU 5) Uses about 1/2 the wattage of the comparable nVidia GPU Downside: 1) NOT a gamer video card. 2) ATI does not have the best Linux history, my last ATI card was a nightmare to get working under Linux and impossible with 64bit So comments? Has anyone "turned off" the onboard video chip and added a better Video card with success? If anyone has experience with modern ATI video cards and Linux I would love a better recommendation if you can. Is there any reason to go to the higher HD 4800 class board ( at double the money ) ? Or go lower say the HD 4550 for $45 ( still has Linux 32/64 drivers )? Joe Apuzzo Gnu_Joe _______________________________________________ Mid-Hudson Valley Linux Users Group http://mhvlug.org http://mhvlug.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/mhvlug Upcoming Meetings (6pm - 8pm) MHVLS Auditorium Jun 3 - TBD Jul 1 - TBD Aug 5 - TBD
