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Thread ID: 137672	2014-08-05 23:46:00	Graphics card for old machine running linux	Morgenmuffel (187)	Press F1

Post ID	Timestamp	Content	User
1380951	2014-08-05 23:46:00	Greetings Wifey running Ubuntu 14.4 Linux on P4 machine, reckons she can't open large graphics files as it times out (using onboard graphics, shared ram), thought getting a graphics card might help? Ok this is the motherboard www.gigabyte.co.nz I can figure out its a pcie card needed, but thats where I get a bit lost. I am in no massive hurry to get a card, I'd just want to know exactly what i should be looking at and which type would work best in Linux	Morgenmuffel (187)
1380952	2014-08-06 03:33:00	Wifey running Ubuntu 14.4 Linux on P4 machine, reckons she can't open large graphics files as it times out (using onboard graphics, shared ram), thought getting a graphics card might help? Really? How much Ram is there? For just pictures it shouldn't matter about GPUs.......but any half decent one will do, doesn't matter whether Nvidia or ATI, I would go a bit higher up than entry level though....just because.... Here's the ranking: www.tomshardware.com You sure don't need any of the top several lines.....	pctek (84)
1380953	2014-08-06 05:12:00	Upgrading the ram would be more effective in this case than a graphic card (unless you want to upgrade the graphics performance for other reasons too).	Rod J (451)
1380954	2014-08-06 12:10:00	If you can get a cheap RAM upgrade then it's worth a shot but bear in mind you can get a brand new MB/CPU/RAM combo for under $300. It's not worth spending very much on what amounts to an ancient MB by today's standards. Here's a couple of examples www.pp.co.nz www.pp.co.nz At least it's pcie so if you did buy a graphics card it could be re-used in a modern PC, what works best in linux tends to be common cards that have been around for a while, i.e. don't get something that's just been released in the last few months. I agree with the others though, it's more likely to be RAM. What do you guys use this machine for?	dugimodo (138)
1380955	2014-08-06 19:38:00	if you need more RAM post what it is sure someone on here will have some even me probably	gary67 (56)
1380956	2014-08-07 00:51:00	Machine has got around 2gb ram, they are 512 sticks (I think) all slots are full, possibly could use more, I guess, it runs fine for everything except the image manipulation stuff. She's using gimp with large scanned images of artworks, sort of graphic intensive, it seems to do 80% of what she wants currently, I don't particularly want to spend much money on it as it is a hobby, So as to graphics card it will be something of trademe thats really cheap if thats realistic. I am guessing that there will be the odd cheap graphics card thats better than 10yr old onboard graphics crop up on trade me every once in a while Something possibly like this www.trademe.co.nz or this www.trademe.co.nz How do i tell if a) How much better it is that the current onboard graphics With processors you used to be able to compare them , the link PCTek gave does give me some guidance, but i have to say graphics cards are pretty damned confusing	Morgenmuffel (187)
1380957	2014-08-07 03:41:00	IF a graphics card helps at all it will only be because it freed up some shared RAM, image manipulation is not graphics intensive, it''s RAM intensive. Have a look at this similar situation gimpforums.com Having said that the onboard graphics on a socket 775 machine will be slower than any add in graphics card you can find and either of those you linked would be a huge upgrade for anything that does use graphics. The 8800GTX might be a bit overpowered and need a beefy PSU to feed it though, something else to consider.	dugimodo (138)
1380958	2014-08-07 05:56:00	Have you tried increasing the swapfile size or even move it to a different drive? This sometimes can be enough to allow the loading of larger size files, of course if they are bigger than 4GB or so they might never load in a 32 bit system?	KarameaDave (15222)
1380959	2014-08-08 07:49:00	I'll look at the swapfile didn't think of that If I was to look at a graphics card, how do you tell how much power they use, as i don't think the old machine has a great power supply As for Ram I assuming its any non ecc ddr400 ram will do?	Morgenmuffel (187)
1380960	2014-08-08 08:04:00	The box for the card will tell you what the requirements are. Or check online for the req's. And yup any non-ecc DDR400 should do. As long as it's 1 gb each (if you get 4 sticks). Since the mobo only supports up to 4 GB	Speedy Gonzales (78)
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