NVidea video card on Mandrake

[sheds]

How do i know if my video card is being used and recognized properly by my distro?

I have a Nvidia Gforce 4 64 MB video card, and i want to start playing heavy games, such as Unreal and Half Life 2, as soon as i can get them. But i am not sure if the card is being used to it's max potencial. If it's not, how do i install the drivers? And, are there drivers for mandrake for this card?

I've checked the Nvidia site, and while browsing to find the driver files, three linux options appeared, here they are:
Linux IA32
Linux AMD64
Linux IA64
Which one applies to mandrake 9.1?

[Coco]

There are linux based nvidia drivers that you can use and get from nvidia. You can also get the install instructions for them from nvidia.

Chances are if you haven't installed these drivers then they arn't in use and you arn't going to be doing any gaming just yet.

[daemonOS]

IA32 unless you have a 64 bit processor like AMD Athlon 64. IA32= Athlon, AthlonXP, Intel P1-4 and a few more. I assume you fall into one of those.

[techieMoe]

I've checked the Nvidia site, and while browsing to find the driver files, three linux options appeared, here they are:
Linux IA32
Linux AMD64
Linux IA64
Which one applies to mandrake 9.1?

As DaemonOS said, you're probably looking for IA32. What you need to understand though is that Nvidia's drivers aren't based on what distribution of Linux you have (thankfully), but rather what CPU you have. Most popular PCs these days are 32-bit, so you'll want IA32. My PC uses an AMD64 chip, so I'd want AMD64 (although the AMD64 can also use IA32 drivers and software). Some computers use Intel's Itanium 64-bit chip, so they'd use IA64. Hope that doesn't confuse you.

[sheds]

Not at all, i also heard that 64 bit technology is being a bit underworld today cause 64 bit applications haven't had a big boost in the market yet, am i right?

Anyway, i'll download that file. I only have one doubt: how come you use only one file for so many distro's and for so many kinds of cards.? The only answer i can think of is that this IA32 file contains all drivers for all possible cards that can be placed on a machine, this sounds a bit strange cause usually you search for a specific driver file for a specific piece of hardware.

[Coco]

That's old. Nvidia came up with the unified driver format years ago and then ATI copied them. There is only the one ATI driver and one Nvida driver. True for both linux and windows.

As for 64 bit computing. Well I'm sure 32 bit is still more popular, but I know in my area a lot of stores don't even bother to stock 32 bit AMD chips anymore. You can only buy 64-bit AMD chips in a lot of stores. WHich is fine by me because there really isn't any reason to buy a 32 bit chip.

A lot of 64 bit stuff is either beta or doesn't work entirely properly. Of course it's not really an issue since 64 bit chips run 32 bit stuff just fine.

[sheds]

You'd be wasting a bit of money since 64 bit technology is not being used or isn't the standard yet.

[Coco]

The diffrence in price is a couple bucks. Like 10 bucks. At least here.

So why buy old. Eventually 64 bit will be more used and sicne it supports 32 bit there is no reason not to have the support now. That's really the biggest hold back from more 64bit apps. People are waiting for there to be a large enough amount of people who can use em to make it worth it.

[sheds]

OK, back to the main issue. I downloaded the driver file and read the readme file to begin installation. It says i should exit X before installing. What's X and how do i exit it? Is my OS going to be all messed up if i exit this X server thing or X thing? Cause if it does, i'd rather refrain from playing any games.

[dialtone]

OK, back to the main issue. I downloaded the driver file and read the readme file to begin installation. It says i should exit X before installing. What's X and how do i exit it? Is my OS going to be all messed up if i exit this X server thing or X thing? Cause if it does, i'd rather refrain from playing any games.

Log in as root and edit /etc/inittab. Change the value (near the top) from 5 to 3. Save it and reboot. Now, you will see a login prompt instead of GUI. Once you have installed your new driver, type "startx" to start windows and if it works, then change the value (in /etc/inittab) back to 5 again...

X is your GUI - like xwindows