Buying some new hardware - any specific considerations?

[danhanly]

Hi guys,
I'm thinking of buying another motherboard and graphics card for my system and I currently run 9.04 and was wondering if there are any specific considerations in terms of drivers and such that I'd need to look out for when I buy.

Thanks for any advice you can offer
Dan

[oz]

On the video card, I'd recommend sticking with nVidia based cards because I've never run into any issues with them and Linux.

[Segfault]

Knowing what your rig will be used for would help. nVidia cards have varied capabilities. For instance, when I was shopping for my media center I found out 8600 cards do 'H.264 decode acceleration with iDCT and CAVLC/CABAC' and 8800 cards don't.

[danhanly]

Hi guys,
Well, a friend of mine has just given me his old graphics card which is still quite new. It's the ATI Radeon HD 4850. Would this cause me any problems?

I still need to look at a new motherboard and for that I was thinking the Gigabyte X48-DQ6. Although, I've never installed a motherboard before so I've no idea about installing any drivers or software for it.

Dan

[Segfault]

With this card you have to use ATI proprietary driver.

[danhanly]

And how easy are the proprietary drivers to install. I know with some drivers you can download a deb or just sudo apt-get, but with some you need to do a little more...

[D-cat]

If it shows up in the hardware drivers manager, it's just a click in the check box (while connected to the Internet).

If not, then you'd use Synaptic to install xorg-driver-fglrx. You might also need to make a small edit to the xorg.conf to make it take effect, but it's not hard.

[danhanly]

Great, thats put my worries away, thanks guys

[minthaka]

I recommend you to buy Nvidia graphic card. ATI is no fun!