On Thu, Dec 21, 2006 at 10:39:30AM -0500, Dave Phillips wrote: > Greetings; > > I'm happy as a clam in mud with my new machine, but it's developed a > problem. I purchased an inexpensive nVidia-based card that's starting to > behave poorly. I think the hardware itself is buggy, the display will > sometimes shudder rapidly side-to-side, blurring the screen view. > Sometimes it stops and stays stopped, other times it goes on until I > have to reboot. The problem doesn't appear to be a heating problem, but > I've decided to go for a much better card anyway. > > So, I want an nVidia-based card with 256 MB video RAM and a decent > cooling fan, preferably under $200. Any recommendations ? > > Best, > > dp I've been happy so far with a Gigabyte GV-NX66256DP2, based on the GeForce 6600. It's PCI-Express. Not a high-end card at all, it cost $95 in April 2006, but so far works flawlessly, and it's fanless. A tip for people with cards that have both proprietary and Free drivers: I have my xorg.conf set up with two ServerLayout sections, each referencing a different Screen section which in turn use a different Device, so I can switch on the command line between the nv (kernel) and nvidia (binary) drivers. So far the binary's given me no trouble so I've gotten in the habit of using it as the default. But if I ever have xruns or crashes I can restart X with the nv driver, just by doing: startx -- -layout kernel this is all explained pretty well in man startx and man xorg.conf. -- Paul Winkler http://www.slinkp.com
