Video Card Recommendations

[Lennart Sorensen]

On Tue, Dec 21, 2010 at 09:04:57AM -0500, William O'Higgins Witteman wrote:
> I am looking for a recommendation for a new video card, and I hope that
> the intrepid TLUG can help.
> 
> Requirements:
> I would like to, eventually, be able to run a 1080p TV as a second
> monitor.  This is probably the tricky bit - but all of the cards I read
> about say Dual, and I don't know who to trust.
> 
> Can run a few basic games - I have bought the Humble Indie Bundle the
> last two years, and some of the games exceed the capabilities of my
> onboard Intel GMA 3100 (though Aquaria, World of Goo, Gish, Machinarium,
> Osmos (a really beautiful game) and Samrost all work perfectly).
> 
> PCI-e x16 is available on my motherboard.
> 
> I'd prefer to spend less money rather than more.  I assume that an
> nVidia powered card is what I want - I plan to use the open source
> driver unless it is absolutely necessary.  I have a 22" LCD right now,
> running at 1680x1050, but it may get upgraded at some point.
> 
> Any suggestions?  Thanks.

Any nvidia card should outperform the intel GMA 3100.  If you get one
with two DVI outputs, you should be able to run both a monitor (of any
type you like) and the TV.  Some now have mini HDMI which means it can
carry audio to the TV as well which might be handy.  DVI to HDMI cables
don't include audio.

I personally tend to go for the x60 series of nvidia cards since they seem
to be the best balance of performance for cost (lower tends to switch
to analog VGA connectors and seriously cut down on memory bandwidth and
other features, and higher costs a lot).  So hence I have a 6600GT (my
desktop, older models had an extra 0 at the end of the models compared
to the new ones), 7600GT (my sisters machine), 8600GT (mythtv box, and a
friends gaming box), 460GT (A friends gaming box built this last week).
My wife's machine has a 275GTX but it's not a budget machine in any way.

I used to use a 5200 on my old mythtv BOX, but I wouldn't have wanted
to play 3D games on it.

-- 
Len Sorensen
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