Nvidia cards

[cewjr9842]

Does anyone know which is a good nvidia card that does UI2 or UI3? I have a:

BFG GeForce 8500 GT - graphics adapter - GF 8500 GT - 512 MB

http://www.officedepot.com/a/products/468430/BFG-GeForce-8500-GT-graphics-adapter/

but for some reason will not get past UI1?

[agentc0re]

Have you upgraded to the latest nvidia drivers?  a 8500 should be more than enough.
also, check this out and compare it with your xorg.conf
http://pastebin.ca/976853

[cewjr9842]

Thanks for that!

I can not find my xorg.conf file in linux cmmd prompt. could that be the issue also?

What is the linux command to get to it again?

[tthaulow]

it's under /etc/X11

So if you want to edit:
sudo nano /etc/X11/xorg.conf

PS. Make a backup before editing.

[totallymaxed]

Does anyone know which is a good nvidia card that does UI2 or UI3? I have a:

BFG GeForce 8500 GT - graphics adapter - GF 8500 GT - 512 MB

http://www.officedepot.com/a/products/468430/BFG-GeForce-8500-GT-graphics-adapter/

but for some reason will not get past UI1?

Hi there,

UI1 is the original static UI and is the most basic and least demanding of your graphics hardware

UI2 with Overlay is the newest UI and demands more of your graphics hardware and needs OpenGL support.

UI2 with Alphablending is the most demanding of your graphics hardware and needs good OpenGl support.

Which nVidia card to choose is an interesting question - we currently use the following nVidia cards and onboard chipsets;

- 6200TC
- 7300LE

On board chip sets;

- 6100
- 6150
- 7025
- 7050

Many people here have a lot of problems using 8500 or above cards (search the forums there are many threads here on this) and although some also manage to eventually get them working I would personally suggest avoiding them. From a performance perspective they off no advantage over less expensive nVidia cards/chipsets in an LinuxMCE system. So if your looking for an add on card i would strongly recommend an nVidia 6200TC (I use one myself at home)

Hope this helps

Andrew

[dopey]

I can see the benefit of having an 8x card if you plan on doing some serious 3D gaming on your MD (I've run C&C 3 on my Hybrid). If you're not looking for gaming then there really isn't a point in using the more expensive card as LinuxMCE itself doesn't use the extra horsepower.

The 8x cards actually work just fine. I believe the AVWizard sets it to use the nv driver instead of the nvidia driver, however. If you edit xorg.conf file to use the nvidia driver instead and make sure you set the proper output if you device has multiple outputs, you'll be fine... Until this (really minor) problem is fixed I wouldn't recommend anyone who doesn't want to get there hands dirty to use a new card...

Now that doesn't mean your TV is compatible with whatever mode you are trying to throw at it... This is actually the major cause of most issues, even with the people using the 8x cards. Editing modelines to use nonstandard timings so a specific TV (that uses non-standard timings) can run a higher resolution is much more complicated than changing from the nv driver to nvidia...

[Veidit]

Is the 7150 chip supported?

[totallymaxed]

Is the 7150 chip supported?

We have not tested the 7150 yet but would expect it to work fine with the 169.12 driver. However it may also not be detected correctly by the AVwizard as its a new chip. So I think you can assume that it will likely work 'out of the box' but there is a small chance that it may need some modest manual tweaks to get it fully working.

Hope this helps

Andrew

[Veidit]

Manual tweeks are OK and I will gladly share what I change

[cewjr9842]

Right now I am trying to upgrade the nvidia 8500 drviers, but i am having a hard time finding the file to upgrade so i can access ui2 or maybe even 3, any suggestions?

[dopey]

You really shouldn't have to update the driver... but you can take a look at the guide: https://help.ubuntu.com/community/BinaryDriverHowto/Nvidia

[danielk]

Is the 7150 chip supported?

We have not tested the 7150 yet but would expect it to work fine with the 169.12 driver. However it may also not be detected correctly by the AVwizard as its a new chip. So I think you can assume that it will likely work 'out of the box' but there is a small chance that it may need some modest manual tweaks to get it fully working.

Andrew, at least two people have tested the 7150 and just needed the 169.12 driver and UseEvents in the xorg.conf, now in the nightlies.

This chip doesn't really give any advantage over the 6xxx series chips for LMCE 704/710, but AFAIK is no worse.

[ouie]

I am using the same card with UI2 alpha blending. I followed the instructions in this post
http://forum.linuxmce.org/index.php?topic=4609.0 I hope this helps.

[nlb]

Hi
I have an nvidia 7300 gt and I cant seem to get past UI1?  I tried with my onboard card and dito.....is it a problem with Open GL?

Any suggestions of how i can get this to work?

cheers
Nick