graphics card

[khz]

Hello,

Unfortunately, audio applications have also become more demanding in terms of graphics output.
Now I don't want a gaming monster with its own "sound output", but something different.
Robust, so that two HD monitors can be operated and the opening of the gui doesn't cause any more ticks.
Nvidia is not really an option (no RT with Nvidia drivers).
Furthermore, the card should have max. occupy a slot.

What cards are you happy with?

[davephillips]

... audio applications have also become more demanding in terms of graphics output.
Now I don't want a gaming monster with its own "sound output", but something different.
Robust, so that two HD monitors can be operated and the opening of the gui doesn't cause any more ticks.
Nvidia is not really an option (no RT with Nvidia drivers).
Furthermore, the card should have max. occupy a slot.

What cards are you happy with?

re: "no RT with Nvidia drivers" :

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$ uname -a
Linux The6300 4.6.7-200.rt14.1.fc23.ccrma.x86_64+rt #1 SMP PREEMPT RT Sat Oct 1 16:06:12 PDT 2016 x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linux

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$ lspci |grep VGA
01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: NVIDIA Corporation GT218 [GeForce 210] (rev a2)

The video card cost ~$20US. Yep, just twenty dollars US. I think I got a special deal, a friend recently purchased a similar card (same chipset) for closer to $30US. (I need the nVidia 3D graphics for a few music & sound applications.)

I run a dual-monitor system here on a machine powered by an AMD FX6300 3.5GHz 6-core CPU with 16G memory. Distro is Fedora 23 with an rt kernel from Planet CCRMA. Even the Planet CCRMA maintainer advises against the rt + nVidia combo but I've been using such a combination for years here. Jack is set for relatively low-latency, and the CPU runs in performance mode.

Btw, the video card is fanless, the CPU cooler is fanless, and the PSU is an extremely quiet unit.

I run this machine constantly, typically for months at a time between reboots.

Best,

dp

[f00bar]

If you want a quiet graphics card from NVIDIA, go with the new 1030 GT. My 1050 Ti is apparently on par with the old 680, and is much more efficient. This is my current configuration

My desktop is XFCE (Xubuntu)

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cat /etc/issue.net 
Ubuntu 16.04.3 LTS

uname -srvmo
Linux 4.4.0-97-lowlatency #120-Ubuntu SMP PREEMPT Tue Sep 19 18:42:00 UTC 2017 x86_64 GNU/Linux

glmark2
=======================================================
    glmark2 2014.03
=======================================================
    OpenGL Information
    GL_VENDOR:     NVIDIA Corporation
    GL_RENDERER:   GeForce GTX 1050 Ti/PCIe/SSE2
    GL_VERSION:    4.5.0 NVIDIA 384.90
=======================================================

cat /proc/cpuinfo | grep 'model name'  | head -1
model name      : Intel(R) Core(TM) i5-3570K CPU @ 3.40GHz

free
              total        used        free      shared  buff/cache   available
Mem:       24638996     2881060    16362408      123220     5395528    21208912


aplay -l
...
kort 3: UA25 [UA-25], enhet 0: USB Audio [USB Audio]
  Underordnade enheter: 0/1
  Underordnad enhet nr. 0: subdevice #0

And jack is running at 48000 Hz, 3x64 frames.

[Lyberta]

NVidia has terrible GNU/Linux support and nouveau can't support latest GPUs. I use AMD Radeon cards. Just proprietary firmware, libre AMDGPU driver. You also get OpenCL via MESA/Clover. I expect more and more software to add OpenCL acceleration.

[f00bar]

NVidia has terrible GNU/Linux support and nouveau can't support latest GPUs. I use AMD Radeon cards. Just proprietary firmware, libre AMDGPU driver. You also get OpenCL via MESA/Clover. I expect more and more software to add OpenCL acceleration.

Somewhere, I have read that NVidia's proprietary driver is excellent, but I have experienced trouble with the distros installation script, so I use the blob from NVidia's homepage ie, execute

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    sudo service lightdm stop
    sudo sh ./NVIDIA-Linux-x86_64-xxx.run
    sudo shutdown -r now

in tty1. It should also be mentioned, that if you run a newer kernel, and have an older NVidia card, this may fail (since the newer drivers do not support older cards). In that case, you need to stay at the older kernel, by a new card, or wait until Nouveau correctly implements power modes.

Here is one discussion: https://www.reddit.com/r/linux_gaming/c ... _on_linux/

If free software is a priority, choose AMD. As said in the linked discussion, free software is probably easier if you're on a roling-release distro. Performance-wise, I guess that the combination of kernel version, cpu, card, and driver version may have an impact.

I see that I missed one point: one slot. This appears to be a huge constraint these days. For example, the GeForce 1030 either requires a fan, or two slots.