Graphic Cards Graphic card for PCI Express X16 slot and what output ?

[shirish]

Hi all,
I just changed few days back to an Intel E5400 Wolfdale 2.7 Ghz (45nm), 2 GB 667 Transcend Memory and P5KPL-AM IN motherboard.

Now this mobo has got an x16 slot where I could put a graphics card.

Now I have reused my old CRT for the time being as the mobo has only a VGA Connector. I could go in for an LCD or perhaps an LED Monitor which has the old-style VGA Connector (analog) or <bold>perhaps</bold> put some nice graphic card in that slot and connect through either a DVI (A/D/I) or an HDMI (1.1/1.2) output.

Anybody has any idea what is possible in this scenario ?

In the Gigabyte/Nvidia range I would tend to be a bit more leaning towards Gigabyte (i.e. AMD) as they have couple of free software developers at their end. Nvidia seems to have much more beefier cards though.

Lastly has anybody got any issues playing stuff on the DVI or/and HDMI output ? I am asking from a free software perspective.

All observations, perspectives and any hyperlinks which would help me in understanding and having an overall perspective would be appreciated.

Lastly, does anybody know what kind of shares do both the graphic giants hold in the Indian market ? I'm sure it is a small pie to begin with.

 

[ch@ts]

That is one confusing post!

1)You can use VGA even with an LCD/LED monitor as long as the monitor supports it, and most do.

2)I assume you're looking at the free dvd/bluray playback software or games that come with some cards. Most cards don't come with anything but the drivers, and the free games/software aren't that great.

3)If you want to put a graphic card in the empty slot just because it's empty then go right ahead and get anything that tickles your fancy. On the other hand if you play games then choose one sensibly depending on your budget/psu and gaming resolution.

4)Reliability and suitability have nothing to do with who makes the chip that fits in the card. Both ATI and Nvidia make great cards, and you should choose one depending on your needs and budget. Are you going to use CUDA/ play games in 3D? If so, then buy nvidia. Are you going to use 3 monitors? If you are, buy ATI.

5) 42.372% of all discrete gpus sold are based on nvidia chips, and 56.947% based on ATI, and the rest are Matrox, and VIA based. The total number of graphic cards sold in India last year was 708,067. This year that number is expected to rise by 19.46%.
http://www.quotegarden.com/statistics.html

6)In the Gigabyte/Nvidia range I would tend to be a bit more leaning towards Gigabyte (i.e. AMD) as they have couple of free software developers at their end. Nvidia seems to have much more beefier cards though.
Well, if you're getting a couple of free software developers along with your card, then go for it! Just remember to feed and wash up after them. Reference : JSTOR: An Error Occurred Setting Your User Cookie

 

[shirish]

That is one confusing post!

Agree with that one.

1)You can use VGA even with an LCD/LED monitor as long as the monitor supports it, and most do.

True, that is not the issue. From what I know :-

a. VGA - still in the market but largely a legacy analog interface where there would be some loss as digital signals are converted back to analog ones to show on the screen. Slight to notional loss to consumer but consumer doesn't know.

b. To overcome this, two new technologies came over time.

b1. DVI or Digital Visual Interface :- More of a stop-gap solution having three different types of connectors. What I am concerned about are when you are three it is very much possible to get both which are incompatible and I'm sure there may be a standard which India as a market follows.

Please see https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Digital_Visual_Interface#Connector

Maybe its DVI-D or DVI-A or DVI-I have to know which one is prevalent and relevant in the Indian and more relevant Pune market .

b2. Of course lastly the purely digital interface HDMI :- https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/HDMI

2)I assume you're looking at the free dvd/bluray playback software or games that come with some cards. Most cards don't come with anything but the drivers, and the free games/software aren't that great.

I wasn't really thinking in that direction. I was thinking more in terms of DRM or Digital Rights Management or as I like to call them Digital Restrictive Management.

Now EFF.org had a campaign few years back as how they don't allow <bold>unlicensed</bold> media to play. As perhaps most of us know DRM means the software would go to some server and check whether I am authorized to play a file or not and unless its not authorized by the company/server I cannot see them.

While piracy is the thing they say but then one cannot see amateur independant projects who don't have either the time, the drive nor the resources to go through that route.

3)If you want to put a graphic card in the empty slot just because it's empty then go right ahead and get anything that tickles your fancy. On the other hand if you play games then choose one sensibly depending on your budget/psu and gaming resolution.

4)Reliability and suitability have nothing to do with who makes the chip that fits in the card. Both ATI and Nvidia make great cards, and you should choose one depending on your needs and budget. Are you going to use CUDA/ play games in 3D? If so, then buy nvidia. Are you going to use 3 monitors? If you are, buy ATI.

5) 42.372% of all discrete gpus sold are based on nvidia chips, and 56.947% based on ATI, and the rest are Matrox, and VIA based. The total number of graphic cards sold in India last year was 708,067. This year that number is expected to rise by 19.46%.

Statistics Quotes and Sayings

Thank you for your kind words. I didn't get from where you got those stats. That site you have linked to or the page to is of quotations.

Right, No. 3 hits right on the mark, I'm asking for what is possible if one uses x16 graphics slot. From what I know x16 stops at 250 MB/s per lane which translates into roughly 4 Gb/s actual bandwidth though maybe 10-15% less (thinking overheads and stuff).

For the record this is and would be a multi-purpose machine, casual gaming and entertainment i.e. movies and stuff like that so having either DVI or HDMI would be good.

The mobo I bought is Asus P5KPL-AM IN

ASUSTeK Computer Inc.

<snipped>

Well, if you're getting a couple of free software developers along with your card, then go for it! Just remember to feed and wash up after them. Reference : JSTOR: An Error Occurred Setting Your User Cookie

I don't know if that was an attempt at humor or what? What I meant was simply which of the two technologies DVI/HDMI have been free software friendly. By Free software I mean GNU/Linux distributions.

 

[ch@ts]

^ yup was trying to be funny, with the statistics and the page about slavery.
The 2nd or 3rd quote is about how 98% of all statistics are made up on the spot.

Your graphic card would be able to output protected content via a dvi cable...but most drm content can be played back just by using windows media player, and it'll display on any monitor.

Most graphic cards would have a DVI-D output. If you're looking for an HDMI connector get something which supports HDMI 1.4. i.e. either an ATI 6 series, or an Nvidia 4/5 series card, so that you can playback 3d content. Most of the newer cards also have display port connectors, and if you are buying something you should preferably buy something with one of those...you'll need it if you're going to use ATi's eyeinfinity, i.e.3 monitors.

Don't worry about the bandwidth of your x16 port as most cards won't come close to saturating it.

You'll get free/open source versions of software for almost anything, so buying a card because of bundled software doesn't make sense. If on the other hand you're buying a card because it comes with some expensive software bundled for free, then it's a welcome bonus.

For gaming at 1680*1050 get an ati 5670 at the least...but it doesn't support hdmi 1.4...but otherwise it's quite well balanced.
Else get an Nvidia 460, or an ATI 6850. They're more powerful, and support hdmi 1.4.

What I meant was simply which of the two technologies DVI/HDMI have been free software friendly. By Free software I mean GNU/Linux distributions.
You pay for both technologies HDMI and DVI when you buy the hardware. You don't need any software except an OS (paid or open source) to utilize either.

 

[shirish]

^ yup was trying to be funny, with the statistics and the page about slavery.
The 2nd or 3rd quote is about how 98% of all statistics are made up on the spot.

Very funny but guess its true as well. Although have to say that most of are obsessed with stats or Google Trends wouldn't do so well

Your graphic card would be able to output protected content via a dvi cable...but most drm content can be played back just by using windows media player, and it'll display on any monitor.

Most graphic cards would have a DVI-D output. If you're looking for an HDMI connector get something which supports HDMI 1.4. i.e. either an ATI 6 series, or an Nvidia 4/5 series card, so that you can playback 3d content. Most of the newer cards also have display port connectors, and if you are buying something you should preferably buy something with one of those...you'll need it if you're going to use ATi's eyeinfinity, i.e.3 monitors.

Thanx for the above notes, they should help me in deciding the graphic card. Btw why would anybody want 3 monitors. I do know how people use dual-head and now you say 3 monitors but then I <emphasis>am</emphasis> not looking for a 3 monitor set-up.

Now just being a bit hypothetical so bear me. Let's say for argument's sake even if I buy a basic ATI's Netinfinity card which comes for let's say 3k buying 3 monitors would set me back by almost 16.5k if one takes the base prices of an 18.5 LCD Monitor which hovers around 5~6k per piece. If I won a lottery or something then that would make sense.

What would really make sense if I could do a sort of two system setup (some sort of emulation or something) where I could run Windows and say Ubuntu side-by-side having two keyboards, two mouses and like that.

I do know that there are ways (hardware-based) where one could do that but those are expensive and don't know how FOSS friendly they are (meaning would those technologies work on Debian and/or Ubuntu or not) .

So frankly the 3 monitor doesn't sound off to me. I'm sure there are lots of enthusiast people in the TE community who have or are in the process of having/acquiring such a setup.

Don't worry about the bandwidth of your x16 port as most cards won't come close to saturating it.

You'll get free/open source versions of software for almost anything, so buying a card because of bundled software doesn't make sense. If on the other hand you're buying a card because it comes with some expensive software bundled for free, then it's a welcome bonus.

The bit about most of the cards, esp. basic beginner cards not being able to saturate the x16 port is a welcome step.

You misread me <sigh!>again.</sigh!> I don't know whether you read phoronix.com or not. For those who know or don't Nvidia has not been supportive of open-sourcing of their drivers. The only result then has been a community hacked driver called Noveau . Please look at

[Phoronix] Nouveau Gets Zaphod Mode Support and

[Phoronix] Mixed Feelings Over The PSCNV Nouveau Driver Fork

as examples. Comparing to the performance of say where ATi and Intel are Nvidia leaves a lot to be desired. That isn't to say ATi or Intel has been doing anything great but atleast they are providing official support and giving money to developers to write open-source drivers. So that's why I said leaning towards ATi.

For gaming at 1680*1050 get an ati 5670 at the least...but it doesn't support hdmi 1.4...but otherwise it's quite well balanced.
Else get an Nvidia 460, or an ATI 6850. They're more powerful, and support hdmi 1.4.
<snipped>

You pay for both technologies HDMI and DVI when you buy the hardware. You don't need any software except an OS (paid or open source) to utilize either.

True, you mis-read me here as well. I do know that the graphic cards would have any or all input and output ports as the case may be. If one were to do an analogy one could say graphic card is like a mobo (motherboard), the only difference being mobo has a southbridge to contend with, the graphic card doesn't. Otherwise both need something, the mobo needs a CPU and RAM to work (atleast) while the same is the case with a graphic card.

Although I would be looking at the stickies on the board as well, but do you or anybody else know of a good site which gives some ball-park figures for graphic cards and specs and what sort of input and output ports one could expect from these cards ?

--- Updated Post - Automerged ---

Just an update :- Put my upgrading experience at my blog Moving onto 45 nm « Experiences in the community Don't know if this is the right corner for this, if not Moderator please shift it to the right place

 

[St.John]

"Btw why would anybody want 3 monitors"

Gamers, people who do Audio/Video editing, Multimedia programming (Maya and stuff)...

What would really make sense if I could do a sort of two system setup (some sort of emulation or something) where I could run Windows and say Ubuntu side-by-side having two keyboards, two mouses and like that.

I don't know if it's possible to have two sets of Inputs connected to one system but yes, a system can have a 2 OS's setup where 1 OS will work inside another OS. It's called a Virtual machine.

Virtual machine - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Windows 7 Enterprise/Professional/Ultimate have a Windows XP VM built in or which can be downloaded free of charge.

If one were to do an analogy one could say graphic card is like a mobo (motherboard), the only difference being mobo has a southbridge to contend with, the graphic card doesn't. Otherwise both need something, the mobo needs a CPU and RAM to work (atleast) while the same is the case with a graphic card."

Very true. A Graphics card is the PCB where you have have a GPU and vRAM (DDR5 is the standard these days).

Although I would be looking at the stickies on the board as well, but do you or anybody else know of a good site which gives some ball-park figures for graphic cards and specs and what sort of input and output ports one could expect from these cards ?"

Quite a few of them actually. tomshardware.com, guru3d.com, anandtech.com to name a few. These websites have detailed reviews which explains the architecture, capabilities, power consumption, temperatures etc.

There is a plethora of Graphics cards available in the market today, starting from about 3,000 to maybe 35,000 for mainstream and even higher for professional Graphics Cards. Your shopping shouldn't be influenced by the stickies (ATI and Nvidia have same technologies but different nomenclatures eg: Crossfire/SLI), what usually matters is what is the need and how much can you spend.

G31 Chipset's onboard Video (Intel GMA 3100) is enough to play DVD movies and play games that are inbuilt in Windows XP/Seven. Only if you intend to watch Hi-Def Movies, or play games that specify that they need a discrete graphics solution will you need a to buy a GFX Card. You can just look for a VGA to DVI connector or just use the VGA port of your LCD.

Maybe its DVI-D or DVI-A or DVI-I have to know which one is prevalent and relevant in the Indian and more relevant Pune market .

The standard today is DVI-I (dual link), though DVI-I (dual link) & DVI-D (dual link) are compatible with each other. Most LCD panels have a DVI-D & Analog inputs while most GFX cards have 2 DVI-I outputs and a mini-HDMI output.

For the record this is and would be a multi-purpose machine, casual gaming and entertainment i.e. movies and stuff like that so having either DVI or HDMI would be good.

Now comes into the picture what is the resolution of your current display or the display that you intend to purchase and the inputs it supports. Going through your blog I know that you have "Pentium LGA 775 Dual-Core 2.7 Ghz E5400 Codename : Wolfdale , a 2 GB Transcend 667 Mhz DDR2 Non-ECC Ram, an Asus P5KPL-AM IN board, 500 GB SATA 2 HDD and a no-name 450 W Power supply with an iffy cabinet".

What we need to know is your display size, available inputs, and what games you want to play...