On Sun, 7 Mar 2021 at 21:58, Alex mysqlstudent@gmail.com wrote:
Hi,
- native open source drivers
- supports at least three monitors
- PCIe x16
- support for 4K
- HDMI output
- audio not necessary
AMD cards are going to be your only options here, because the two
choices
for open source drivers are AMD and Intel, and Intel doesn't make stand-alone cards with multi-monitor support. (With some laptop
models, you
can drive the internal display plus one with the built-in external
HDMI plus
one over thunderbolt, for a total of three displays, but that doesn't
sound
like what you're looking for.)
I personally have been very happy with AMD cards (previously, a Vega
56 and
now a Radeon Pro W5700) on Fedora Workstation -- they basically just
work,
and provide a great gaming experience.
Those are in a completely different range from what I was thinking.
$800 for a video card? And only using the open source driver?
That seems to be a typical price for a gaming video card.
I mentioned earlier on, but probably should have been more clear, that I'm not really interested in it for gaming. This is my everyday desktop that I use for a Windows VM and office work. Hmm... are these games on Linux that people are playing, anyway?
How about this card? It says it's on sale, but is it really?rr
https://www.newegg.com/gigabyte-radeon-rx-5500-xt-gv-r55xtoc-4gd/p/N82E16814...
Older cards have higher power and cooling requirements, and you have to factor in the cost of adapters. Low end cards are being displaced by improved 'integrated' graphics and because the vendors make more profits on higher end cards. In this market your best bet may be to look for used cards from people who upgraded to newer gaming cards. Some older cards with 3 ports [ HDMI | DP | DVI |VGA] may only support 2 monitors. If your system has the capacity (bus slots and power), you might be better off adding another single-port card.
I have a low-end 10+ year-old Nvidia card and use nouveau, but a small mistake introduced after kernel 5.8.18 wasn't corrected until 5.11 (just now being tested -- more recent changes may have introduced new bugs that weren't detected since nobody could use them). Older cards are at risk that open source drivers will not be properly maintained.
If you don't need high performance on all 3 monitors you might be able to add a USB3 card with a USB3 to video adapter. There are adapters that have linux drivers, some reported to work with Fedora using 3rd party RPM's.