Video controller recommendations

[Alex]

Hi,

I currently have an AMD Radeon 5770 with 1GB that must be at least ten
years old. I've just purchased a 32" Samsung to go with my two 27"
connected using DVI. If I continue to use this card, I would connect
the 32" with the HDMI or DisplayPort adapter.

How would this card perform supporting three monitors?

I realize it's a terrible time to purchase a video card, but do you
have any recommendations?

I currently use one monitor for streaming, and plan to use the other
two for work-related things. No games now, but perhaps in the future -
what's the game market like for Linux users using fedora33 these days?

I believe AMD is a better option than Nvidia due to the drivers on
Linux, correct?

Do I need anything more than a 4GB card? I thought the main advantages
for more memory were to support larger resolutions, correct?

Is there a big difference between PCI 2.1 and 3.0/3.1?

Here are a few I've been considering. Other recommendations?
AMD FirePro V9800 4GB 6x mini displayport
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07M6RNJL3

AMD ATI FirePro W7000 4GB GDDR5 4 DisplayPort PCI-E
https://amazon.com/Dell-FirePro-DisplayPort-Workstation-Graphics/dp/B07NLJQC...

Radeon RX 560 1295MHz,4gb GDDR5
https://www.amazon.com/XFX-Radeon-1295MHz-Graphics-RX-560P4SFG5/dp/B072VH8NR...

[Joe Zeff]

On 5/14/21 12:35 PM, Alex wrote:
> How would this card perform supporting three monitors?

Try it and find out for yourself.

[Alex]

> On 5/14/21 12:35 PM, Alex wrote:
> > How would this card perform supporting three monitors?
>
> Try it and find out for yourself.

Well, I've already had to disable hardware acceleration in Chrome
because I think it couldn't support streaming reliably, but I
certainly will try it.

[Joe Zeff]

On 5/14/21 12:54 PM, Alex wrote:
> > On 5/14/21 12:35 PM, Alex wrote:
> > > How would this card perform supporting three monitors?
> >
> > Try it and find out for yourself.
>
> Well, I've already had to disable hardware acceleration in Chrome
> because I think it couldn't support streaming reliably, but I
> certainly will try it.

That's always your best bet because it will tell you how the card will 
work with your hardware, not somebody else's.

[Matti Pulkkinen]

pe, 2021-05-14 kello 14:35 -0400, Alex kirjoitti:
> I realize it's a terrible time to purchase a video card, but do you
> have any recommendations?

I have an Nvidia card myself, so take this with a pinch of salt, but
from what I have heard, the newer AMD cards are what you'll want to get
on Linux so long as your workload doesn't demand something else.
They've got good driver support in the kernel, unlike Nvidia, so they
should work well out of the box. With Nvidia you'll have to choose
between the relatively low performance free drivers, or going through
the moderate hassle of installing the proprietary Nvidia drivers. I
stll have an Nvidia card because I bought it well before AMD's renewed
Linux driver effort.
> I currently use one monitor for streaming, and plan to use the other
> two for work-related things. No games now, but perhaps in the future
>
> what's the game market like for Linux users using fedora33 these
> days?

This depends heavily on what you want to play, but at least I find
myself with more games to play than I have time for. Valve has a
compatibility tool called Proton (or Steam Play) that lets you play
many of Steam's Windows games on Linux, in addition to the ones that
work on Linux natively. A game's Steam page will indicate whether it
will run on Linux natively, and if not, you can check
https://protondb.com for the Proton-compatibility status of a given
title.

[Roger Heflin]

What do you mean by you use one monitor for streaming?     Note that the
nvidia cards with their driver are much better for encoded video if that is
what you mean by streaming.  The AMD cards are garbage for video encoding
much worse quality than nvidia even at much higher bitrates.

A lot depends on what you are doing and how much you want to spend.

On Fri, May 14, 2021 at 2:20 PM Matti Pulkkinen  wrote:
> pe, 2021-05-14 kello 14:35 -0400, Alex kirjoitti:
> > I realize it's a terrible time to purchase a video card, but do you
> > have any recommendations?
>
> I have an Nvidia card myself, so take this with a pinch of salt, but
> from what I have heard, the newer AMD cards are what you'll want to get
> on Linux so long as your workload doesn't demand something else.
> They've got good driver support in the kernel, unlike Nvidia, so they
> should work well out of the box. With Nvidia you'll have to choose
> between the relatively low performance free drivers, or going through
> the moderate hassle of installing the proprietary Nvidia drivers. I
> stll have an Nvidia card because I bought it well before AMD's renewed
> Linux driver effort.
> > I currently use one monitor for streaming, and plan to use the other
> > two for work-related things. No games now, but perhaps in the future
> >
> > what's the game market like for Linux users using fedora33 these
> > days?
>
> This depends heavily on what you want to play, but at least I find
> myself with more games to play than I have time for. Valve has a
> compatibility tool called Proton (or Steam Play) that lets you play
> many of Steam's Windows games on Linux, in addition to the ones that
> work on Linux natively. A game's Steam page will indicate whether it
> will run on Linux natively, and if not, you can check
> https://protondb.com for the Proton-compatibility status of a given
> title.
>
> --
> Terveisin / Regards,
> Matti Pulkkinen
>
> users mailing list -- [e-mail]
> To unsubscribe send an email to [e-mail]
> Fedora Code of Conduct:
> https://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/project/code-of-conduct/
> List Guidelines: https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Mailing_list_guidelines
> List Archives:
> https://lists.fedoraproject.org/archives/list/[e-mail]
> Do not reply to spam on the list, report it:
> https://pagure.io/fedora-infrastructure

[Alex]

Hi,
> What do you mean by you use one monitor for streaming?     Note that the nvidia cards with their driver are much better for encoded video if that is what you mean by streaming.  The AMD cards are garbage for video encoding much worse quality than nvidia even at much higher bitrates.

That's interesting. I mean watching video from within
Chrome/Chromium/Firefox for Netflix, news, etc, or VLC to watch
regular videos.

I can't imagine my requirements would be so demanding that there would
be a noticable difference between nvidia and AMD, particularly with
the driver tradeoff issues?
> A lot depends on what you are doing and how much you want to spend.

Yeah, doesn't it always. I think I'm in the $350 to $500 range,
considering I just spent $400 on a monitor.

This one is interesting because it has six displayport ports, but it's
only PCIe 2.1. Is that a problem/drawback?
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07M6RNJL3

[Roger Heflin]

This feature is called nvenc and is for streaming your output to a website
as gamers do with their gameplay and/or various webcam services.  It can
also be used with ffmpeg to re-encode video at a much faster rate than all
but the most extreme systems.   I have about the oldest nvidia card that
supports nvenc and it is rated at 8x real time 1080.  I can get 2.5x real
time at 1080 with very good quality.   The newer cards are 2-4-8-16x as
fast as my card and can do 4k video encoding faster than real time.

It sounds like you aren't doing that.  If you were doing that the nvidia
cards with their driver are useful and the encoding on the AMD cards is
currently I believe rated as almost useless because of poor quality.  I
tried that with their vega(APU with/ryzen 4500U), and to get the quality
decent the bit rates were many times higher than the nvidia card encoded
video making it useless all around.   Maybe whatever is after vega does
better.

What kind of motherboard/system do you have and does it support more than
PCI2.1?

Unless you are doing gaming and/or some other intensive video I am not sure
how much of a video card you need.   I recently converted from
multi-monitor to just a single giant 4k monitor and effectively have about
the same area as 4 22" 1920x1080 monitors.

Passmark says your current card has a rating of 1350.    You might compare
the performance found at:
https://www.videocardbenchmark.net/high_end_gpus.html to get an idea of how
fast each card is.

If you are using the rpmfusion delivered Nvidia driver, then about the only
issue I have had is sometimes you upgrade the kernel before the nvidia
driver has been rebuild and when that happens it does not work.

On Sat, May 15, 2021 at 10:47 AM Alex  wrote:
> Hi,
> > What do you mean by you use one monitor for streaming?     Note that the
>
> nvidia cards with their driver are much better for encoded video if that is
> what you mean by streaming.  The AMD cards are garbage for video encoding
> much worse quality than nvidia even at much higher bitrates.
>
> That's interesting. I mean watching video from within
> Chrome/Chromium/Firefox for Netflix, news, etc, or VLC to watch
> regular videos.
>
> I can't imagine my requirements would be so demanding that there would
> be a noticable difference between nvidia and AMD, particularly with
> the driver tradeoff issues?
> > A lot depends on what you are doing and how much you want to spend.
>
> Yeah, doesn't it always. I think I'm in the $350 to $500 range,
> considering I just spent $400 on a monitor.
>
> This one is interesting because it has six displayport ports, but it's
> only PCIe 2.1. Is that a problem/drawback?
> https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07M6RNJL3
> _______________________________________________
> users mailing list -- [e-mail]
> To unsubscribe send an email to [e-mail]
> Fedora Code of Conduct:
> https://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/project/code-of-conduct/
> List Guidelines: https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Mailing_list_guidelines
> List Archives:
> https://lists.fedoraproject.org/archives/list/[e-mail]
> Do not reply to spam on the list, report it:
> https://pagure.io/fedora-infrastructure

[Alex]

Hi,
> What kind of motherboard/system do you have and does it support more than PCI2.1?

It's the Asus Z370-A and appears to support PCIe 3.0
https://www.asus.com/us/Motherboards-Components/Motherboards/All-series/PRIM...
> Unless you are doing gaming and/or some other intensive video I am not sure how much of a video card you need.   I recently converted from multi-monitor to just a single giant 4k monitor and effectively have about the same area as 4 22" 1920x1080 monitors.

I just got the Samsung S34J550WQ 34" 3440x1440, but it appears my
current video card only supports 1920x1080, so I'd like to upgrade.

Does anyone have any idea how to purchase a video card during that
quick period when it's in stock? For example, I received an alert from
newegg about this video card, but apparently within ten minutes it was
gone.
https://www.newegg.com/msi-geforce-gtx-1660-gtx-1660-ventus-xs-6g-oc/p/N82E1...

[Roger Heflin]

You might have to buy a cheap throw away card.    There are way too many
people going after the "good" mining cards right now.

https://www.newegg.com/asus-geforce-gt-710-gt710-sl-2gd5-csm/p/N82E168141262...

Is a basic card, it is $70+shipping  Verify that the 4k support is good
enough for your monitor.  The refresh rate may not be good enough it claims
to only do 30hz at full 4k on one of the ports

The important things on the above card to look for are nvidia 710/730 and
GDDR5 that is I think the lowest card that does 4k but only at 30hz, and
that card sucks for mining I believe so is still in stock.

And it only has 3 ports and one is a vga so 2 of the ports I believe do not
support your monitors resolution but will do 1080.  It is not a great
gaming card, but if not gaming and/or doing lots of 3d work it should be
good enough.

On Wed, May 19, 2021 at 7:14 AM Alex  wrote:
> Hi,
> > What kind of motherboard/system do you have and does it support more
>
> than PCI2.1?
>
> It's the Asus Z370-A and appears to support PCIe 3.0
>
> https://www.asus.com/us/Motherboards-Components/Motherboards/All-series/PRIM...
> > Unless you are doing gaming and/or some other intensive video I am not
>
> sure how much of a video card you need.   I recently converted from
> multi-monitor to just a single giant 4k monitor and effectively have about
> the same area as 4 22" 1920x1080 monitors.
>
> I just got the Samsung S34J550WQ 34" 3440x1440, but it appears my
> current video card only supports 1920x1080, so I'd like to upgrade.
>
> Does anyone have any idea how to purchase a video card during that
> quick period when it's in stock? For example, I received an alert from
> newegg about this video card, but apparently within ten minutes it was
> gone.
>
> https://www.newegg.com/msi-geforce-gtx-1660-gtx-1660-ventus-xs-6g-oc/p/N82E1...
> _______________________________________________
> users mailing list -- [e-mail]
> To unsubscribe send an email to [e-mail]
> Fedora Code of Conduct:
> https://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/project/code-of-conduct/
> List Guidelines: https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Mailing_list_guidelines
> List Archives:
> https://lists.fedoraproject.org/archives/list/[e-mail]
> Do not reply to spam on the list, report it:
> https://pagure.io/fedora-infrastructure

[Alex]

Hi,

On Wed, May 19, 2021 at 11:36 AM Roger Heflin  wrote:
> You might have to buy a cheap throw away card.    There are way too many people going after the "good" mining cards right now.
>
> https://www.newegg.com/asus-geforce-gt-710-gt710-sl-2gd5-csm/p/N82E168141262...
>
> Is a basic card, it is $70+shipping  Verify that the 4k support is good enough for your monitor.  The refresh rate may not be good enough it claims to only do 30hz at full 4k on one of the ports
>
> The important things on the above card to look for are nvidia 710/730 and GDDR5 that is I think the lowest card that does 4k but only at 30hz, and that card sucks for mining I believe so is still in stock.

I really wanted to avoid nvidia and the proprietary drivers issue,
especially considering I kept my current card for more than ten years,
lol.

I ended up purchasing the AMD Radeon RX580 with 8GB. It's this card,
but I found it new on eBay for less than $300.
https://www.amazon.com/MSI-RX-580-8G-OC/dp/B06XZQMMHJ

I was also considering the RX570 because it had four DisplayPort
adapters and the RX580 has only two, but this card was virtually the
same price and includes 8GB.

Hoping I made a wise choice...

Thanks,
Alex

[Patrick O'Callaghan]

On Thu, 2021-05-20 at 12:40 -0400, Alex wrote:
> Hi,
>
> On Wed, May 19, 2021 at 11:36 AM Roger Heflin 
> wrote:
> > You might have to buy a cheap throw away card.    There are way too
> > many people going after the "good" mining cards right now.
> >
> > https://www.newegg.com/asus-geforce-gt-710-gt710-sl-2gd5-csm/p/N82E168141262...
> >
> > Is a basic card, it is $70+shipping  Verify that the 4k support is
> > good enough for your monitor.  The refresh rate may not be good
> > enough it claims to only do 30hz at full 4k on one of the ports
> >
> > The important things on the above card to look for are nvidia
> > 710/730 and GDDR5 that is I think the lowest card that does 4k but
> > only at 30hz, and that card sucks for mining I believe so is still
> > in stock.
>
> I really wanted to avoid nvidia and the proprietary drivers issue,
> especially considering I kept my current card for more than ten
> years,
> lol.
>
> I ended up purchasing the AMD Radeon RX580 with 8GB. It's this card,
> but I found it new on eBay for less than $300.
> https://www.amazon.com/MSI-RX-580-8G-OC/dp/B06XZQMMHJ
>
> I was also considering the RX570 because it had four DisplayPort
> adapters and the RX580 has only two, but this card was virtually the
> same price and includes 8GB.
>
> Hoping I made a wise choice...

AFAIK the 8GB is really only relevant for gaming.

poc

[Roger Heflin]

I had a 10 year old nvidia and was able to stay using the older last
supported nvidia driver (on recent kernels) that was still being built in
rpm fusion and still supported the older cards, and still decode the
1080P/x264 with a massively slow Atom 330.  Updates worked as well as new
nvidia cards.

I don't have that machine running anymore because the custom-laptop cpu fan
died and getting a replacement was more than the old machine was worth.

On Thu, May 20, 2021 at 11:41 AM Alex  wrote:
> Hi,
>
> On Wed, May 19, 2021 at 11:36 AM Roger Heflin 
> wrote:
> > You might have to buy a cheap throw away card.    There are way too many
>
> people going after the "good" mining cards right now.
> >
>
> https://www.newegg.com/asus-geforce-gt-710-gt710-sl-2gd5-csm/p/N82E168141262...
> > Is a basic card, it is $70+shipping  Verify that the 4k support is good
>
> enough for your monitor.  The refresh rate may not be good enough it claims
> to only do 30hz at full 4k on one of the ports
> > The important things on the above card to look for are nvidia 710/730
>
> and GDDR5 that is I think the lowest card that does 4k but only at 30hz,
> and that card sucks for mining I believe so is still in stock.
>
> I really wanted to avoid nvidia and the proprietary drivers issue,
> especially considering I kept my current card for more than ten years,
> lol.
>
> I ended up purchasing the AMD Radeon RX580 with 8GB. It's this card,
> but I found it new on eBay for less than $300.
> https://www.amazon.com/MSI-RX-580-8G-OC/dp/B06XZQMMHJ
>
> I was also considering the RX570 because it had four DisplayPort
> adapters and the RX580 has only two, but this card was virtually the
> same price and includes 8GB.
>
> Hoping I made a wise choice...
>
> Thanks,
> Alex
> _______________________________________________
> users mailing list -- [e-mail]
> To unsubscribe send an email to [e-mail]
> Fedora Code of Conduct:
> https://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/project/code-of-conduct/
> List Guidelines: https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Mailing_list_guidelines
> List Archives:
> https://lists.fedoraproject.org/archives/list/[e-mail]
> Do not reply to spam on the list, report it:
> https://pagure.io/fedora-infrastructure