Advice on new system for Linux

[mark-OGhnF3Lt4opAfugRpC6u6w at public.gmane.org (Mark J Dulcey)]

On 4/13/2010 4:46 PM, James Kramer wrote:

> I deleted the Nvidia Card in the order but it printed out anyway.
> Since I do not play games too much I decided to go with the graphics
> on the board.
>
> On-Board Radeon X1250-based Integrated Graphics
>
> This reduced the price by over $100.
>
> Is this a wise choice or should I go with a graphics card?  They list
> a lot of different cards.

Sadly, it's not a wise choice if you want to run any 3D software at all. 
ATI stopped supporting their older hardware (anything older than the 
Radeon HD 2000 series) in their latest closed-source drivers, and the 
older drivers won't work with current versions of X.org. So if you 
install a current Linux distro, the built-in Radeon X1250 will only work 
with the open-source driver which has very poor 3D performance. It will 
be fine for standard office-type software, but not for 3D things such as 
games or Blender.

If you do decide to add a graphics card, it's basically a money vs. 
performance trade. You can also skip it for now and add one yourself 
later; you don't really save any money by getting it with the system.