Green Graphics Adapter Recommendation

[Jarod Wilson]

On Mon, 2008-10-20 at 11:51 -0400, David Rosenstrauch wrote:
> Bob - BLU wrote:
> > I have a Linux server that needs a graphics adapter.  It will spend
> > most of it's time displaying an X login window, and the rest of the
> > time displaying an X session while maintenance occurs.  No games
> > here.  But I expect to be running a few virtual machines under
> > VirtualBox or VMWare.  So I'm looking for a graphics adapter than can
> > handle that (most any), and not chew up much power as it spends its
> > life displaying the login window.
> > 
> > The motherboard has a PCI 2.0 x16 slot for an adapter.  I was
> > thinking an NVidia based card as they seem to have the best drivers
> > (proprietary is acceptable here).
> > 
> > Any recommendations for a 'green' card?
> 
> I just bought a nice, cheap, low-end pcie2.0 graphics card for a box I 
> built a couple of months ago:
> 
> http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814102724
> 
> It's pretty green, since it doesn't have a fan (cools by heatsink only) 
> and thus uses less power.
> 
> 2 caveats though:
> 
> 1) it might be hard to find (Newegg no longer sells it), and
> 
> 2) not sure how the Linux support is for this; I used it for our Windows 
> desktop

Radeon HD support, particularly for >2000 series, I believe is still
shaky at best, unless you're using the proprietary fglrx blob (though I
seem to recall that not being updated for ages a little while back
too...). I'd stick to something older, particularly if its for a machine
running a non-bleeding-edge distro.

These should be more than sufficient:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814121019
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814500035

The cheap low-end seems to be dominated heavily by nVidia, at least as
far as what newegg carries. Only a few fanless sub-$50 ATI cards.


-- 
Jarod Wilson
jarod-ajLrJawYSntWk0Htik3J/w at public.gmane.org