# Any stable graphic card?

## iarwain

I'm going to buy a ASUS A7V880 motherboard. It has a VIA chipset. My last computer was a A7V and with via too, and i had lock problems with nvidia. It was a geforce DDR.

This card is enough for me in quality, but not in stability. As it's an old card, i suppose there are other companys with same quality cards as this and stable.

I want a graphic card no to play, but to work. I want a clean and good image quality. And I don't want ATI! Is there any graphic card company with good cards and good and stable linux drivers?

I'm fed up of seeing X locked and ssh-ing to kill it.

Help please.

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## korpo

VIA chipsets have always been somewhat flaky for me, especially doing anything graphics-intensive.

Why not just buy a different kind of board, and keep your same GF card, instead of buying a new board and card?

-Kris

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## drescherjm

Never had any sort of lockups with nVidia cards and VIA Athlon boards. Were you overclocking? Poor powersupply? Cheap memory??

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## codergeek42

Using a VIA82-something chipset board with an Athlon Thunderbird @1.2 GHz and a Riva TNT2 @ 2x AGP. Perfectly stable AFAIC. As drescherjm suggested, are you overclocking? Hardware troubles?

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## Zyne

why no ATI?

I've NEVER had any problems with my radeon 9000 PRO card. It's not good for games, but who cares? It's only needed for work.

if you don't want ATI, then there's only NViDiA or Matrox there. Should be easy enough to pick a good card. See how much you want to spend, and buy the card that fits the budget...

just my 0.02   :Razz: 

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## codergeek42

 *Zyne wrote:*   

> why no ATI?

  *iarwain wrote:*   

> And I don't want ATI!

 

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## iarwain

Hi. I haven't overclocked anything in my computer. The powersupply is ok and the memory i think is good. I have AGP@4X, fast write disabled and SBA too. maybe the locks were because of 4X? 

Why not ATI? Their linux drivers are not very good. Ok, nvidia's aren't wondeful, but they're better than ati's.

Maybe i'll look for another chipset rather than VIA. But I don't know which one. I've read many people having problems with nforce chiptsets (no hardware missing support, etc). Do you recommend me any motherboard? I like ASUS motherboards, but i'm opened to other suggestions. I don't care paying more if i know it's going to be stable and faster. My needs are:

- SATA.

- Dual sided RAM DDR 400 PC3200.

- Support for Athlon XP 3200+.

- Gbit net card, supported by the linux kernel.

- Sound card with hardware mixing support.

- FSB of 400mhz.

- And of course, with no lock-ups with nvidia!  :Wink: 

Thanks for your help.

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## blackcat77

I'm using MSI mainboards with via chipsets and Aopen Nvidia vga cards without any serious trouble.

Before i used MSI i also ocasionaly used Asus mainboards. The Asus mainboards are the best choice for speed but the MSI mainboards are more reliable.

 *Quote:*   

> 
> 
> My needs are: 
> 
>  - SATA. 
> ...

 

I think the KT6V-LSR meets your needs but i'm not sure about the audio and net card. For audio i'm using a creative card and for net card a 3com Gbit so check the MSI site for more info.

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## codergeek42

 *iarwain wrote:*   

> Hi. I haven't overclocked anything in my computer. The powersupply is ok and the memory i think is good. I have AGP@4X, fast write disabled and SBA too. maybe the locks were because of 4X? 
> 
> Why not ATI? Their linux drivers are not very good. Ok, nvidia's aren't wondeful, but they're better than ati's.
> 
> Maybe i'll look for another chipset rather than VIA. But I don't know which one. I've read many people having problems with nforce chiptsets (no hardware missing support, etc). Do you recommend me any motherboard? I like ASUS motherboards, but i'm opened to other suggestions. I don't care paying more if i know it's going to be stable and faster. My needs are:
> ...

 I think you want an Asus A7N8X-E Deluxe.   :Very Happy:  (Except for the hardware-mixed sound. Until nvidia comes out with good ALSA drivers for it or releases the specs for it, I would recommend just buying a cheap PCI card, like an SB Live! or Turtle Beach Santa Cruz, and using that instead.)

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## blixel

 *iarwain wrote:*   

> I'm going to buy a ASUS A7V880 motherboard. It has a VIA chipset. My last computer was a A7V and with via too, and i had lock problems with nvidia. It was a geforce DDR.
> 
> This card is enough for me in quality, but not in stability. As it's an old card, i suppose there are other companys with same quality cards as this and stable.
> 
> I want a graphic card no to play, but to work. I want a clean and good image quality. And I don't want ATI! Is there any graphic card company with good cards and good and stable linux drivers?
> ...

 

You posted that over a month ago so I don't know if you've already made your purchase.  But I just bought an ASUS A7V880 board to replace my ASUS A7N8X Deluxe 2.0 because I thought that would solve my NVidia card lock up problem.  It didn't.  It still crashes several times per day.  The reason I was hopeful that the new motherboard would work was because I had read about lots of problems with the nForce2 chipset and specifically a lot of problems with the ASUS A7N8X motherboard.  The new board didn't solve my problems.  And interestingly enough, when I put the old ASUS A7N8X in my other computer with an ATI graphics card, it hasn't locked up once!  So the issue is seemingly with the NVidia drivers for Linux.  Because under Windows, the boards and video cards work fine.

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## Ast

FWIW, I have a GeForce 6800 GT on an Asus P4C800 and I've never had a lock-up.  That said, I've never gotten around to trying enabling RenderAccel again (that used to cause lock-ups on my old Ti4600).  I'm emerging xorg 6.8 at the moment and might try it again.

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## iarwain

OK, I've finally bought it. You made me change my mind. Specs:

- ASUS P4C800-E Deluxe

- Pentium IV 3,2GHz HT

- DDR PC3200 400Mhz Dual Channel

- NVidia Geforce 5900 XT

Using 6629 drivers and NVAGP@8X. Rock solid. Hell yes. At last. Not a single crash.

Thanks a lot for your help dudes, it's been really useful.

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## Gentii

Hey, it's quite surprising, I built a new box some months ago with exactly the same components  :Smile:  Same proc, same mobo, same 3d card lol. I like it too, it's running fast. But I don't think there is hardware mixing support, it seems the alsa intel8x0 driver doesn't support it. But I've a lovely sound blaster audigy (my old sb live was very nice too).

And maybe an amd 64 would have been faster at the same price, but I didn't want a nvidia nforce mobo again (it seems like it was the best for amd64)

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