Arch Linux

rasmuz

Member

Registered: 2012-01-02

Posts: 30

Older graphics card issues

Hi!

I have an old computer and I just installed Arch on it. Everything runs nicely but I have one major issue.

My Current graphics card is NVidia GeForce MX440 and I don't have any hardware acceleration at all. Currently using nouveau drivers.

I also have a ATI Radeon 9800pro card but same issues with drivers and xorg.

What would be my best option besides upgrading hardware obviously?

Xabre

Member

From: Serbia

Registered: 2009-03-19

Posts: 757

Re: Older graphics card issues

glxinfo |grep 'direct\|OpenGL'

pacman -Q| grep nouveau

Nouveau isn't that bad for Gf4MX, it works within the hardware limits. It of course isn't anything special, but should run most KWin/Compiz effects rather decently.

Second option would be downgrading Xorg to 1.10, and using proprietary driver. But that way youl'll be stuck with 1.10 until (if ever) Nvidia releases legacy drivers campatible with 1.11+. That may lead to some troubles considering rolling release nature of Arch.

BTW, never had that much expirience with Radeons, but check if you've installed ati-dri... Or, even better, check the whole  pages on wiki about Radeon and Nouveau instalation/configuration.

rasmuz

Member

Registered: 2012-01-02

Posts: 30

Re: Older graphics card issues

[rasmus@n1 ~]$ glxinfo |grep 'direct\|OpenGL'
direct rendering: Yes
OpenGL vendor string: Nouveau
OpenGL renderer string: Mesa DRI nv17 x86/MMX+/3DNow!+/SSE
OpenGL version string: 1.2 Mesa 7.11.2
OpenGL extensions:
[rasmus@n1 ~]$ pacman -Q| grep nouveau
nouveau-dri 7.11.2-1
xf86-video-nouveau 0.0.16_git20110829-1

Driver seems to be working.

So much fuss with drivers. Today installed arch to a newer laptop with intel onboard gfx + some kind of newer ATi card. Atleast they are working how they should so far

rasmuz

Member

Registered: 2012-01-02

Posts: 30

Re: Older graphics card issues

I am planning to reinstall whole system but i seriously don't know if I should use ATI or NVIDIA card. So much fuss about drivers. I have read Wiki pages too.

So please somebody with experience recommend me wich of these cards would be faster and working HW acceleration. 2D accel. would be good enough but 3D would be even better.

All help is really welcome .