So, UPS came and went. 10 minutes later (took longer than absolutely needed to, cos I was being very careful… something I try to do consciously when I’m caffeine-deprived *heh*), new vidcard, new drivers good to go. Not as hairy as it could have been. Not too much command line stuff to do for new drivers, hence not as much chance for my usual typos. :-).
Quick rundown: I don’t “do” computer gaming, so although the onboard video was not satisfactory and I’d intended to replace it all along, I waited until a suitable vidcard turned up before doing so. Still, “suitable” for me would definitely not be suitabe for a hardcore gamer. But all I needed was quick response for normal video, still graphics and text. I had “pretty good” with the onboard video, just not “good enough” IMO, and besides, it took as much as 512MB of my system memory, sooo…
EVGA nVidia 9500GT with 1GB of DDR2. Now, if I’d been a gamer, I would almost have had to shell out another $100 beyond the ~$70 I paid for this one for a 9800GTX with 1GB of DDR3 and a faster GPU, but this card
1. frees up 512MB of (DDR2) system memory
2. with 2 DVI ports, offers an extra video out (over the analog video out the onboar video offered) in addition to the S-Video port it has, while the onboard video (with its analog and S-Video ports) is still available should I need it.
(I don’t expect I’ll be enabling the HDMI port on the motherboard any time soon, but it’s there as well)
Immediate impression? The DVI video does make a difference on my 22″ “widescreen” Acer V223W LCD. An easy “test” for me is the wee lil favicons I have lining a toolbar at the bottom of Opera: much clearer than earlier today with the analog input.
‘S’all, folks. Just a drive-by status report. Contrary to some of my experiences adding “unsupported” peripherals to Ubuntu, no hosing of system today.
L8R