PCIe x1 video card suggestions

[Hokiefyd]

I have video success in Windows XP. This is what about:gpu tells me:

Graphics Feature Status
Canvas: Software only. Hardware acceleration disabled.
Compositing: Hardware accelerated on all pages and threaded
3D CSS: Hardware accelerated
CSS Animation: Accelerated and threaded
WebGL: Hardware accelerated
WebGL multisampling: Hardware accelerated
Flash 3D: Unavailable. Hardware acceleration unavailable
Flash Stage3D: Hardware accelerated
Flash Stage3D Baseline profile: Hardware accelerated
Texture Sharing: Hardware accelerated
Video Decode: Software only, hardware acceleration unavailable
Video: Hardware accelerated

Problems Detected
Disable 3D (but not Stage3D) in Flash on XP: 134885
Hardware video decode is only supported in win7+.: 159458
Accelerated 2D Canvas is not supported on WinXP.: 175149
Accelerated 2D canvas is unavailable: either disabled at the command line or not supported by the current system.

Driver Bug Workarounds
clear_alpha_in_readpixels
disable_angle_instanced_arrays
disable_d3d11
exit_on_context_lost
set_texture_filter_before_generating_mipmap
use_current_program_after_successful_link

Videos play well without flutter. There is apparently something with this particular hardware and Linux that just don't play well together. The way I'm seeing this, you are right (ramblejam): hardware acceleration is not enabled in Linux, and unless I'm overlooking something, it doesn't appear that it can be, for some reason.

 

[Garak]

Originally Posted By: Hokiefyd
I like trying to get an old computer to run as much as I like trying to resurrect an old lawn mower.

The Super Grub rescue disk is also another remarkable tool!

 

[Ramblejam]

Originally Posted By: Hokiefyd
Videos play well without flutter. There is apparently something with this particular hardware and Linux that just don't play well together. The way I'm seeing this, you are right (ramblejam): hardware acceleration is not enabled in Linux, and unless I'm overlooking something, it doesn't appear that it can be, for some reason.

So everything is working as it should with XP?
Have you tried alternative drivers with Linux?

 

[Hokiefyd]

Originally Posted By: Ramblejam
So everything is working as it should with XP?
Have you tried alternative drivers with Linux?


Yes.
No.

I've really been out of time this weekend with family coming over for Christmas parties, etc. And now that XP's working and it runs that good, my urgency to get it running well has been removed. I will play more with it over time.

 

[Hokiefyd]

I have an update on this computer. I was messing with a partition tool in XP to combine two partitions (it was a GUI-based partitioning tool). It asked for a restart, and then I got the blue screen of death, talking about an unmounted boot volume. I tried a few things, but figured I'd try Ubuntu again. Ubuntu didn't want to install last time, I think because the older motherboard it had with an older video processor wasn't supported. It seemed to be a known issue with that older motherboard.

Ubuntu 12.04 LTS installed straight away on this machine. There was a slight hiccup with a stalled first boot after the files were copied, but I power cycled it and it started up. I'm using an external D-Link wireless dongle and it recognizes that and works well. There's a touch of lag to Ubuntu's rich GUI, but it's okay. More importantly, the computer's running again.

I type this post from that computer. I've got Google Chrome on it and it seems to run well. It took about 30 minutes for the Ubuntu DVD to wipe the drive, install itself, and then for me to do the updates and install Chrome. Much faster than with a Windows re-format!

This'll go back into the garage and play Pandora for me. I will try video on it, though I still have the same issues as posted above regarding a lack of hardware acceleration. I should be fine though.

 

[Hokiefyd]

YouTube runs good with video in the standard windowed mode. If I made it full screen, there is some lag, but not too bad. Netflix of course won't play in a Chrome Window, but I know there are some workarounds for that. Pretty slick.

 

[ClutchDisc]

I've really been liking my Ubuntu 12.04 install on my laptop. One thing I love is how quickly you are up and running with an install of Linux vs. windows. Plus, you get a excellent word processor in the install.. try that one with windows!

 

[Hokiefyd]

The "Additional Drivers" applet found NVIDIA drivers for this board, and I installed the v331 driver, but that crashed the system; it would not re-start, and I didn't know how to load in "Safe Mode", if there is one. So I elected to re-install Ubuntu last night. I learned a long time ago with a Windows machine to not update video drivers if the computer works fine. Same apparently for Ubuntu.