[RndTbl] recommendations for 4k video card under Linux

[Gilles Detillieux]

On 04/06/2018 01:55 PM, Adam Thompson wrote:
>
> The short answer is... pretty much anything you can buy at this point 
> will do what you want, except for some of the older cards.
>
> I tend to stick to fanless cards, since the fans are always the first 
> thing to die, however there aren't all that many of them out there, 
> and they don't tend to support 4K but it varies widely.
>
> The AMD/ATI cards don't need precompiled 3rd party drivers, but that 
> doesn't mean they work better.  I haven't had much trouble with the 
> nVidia drivers... and if you don't need 3D performance, just use the 
> Nouveau driver which works fine for 2D.
>

Just need 2D, but I have encountered nVidia cards that the nouveau 
driver didn't support, so I'm a bit wary. It does look like whether I go 
with nVidia or Radeon, I'm going to have to bite the bullet and try 
something, because I'm coming up empty on 4k cards whose chipset is 
explicitly mentioned in the X.org radeon or nouveau driver chipset lists.

> Regardless, a quick search on NewEgg reveals a handful of options 
> that fit your bill:
>
> https://www.newegg.ca/Product/ProductList.aspx?Submit=ENE&N=100007708%204814%208000%20600050349%20600050351%20600050350%20600050352%20600083706%20601114340%20601114674%20601195631%20601203676%20600486270%20601195647%20601211651%20600100181%204017%204018&IsNodeId=1&bop=And&Order=PRICE&PageSize=96
>
> I have not checked each chipset against the latest CentOS X.org 
> drivers for compatibility, sorry.  That's one reason I actually prefer 
> the nVidia experience - they update faster than the AMD drivers.  
> (Usually.  Except when they don't.  YMMV.)
>

Those are Radeon RX 550 & 560 cards. I was all set to order an RX 550 
card until I saw that the X.org radeon driver & docs make no mention of 
RX chipsets at all. So now I'm not so sure about that.

It does make nVidia seem like the safer bet, though, because if I'm 
stuck with no X.org driver support, at least it looks like I'll have 
better options for 3rd party support.

As for DKMS, my impression was you needed driver source for that, and 
that nVidia only provided binaries. The elrepo approach may be a better 
way to go, but that would mean going with nVidia as they don't seem to 
have radeon drivers that I can find.

-- 
Gilles R. Detillieux              E-mail: <grdetil at scrc.umanitoba.ca>
Spinal Cord Research Centre       WWW:    http://www.scrc.umanitoba.ca/
Dept. of Physiology and Pathophysiology, Rady Faculty of Health Sciences,
Univ. of Manitoba  Winnipeg, MB  R3E 0J9  (Canada)