The Graphics Card This card will not be used for gaming or high-resolution video, but because I chose a motherboard with PCI Express, the card does have to be modern and an subsequently capable of more work than it will be utilized for. My immediate choice for a card chip manufacturer is NVIDIA. They have far better Linux support than ATI and a few mainstream cards that support this interface. There is a choice to be made between the Quadro FX chip series and the newer GeForce chip. The GeForce is used in more of NVIDIA's high-performance cards, but there are one or two from the 5 series and 6 series that have a reasonable price. The only card in the 5 series that supports PCI-e is the PCX 5300. It's a nice enough card, but too much of an odd-ball in it's series and class. I'm worried that the lack of similar cards will mean a lack of Linux support. The LinuxQuestions.org Hardware Compatibility List contains a few entries for PCI-e cards in the GeForce 6 series. Because I don't need anything more than the baseline performance, I will settle on the NVIDIA® GeForce™ 6200 for a GPU. A quick Froogling reveals that there are 5-6 manufacturers that build cards around the GeForce GPU's and two variants of the card. The price differential between the 128MB and 256MB versions is small, so the 256MB version is a better value. I imagine that the cards are all similar, but an informal search of reviews shows that XFX has a good reputation for reliability. The video card for my Linux PVR will be: the XFX Geforce 6200 With Turbo Cache - 256MB - PVT44PQA

XFX GeForce 6200 with Turbo Cache - 256MB - PVT44PQA
$62.99 - Buy.com: 3.5 / 5  Add to list

  ¶ 11:22 AM