Video Card Question - Beginner

[Øyvind Stegard]

Bradley (FC2 List) wrote:
> Thanks for the great list.
> 
> I have an MSI nVIDIA Ti4200 8X 128MB video card that is extremely jumpy with
> Tux Racer and 3D screen savers.
I am assuming that by "jumpy", you mean slow/staggering/unusable ? This 
is probably software opengl rendering in action (the Mesa OpenGL library).
> 
> Will drivers from the nVIDIA site help this or do I need openGL drivers
> (which I couldn't locate for this card)?
Yes, most definitely, they will help. nVIDIA supplies its own OpenGL 
drivers which enable hardware acceleration on their cards (together with 
the kernel module).
 From what you're saying, it seems you are using the Xorg supplied 'nv' 
driver, which does not support 3D hardware acceleration. If you want 
games/3D screensavers using your nVIDIA card, you have only one choice: 
get the drivers from nVIDIA (they work well).

You can get RPMs with the nVIDIA driver for FC2:
http://www.fedorafaq.org/#nvidia (maybe easiest alternative, but 
requires setting up Yum)

or:
download the most recent driver from nVIDIA and use their installer:
http://www.fedorafaq.org/custom_nvidia.html (install instructions)
http://www.nvidia.com/linux
> 
> I am asking this question instead of experimenting because I am paranoid of
> losing my display and not having the experience to bring it back.
Installing the drivers won't happen magically by itself, you need to 
make some small changes to the Xorg configuration file, in addition to 
installing the drivers themselves. Make a backup of 
'/etc/X11/xorg.conf', before altering anything. If X won't start, 
replace the faulty config file with your original backup copy, and X 
should be able to get back up on its feet.

If you're not happy with the default install/settings, in this case 
because it does not include 3D acceleration for nVIDIA cards, and you 
don't like fiddling with config-files in text-mode only, things might 
get tricky.

In all cases, be sure to read the instructions properly (print on paper, 
if necessary) and always have a backup of critical data. If you suddenly 
  find you need to re-install, because you don't know how to fix it, at 
least you don't have to worry about losing all your documents and 
things, in the process.

Øyvind
-- 
< Øyvind Stegard <oyvinst (at) ifi uio no>
  < University of Oslo, Dept. of informatics
   < http://www.stegard.net/
    < "If at first you do succeed, try not to look astonished."