"Buying a New Laptop" Need Suggestion/Opinion for Graphics card

[Guest]

Hello,

I am planning to buy a new laptop , and looking to run kubuntu on it.....! i am currently looking at HP,Lenovo and i would need a suggestion on going for the graphics card....what do you think would be a better idea a ATI Radeon HD Graphics card or an NVIDIA 9xSeries ....! also let me know if there are anyother laptop's which have a descent graphics and are very much compatible with kubuntu.


Thank You,
Frk

[changturkey]

Re: "Buying a New Laptop" Need Suggestion/Opinion for Graphics card

Dell or Lenovo or Sony. Get either an Intel or Nvidia card. I prefer Lenovo IBM. SL series or T series.

[CVPunk]

Re: "Buying a New Laptop" Need Suggestion/Opinion for Graphics card

I am running Kubuntu 8.10 64bit w/KDE4.2 beta on a HP Pavilion dv5z,
the specs are....
-AMD Turion(TM) X2 Dual-Core Mobile Processor RM-70 (2.0GHz)
-15.4" diagonal WXGA High-Definition HP BrightView Widescreen Display (1280 x 800)
-3GB DDR2 System Memory (2 Dimm)
-ATI Radeon(TM) HD 3200 Graphics
-160GB 5400RPM SATA Hard Drive
-Wireless-G Card
-SuperMulti 8X DVD+/-R/RW with Double Layer Support

Everything works great... only snag I ran into was getting wireless to work initially. It turned out to be very simple though. (I have a post about it somewhere )

[changturkey]

Re: "Buying a New Laptop" Need Suggestion/Opinion for Graphics card

I am running Kubuntu 8.10 64bit w/KDE4.2 beta on a HP Pavilion dv5z,
the specs are....
-AMD Turion(TM) X2 Dual-Core Mobile Processor RM-70 (2.0GHz)
-15.4" diagonal WXGA High-Definition HP BrightView Widescreen Display (1280 x 800)
-3GB DDR2 System Memory (2 Dimm)
-ATI Radeon(TM) HD 3200 Graphics
-160GB 5400RPM SATA Hard Drive
-Wireless-G Card
-SuperMulti 8X DVD+/-R/RW with Double Layer Support

Everything works great... only snag I ran into was getting wireless to work initially. It turned out to be very simple though. (I have a post about it somewhere )

Great laptop, almost bought it myself.

[kjjjjshab]

Re: "Buying a New Laptop" Need Suggestion/Opinion for Graphics card

...Lenovo.... Get either an Intel or Nvidia card.

Or both!

I take that back... they do the ATI/Intel now.

[kevinc]

Re: "Buying a New Laptop" Need Suggestion/Opinion for Graphics card

Regarding the video card, either ATI or nvidia. Check to see if the particular card is supported as some very recent cards may not yet be, but most are.
One thing I found, I have a 2006 machine with ATI x1300 video card and I saw similar machines with either (at that time) 128MB, 256MB or 512MB video RAM. I got the 512MB, thinking more would be better. Now, the ATI driver for windows recognizes all of the video memory, but the Linux drivers have a lot of trouble as it seems my 512MB is actually 256MB plus 128MB plus 64MB plus 64MB scattered over the place. This shows up in the log files when the kernel detects what hardware, memory, busses, etcetera are available and I've had problems getting dvd's to play in the past four versions of Kubuntu because the video memory is not continuous. It takes some tweaking with xorg.conf to get dvd's to play well.

[kbunt]

Re: "Buying a New Laptop" Need Suggestion/Opinion for Graphics card

Hello, I am researching this, currently, so maybe I can offer some ideas?

Try the laptop website, 'notebook reviews' or:

http://www.notebookreview.com

They have a Linux section.

It also depends how much you want to pay and which features/specs/hardware you need.

From what I've read, Ubuntu/Kubuntu can run well on any of the newer Intel hardware and when paired with Nvidia graphics, it sounds like it is your best bet for fewest headaches.

Some users (on the site) claim that some of the Nvidia hardware, specifically the 9400 and 9600 Nvidia mobile graphics chips might have hardware flaws so beware. Not all but certain ones if they were soldered with inferior hardware materials. I just don't want to risk it so I am avoiding laptops with either Nvidia 9400 or 9600 mobile chips but that's me.

I prefer an Intel-based laptop because I think it will have better overall cooling or the heat won't be as bad.

Also, I have read if you buy one of the hybrid graphics-switching laptops that have the Intel X4500 integrated chip with a discrete graphics (called 'external' chip) board, you have to go into the BIOS to switch it when you use Linux. There's no switching it on the fly. Just to let you know.

The Thinkpad wiki site has info about installing various distros on hardware that cover the Intel cpu, Intel X4500 graphics, Nvidia graphics and ATI graphics chips that might be in those laptops.

The way I perceive it, it doesn't matter so much as the brand but what hardware it is. The brand matters relating to build quality.

That's my two cents, FWIW.

P.S. It seems, if the laptop has a newer Intel wireless chip (e.g. 5100+), you need kernel 2.6.27 so that means Intrepid.

[ioaniro]

Re: "Buying a New Laptop" Need Suggestion/Opinion for Graphics card

I'm working on a clevo based laptop, m8660tu i think is the model and so far 95% works without any problems. The wireless as mentioned before worked only in intrepid (5300 model i think).

Also, I have the nvidia 9800m gts which does not work very well, nvidia drivers work but the powermizer keeps the gpu in the low performance modes all the time and so far there is no fix to that that I know of. Is not a big deal unless you really need that gpu power under linux but is something to keep in mind since there's no word on when this will be solved. So I'd go with Ati if this would be an issue for you.

PS clevo is not famous for their linux friendly laptops so I wouldn't recommend it, also I tried to put the x64 kubuntu and there's no way to install it, I'm guessing a bios update is needed for that and I don't think we'll see one...

[kbunt]

Re: "Buying a New Laptop" Need Suggestion/Opinion for Graphics card

ioaniro, I was looking at a similarly configured laptop, ironically. What is going on that causes problems trying to use x64 kubuntu? It could be just the nvidia situation as I assume it would effect desktops with nvidia cards and not just laptops. I'm just guessing/speculating, though.

The wireless works because it needs the 2.6.27 kernel, min., at the moment.

Maybe that Nvidia mobile chip is too recent and just needs some work as it applies to Linux?

I've looked at laptops with X4500 Intel graphics, Nvidia 9300/9600 and now 9800M GTS (in the Clevo clone as I call it) and finally, some Thinkpads that come with the ATI 3470 or something like that? I'm wary of the ATI-based ones, though.

My priorities are decent cpu power, DVI or HDMI port, decent screen for movies/video and somewhat lightweight (not essential). Also, I think I need a 1680 x 1050 res. if I want to hook up to my 20" LCD?

[ioaniro]

Re: "Buying a New Laptop" Need Suggestion/Opinion for Graphics card

I'm not sure what's going on with the x64 linux, I didn't put much thought into trying since the x32 works very nice. The thing is I put the cd in to boot, I get to the options screen and whatever option I select it starts, gives an error and I need to reboot. So I was guessing that there's something in the bios that the linux does not like. Vista x64 has no problem to install but who wants Vista... I looked around the notebookreview.com site and other laptops with more or less the same platform work with x64 so it must be something on Clevo side... (tried kubuntu, and ubuntu only)
For the graphics card I'm pretty sure it will get fixed soon, I think it has to do with the fact that the new nvidia cards have 4 levels of performance and the driver only "looks for" 2. On my old laptop with a 6800 Ultra mobile that has only 2 levels of performance I have no problem.
Other than that everything works beautifully, the 1680x1050 screen is perfect and fan control seems to be working nicely.
Did not try the bluetooth and the x32 linux sees only 2.5Gb out of 4Gb of memory which I was expecting.

[wrender]

Re: "Buying a New Laptop" Need Suggestion/Opinion for Graphics card

System76 has some sweet laptops and ships with Ubuntu natively. I got the new Serval Pro and Kubuntu runs fine on it.

The best part is you get free tech support on their forum from them if you have any problems running linux on it.