I'm thinking a little ahead here, and this isn't strictly Kubuntu related, but please bear with me.
One of the things I have planned to do with my tax refund (usually in my account before February 15) is to upgrade the video card in my desktop machine (Kubuntu 14.04, updated to 14.04.1 a few days after installation). The one I have, a Galaxy-built card with nVidia GT520 GPU and 1 GiB GDDR3 on PCIe x16, is almost six years old and wasn't anything like top of the line then; given I'm running a Core2Quad at 2.7 GHz with 4 GB RAM (all the MSI P6NGM-L motherboard can accept), the only performance upgrade open to me short of spending hundreds of dollars upgrading to a new motherboard (likely to require a new CPU, RAM, and possibly replacing my IDE hard disk) is video (and that'll likely have more effect on game performance than anything I can afford to do to the rest of the machine anyway).
Question is, what video card to get? I prefer to stick with nVidia; I've been using their video chipsets since the FX5200 that's still in my 2000-2001 second Athlon XP system, and generally been happy with the price to performance equation, as well as their driver support. I haven't booted to Windows in many months, and have no expectation of doing so in future, so Windows performance isn't an issue. I'll have up to about $200 to spend, barring unforeseen occurrences. My motherboard is too old to have PCIe 3.x (I'm not even certain about 2.x; that standard came out in 2007 and I bought this MB in late 2008, but it wasn't cutting edge then), so I need a card that's compatible with 2.x standards and preferably won't suffer a great performance penalty in a 2.x slot or even 1.x slot.
The good news is that my board and case layout will support a full height, full length double slot width card, and I'm pretty sure my power supply has enough reserve left to handle an upgrade (power supplies are relatively cheap and easy to swap, I'll check my wattage and upgrade if it's less than 450W). Given I'm currently running a GT520 chipset with 1 GiB GDDR3, I've been looking at a GT650 chipset card from Tiger Direct with 2 GiB (which comes in a full height, 3/4 length double slot double fan configuration); it's around $150. Would I get more performance for my money with a different nVidia chipset and/or more VRAM? Would this be a big enough improvement to be worth spending money on, or should I just try to save up for a major system rebuild (PSU, MB, CPU/RAM, video, one HDD), which would also get me USB 3.x (I have no 3.x devices that I know of, but likely will eventually) and ensure I have PCIe 3.0 (that'd be a minimum of about $350, likely $500, probably another year out barring a windfall)?
One of the things I have planned to do with my tax refund (usually in my account before February 15) is to upgrade the video card in my desktop machine (Kubuntu 14.04, updated to 14.04.1 a few days after installation). The one I have, a Galaxy-built card with nVidia GT520 GPU and 1 GiB GDDR3 on PCIe x16, is almost six years old and wasn't anything like top of the line then; given I'm running a Core2Quad at 2.7 GHz with 4 GB RAM (all the MSI P6NGM-L motherboard can accept), the only performance upgrade open to me short of spending hundreds of dollars upgrading to a new motherboard (likely to require a new CPU, RAM, and possibly replacing my IDE hard disk) is video (and that'll likely have more effect on game performance than anything I can afford to do to the rest of the machine anyway).
Question is, what video card to get? I prefer to stick with nVidia; I've been using their video chipsets since the FX5200 that's still in my 2000-2001 second Athlon XP system, and generally been happy with the price to performance equation, as well as their driver support. I haven't booted to Windows in many months, and have no expectation of doing so in future, so Windows performance isn't an issue. I'll have up to about $200 to spend, barring unforeseen occurrences. My motherboard is too old to have PCIe 3.x (I'm not even certain about 2.x; that standard came out in 2007 and I bought this MB in late 2008, but it wasn't cutting edge then), so I need a card that's compatible with 2.x standards and preferably won't suffer a great performance penalty in a 2.x slot or even 1.x slot.
The good news is that my board and case layout will support a full height, full length double slot width card, and I'm pretty sure my power supply has enough reserve left to handle an upgrade (power supplies are relatively cheap and easy to swap, I'll check my wattage and upgrade if it's less than 450W). Given I'm currently running a GT520 chipset with 1 GiB GDDR3, I've been looking at a GT650 chipset card from Tiger Direct with 2 GiB (which comes in a full height, 3/4 length double slot double fan configuration); it's around $150. Would I get more performance for my money with a different nVidia chipset and/or more VRAM? Would this be a big enough improvement to be worth spending money on, or should I just try to save up for a major system rebuild (PSU, MB, CPU/RAM, video, one HDD), which would also get me USB 3.x (I have no 3.x devices that I know of, but likely will eventually) and ensure I have PCIe 3.0 (that'd be a minimum of about $350, likely $500, probably another year out barring a windfall)?
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