ladasky
September 6th, 2009, 01:56 AM
Hi folks,
I just inherited a hand-me-down computer. The good news is that its fairly new. The bad news is that when I booted from the Ubuntu 8.04 LTS 32-bit x86 Live CD, the video went to pieces once the desktop appeared.
Diagonal stripes and hash were everywhere, there was ghosting, etc. If there is interest in the details, I will post a photo. Reading anything but the simplest text was impossible, and I could barely maneuver the mouse over the shut-down icon.
The motherboard in this system is a model P4M900T-M (V1.0) from ECS (http://www.ecs.com.tw/ECSWebSite/Products/ProductsDetail.aspx?detailid=704&CategoryID=1&DetailName=Specification&MenuID=1&LanID=0). The on-board video, which I was trying to use, is described as "Integrated Chrome9™ HC IGP".
Since Chrome9 video is apparently not widely used, it appears that support for it is limited. I found this discussion (http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=485646&highlight=chrome9) of OpenChrome (https://help.ubuntu.com/community/OpenChrome). Maybe I would be among the roughly 50% of people who reported that OpenChrome solved their problems. HOWEVER, installing and configuring it involves opening a terminal and doing a fair amount of typing. To do that, I would actually need to be able to read the screen!
In this recent discussion (http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1257595&highlight=chrome9), a fellow Ubuntu user says to forget Chrome and just buy another video card. Since I was eventually planning to do this anyway, I was thinking that I might just do that now. I am considering some of the cheaper CUDA-equipped cards from NVidia, as I do a lot of computation. Are NVidia outboard video cards a good bet for working right out of the box, or can I expect more problems?
Thanks for your input!
I just inherited a hand-me-down computer. The good news is that its fairly new. The bad news is that when I booted from the Ubuntu 8.04 LTS 32-bit x86 Live CD, the video went to pieces once the desktop appeared.
Diagonal stripes and hash were everywhere, there was ghosting, etc. If there is interest in the details, I will post a photo. Reading anything but the simplest text was impossible, and I could barely maneuver the mouse over the shut-down icon.
The motherboard in this system is a model P4M900T-M (V1.0) from ECS (http://www.ecs.com.tw/ECSWebSite/Products/ProductsDetail.aspx?detailid=704&CategoryID=1&DetailName=Specification&MenuID=1&LanID=0). The on-board video, which I was trying to use, is described as "Integrated Chrome9™ HC IGP".
Since Chrome9 video is apparently not widely used, it appears that support for it is limited. I found this discussion (http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=485646&highlight=chrome9) of OpenChrome (https://help.ubuntu.com/community/OpenChrome). Maybe I would be among the roughly 50% of people who reported that OpenChrome solved their problems. HOWEVER, installing and configuring it involves opening a terminal and doing a fair amount of typing. To do that, I would actually need to be able to read the screen!
In this recent discussion (http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1257595&highlight=chrome9), a fellow Ubuntu user says to forget Chrome and just buy another video card. Since I was eventually planning to do this anyway, I was thinking that I might just do that now. I am considering some of the cheaper CUDA-equipped cards from NVidia, as I do a lot of computation. Are NVidia outboard video cards a good bet for working right out of the box, or can I expect more problems?
Thanks for your input!