On 06/25/13 00:12, aka@alphanet.ch wrote:
1. Your budget.<= ~$1502. What applications you plan to run.Some office applications, no games, max HD video. I actually have problems with fast forward (up to a frozen picture...)3. How many monitor(s) you have (or will buy) and their interfaces, resolution(s), color depth(s), and refresh rate(s).I have 2 ; a newer (hdmi, dvi, vga) and an old one (no hdmi, vga is of course sure, and perheaps a dvi (need to check, I'm not at home)).4. Your preference for open-source vs. proprietary drivers.I prefer open source, it's is easier to install/remove. I never understood how to remove a driver installed by # sh something.run5. How much effort you are willing to put into keeping the video device driver(s) current.If I can only "apt-get upgrade", I will not be hurted :) (And I am quite sure to take an AMD CPU)
It sounds like a current CPU with integrated video is what you want.While there are video cards available for under $150, it will be a challenge to find a CPU, motherboard, and memory combination at that price.
My Intel i7-2600S CPU (with Intel HD Graphics 2000) and Intel DQ67SW motherboard are supported by Debian Wheezy; updates are as easy as "apt-get update" and "apt-get upgrade". Setting video modes (including dual head) is a matter of editing /etc/X11/xorg.conf. It's my understanding that Intel has employees developing and releasing open-source drivers for Intel products.
I have an older machine with motherboard NVIDIA graphics. Building and installing the NVIDIA proprietary driver wasn't too hard, but I have experience with Linux kernel and embedded systems programming. The kicker was keeping the video driver current/ built/ rebuilt as it and the Linux kernel evolved. Typically, I'd run the machine until it barfed, wipe it, and start over again. Most recently, I went with the open-source/ reverse-engineered NVIDIA driver (nouveau). It auto-detects one monitor just fine, but locks up if /etc/X11/xorg.conf is present.
David