I have a PC that I got from someone else who built their PC and it is finally starting to show its age. Sometimes when I open applications, the frame rate drops.

I think it is using one of these currently, from 2014. https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/geforce/900-series/

I know that gfx cards have to be compatible with your Power Supply, and your PCI-E slot, but not sure what else I should know??

I would like to get something very compatible with Linux, Firefox, and Wayland, with lots of hardware codecs. Intel ARC?

How do you learn all this stuff?

  • olosta@lemmy.world
    6·
    3 days ago

    I’m a bit surprised an Nvidia 9x0 would struggle for web browsing. On a PC this old I would first check other things before swapping the GPU:

    • Is it clean? Physically clean? Restricted air flow can make your CPU throttle down to avoid getting too hot.
    • Is the operating system on an SSD or a spinning disk? I’m sure prices are insane nowadays but a small data SSD just for the OS will dramatically improve performance.
    • How much RAM do you have? Again, prices are not good right now, but 8GiB is the minimum to run a modern desktop+browser.
    • Do you have the proprietary drivers installed? I haven’t touched an Nvidia GPU on Linux in a long time, but I would expect those to be basically mandatory for a smooth experience.

    As for the GPU, if you are not gaming on big modern titles, anything released in the last ten years should be enough. I had a good experience with AMD over this era for out of the box Linux compatibility, but I can’t say much about codecs, I never had issues and never bothered to check.

    Intel is probably good enough also.

    Another thing to consider is maybe your CPU has a built-in GPU, I use low/mid-range Intel CPU from this era without a discrete GPU as an HTPC and it performs fine.

    • sem@piefed.blahaj.zoneOPEnglish
      1·
      2 days ago

      It doesn’t struggle with web browsing per se., just with opening and closing windows mostly. I just experienced it – I open the file browser, the system hangs for a moment or two where I can’t move the mouse. Then the mouse jerks around for a bit. Then the system is smooth again. I looked in System Monitor right after this happened and didn’t see any big spikes in storage, CPU, or memory, so I am assuming GPU.

      It is probably not physically clean. I should address that first.

      It is running on a Samsung SSD 830 series. I tried enabling write cache. I ran into the system stuttering problem (described above) clicking ‘cancel’ on a random dialog.

      I have had a lot of problems with codecs, and video playback being choppy everywhere, which is why I am focused on getting good hardware codecs that are supported under linux.

      The CPU/motherboard definitely does have a built-in iGPU. I think I could try it out with prime-select. Maybe that is worth experimenting.