Graphic card on Linux Mint

[Joe Vale]

I am using AMD A6 6400K on Asus A88XM-A Motherboard, running Linux Mint. Please suggest me a descend graphic which could play 4K videos.

 

[AskTJ]

Why the duplicate thread. Anyway, for 4K output, a GT1030 will work fine. What's your budget? Linux doesn't have much support for games so you'll only get half developed open source games, not triple A titles.

[pipnina]

34 minutes ago, Joe Vale said:

I am using AMD A6 6400K on Asus A88XM-A Motherboard, running Linux Mint. Please suggest me a descend graphic which could play 4K videos.

 

I would ideally stay away from Nvidia cards when using Linux. They aren't bad, but they will annoy you and require maintenance (and sometimes cause serious headaches).

I suggest an AMD card, since the drivers are open source and part of the kernel. This means the drivers are installed automatically and you don't have to do anything - it just works.

Just find a card in the R500 series that matches your budget, I believe all of them should handle 4k output and a higher end 500 series will play games well enough at 1080p.

24 minutes ago, tj_420 said:

Linux doesn't have much support for games so you'll only get half developed open source games, not triple A titles.

"Half developed open source games" Never encountered one as a Linux gamer myself. More than half my games library supports Linux (and I've been buying windows-only titles as well as Linux titles). This includes games such as: Stellaris, Crusader Kings 2, Dirt Rally, Kerbal Space Program, DotA2, CS:GO, Factorio and several others. A fair few windows games these days run through Wine as well so I get by on that too.

 

If you define "Triple A" as EA, Ubisoft and Activision/Blizzard, then of course there's "no Linux support for AAA games" outside of that bubble however there is much more support for the platform than non-users tend to think. And it's getting better.

[Bananasplit_00]

AMD cards have less issues with drivers, but NVIDIA ones work fine from my experience(though im not a massive user of Linux in general seeing as none of the games i play run on it).

[Wild Penquin]

Hi Joe,

 

Haven't played a lot of 4K content since I don't own a 4K display, but periodically checking things on the matter since I've considered investing in a 4K video projector at some time.

 

If the only need is 4K video playback, I'd buy a processor with Intel IGPs since they are adequate, if I was starting from scratch. But you already have a CPU! I think chances are high your AMD A6 6400Ks IGP (HD 8470D) might already be sufficient. Just make sure you are using GPU HW for video decoding!

 

I tried with a short Google search to confirm what kind of GPU is needed these days for 4K video decoding and found surprisingly little information, and couldn't even find any confirmation your IGP can cut it. Perhaps  4K video hasn't penetrated that much into the use, or maybe even the crappiest GPUs can do it these days. I don't know, but since you already have the CPU, it never hurts to test (if you do not need a dedicated GPU for other needs).

 

Which brings as to a second question: What are your other needs (if any)? Any decent graphics card, AMD or NVidia should be able to do the job. Even older generation NVidia cards should be sufficient for this job (and probably even AMD). But if you are not gaming, better stick with AMD (or Intel, if the make dedicated GPUs).

[Joe Vale]

16 hours ago, Wild Penquin said:

Hi Joe,

 

Haven't played a lot of 4K content since I don't own a 4K display, but periodically checking things on the matter since I've considered investing in a 4K video projector at some time.

 

If the only need is 4K video playback, I'd buy a processor with Intel IGPs since they are adequate, if I was starting from scratch. But you already have a CPU! I think chances are high your AMD A6 6400Ks IGP (HD 8470D) might already be sufficient. Just make sure you are using GPU HW for video decoding!

 

I tried with a short Google search to confirm what kind of GPU is needed these days for 4K video decoding and found surprisingly little information, and couldn't even find any confirmation your IGP can cut it. Perhaps  4K video hasn't penetrated that much into the use, or maybe even the crappiest GPUs can do it these days. I don't know, but since you already have the CPU, it never hurts to test (if you do not need a dedicated GPU for other needs).

 

Which brings as to a second question: What are your other needs (if any)? Any decent graphics card, AMD or NVidia should be able to do the job. Even older generation NVidia cards should be sufficient for this job (and probably even AMD). But if you are not gaming, better stick with AMD (or Intel, if the make dedicated GPUs).

Thank you for helping me. I don't play games, I mostly use my PC to play videos and surf the web. I tried to play 4K videos several times, but I couldn't. 

[LienusLateTips]

6 minutes ago, Joe Vale said:

Thank you for helping me. I don't play games, I mostly use my PC to play videos and surf the web. I tried to play 4K videos several times, but I couldn't. 

Then get a cheap card such as the RX 550.

[Joe Vale]

16 hours ago, Bananasplit_00 said:

AMD cards have less issues with drivers, but NVIDIA ones work fine from my experience(though im not a massive user of Linux in general seeing as none of the games i play run on it).

Thank you Bananasplit_00.

[Joe Vale]

17 hours ago, pipnina said:

I would ideally stay away from Nvidia cards when using Linux. They aren't bad, but they will annoy you and require maintenance (and sometimes cause serious headaches).

I suggest an AMD card, since the drivers are open source and part of the kernel. This means the drivers are installed automatically and you don't have to do anything - it just works.

Just find a card in the R500 series that matches your budget, I believe all of them should handle 4k output and a higher end 500 series will play games well enough at 1080p.

"Half developed open source games" Never encountered one as a Linux gamer myself. More than half my games library supports Linux (and I've been buying windows-only titles as well as Linux titles). This includes games such as: Stellaris, Crusader Kings 2, Dirt Rally, Kerbal Space Program, DotA2, CS:GO, Factorio and several others. A fair few windows games these days run through Wine as well so I get by on that too.

 

If you define "Triple A" as EA, Ubisoft and Activision/Blizzard, then of course there's "no Linux support for AAA games" outside of that bubble however there is much more support for the platform than non-users tend to think. And it's getting better.

Thank you very much, I will surely look for an AMD card. 

[Wild Penquin]

4 hours ago, Joe Vale said:

Thank you for helping me. I don't play games, I mostly use my PC to play videos and surf the web. I tried to play 4K videos several times, but I couldn't. 

How / with what program did you try to play the video?

 

I really recommend you check that you have HW acceleration on before barging into buying a graphics card. If you don't, buying a graphics card will not help at all since your CPU is still trying to do the decoding, which it (most probably) can not, and might even be redundant.

 

I found out there is an utility called vdpauinfo. You might check it's output (and post it here if you wish); you probably need to first install it (apt-get install vdpauinfo).

[Wild Penquin]

After peacing together some information, it seems that that HD8470D can support UVD3.1, which is not enought to decode 4K video (at least not on all formats). Never hurts to give it a shot, but after that it's a good idea to follow JDE's advice :-)

 

Some information for the curious:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unified_Video_Decoder#UVD_3

[pipnina]

Also be aware that chrome and firefox may not have GPU accelerated rendering enabled by default on Linux. In many or most cases yo can enable it.

https://askubuntu.com/questions/491750/force-enable-hardware-acceleration-in-firefox