Old Video Card Compatibility

[gd]

Hello,

I'm building a server and as a result I don't care at all about the graphics subsystem. I have an old PCI card lying around and I intend to use it as the graphics adapter of an nforce 3 based system. Do you think I might run into compatibility issues? The card (while originally used in a Pentium MMX box) is currently happily residing in a Athlon Slot A based system.

I could, of course, get a VIA motherboard with intergrated graphics at about the same price as the nvidia board, but I somehow feel the nvidia one would be more stable (although I have never been let down by a VIA based solution)

Any suggestions?
Thanks in advance,
GD

 

[slackwarelinux]

Yeah, I don't see any reason why it would not work. I have never read about PCI graphics cards not working in recent motherboards, and I have read about people using them for second or third monitors.

Going with a dedicated graphics card seems to be the better option. You already know it works due to testing it on the MMX box (meaning it has worked for some time now ), and going with dedicated graphics will not tie up any RAM.

EDIT: googling confirms that PCI graphics cards do work on NForce 3 motherboards.

 

[redbeard1]

I have seen old and slow video cards, in fast systems, cause odd issues, the most common being freezing up. Having them run a small screen size and lower colors, minimized most of the issues. In a couple of cases, we had to find newer cards.

 

[ViRGE]

:thumbsup:

 

[gd]

Thanks for replying everyone,

The box will be running gentoo, and since it will be used as a server I only need a basic non-framebuffer console... Do you think this might raise issues as well?

 

[Leper Messiah]

It'll work, but for any type of graphically intensive task, it will blow bawls. For a console, it'll work fine.

 

[slackwarelinux]

What type of server?

If it is going to be a VNC server, then you would be using the video card.
If it is a FTP/SSH/HTTP/Samba/[insert favorite server] you should be fine.

 

[gd]

nah, it won't be doing any graphics intensive task... just bind/dhcp/samba/iptables/wifiAP/ntp/ssh/cups/apache/ldap and perhaps, kerberos if I ever get it to work...

So I suppose it will be alright...
Thanks again,
George