Geforce GTX 650 on Nadia 64?!

[Cityscape]

Hi all,

I'm very new to Linux Mint. I've used Ubuntu since 2009 although I have not used Linux much in the last year as my iPhone can do a lot my basic stuff (emails etc).

I'm building a new PC and thinking about using an Nvidia Geforce GTX 650 card. How does this card work with Linux Mint or Linux in general? I was planning to get this because a lot o people say that Nvidia works better with Linux. I am planning to use the proprietary drivers because I want the best performance from the card that is possible. Is the proprietary driver very hard to install?

And how is the state of 64 bit Linux btw? I know back when I used to use Linux a lot more the 64 bit versions weren't all the way there yet.

I'm really hoping that someone can give me some advice on graphics cards!

Adam

[xenopeek]

I had a look at the hardware compatibility database, as reported by Linux Mint users, but I couldn't find your specific card there: http://community.linuxmint.com/hardware/search. If the GTX 670 is similar, that is reported to work perfectly: http://community.linuxmint.com/hardware/view/14016.

As for installing the proprietary drivers, that should normally be easy. Open Menu > Preferences > Software Sources and from the Additional Drivers tab install the driver you want (on Linux Mint 14; on Linux Mint 13 you would find Additional Drivers as a standalone program in your menu).

64-bit has been fine for years. I've used it without any problems since 2006. It is especially faster for repetitive mathematical tasks (archiving, encrypting, rendering, transcoding, etc.) but it uses on average up to 30% more memory per task. If you have at least 4 GiB RAM, I'd recommend 64-bit these days.

[Cityscape]

Thanks so much for your reply! Its great to see friendly people around here!

The 670 would be a bit similar, it's also part of the Geforce 600 series.
Would the driver show up under Additional drivers? I have had graphics card on Ubuntu and nothing would show up under the Additional Drivers.

And is the drivers under the Additional Drivers the same as the ones from the Nvidia site?

Thanks for your input on 64 bit bit! I'm going to have an 8-core CPU and 8-16 GB RAM so I'll be running 64 bit. I'm thinking about trying Cinnamon, I read up on it and it looks amazing! I hate GNOME shell and I dislike Unity so I'm so glad Mint has Mate and cinnamon!

If anyone else knows anything about the GeForce GTX 650 on Linux it'd be very helpful!

[xenopeek]

I think it should show up in additional drivers, though perhaps there are cases where it won't. Then the friendly people in Graphics Cards & Monitors section will know what to do, which is probably download the driver from Nvidia site.

The driver you get from the Nvidia site will be the same or a newer version as the driver you get through additional drivers.

[elod]

I have the same problem with Mint 16 Cinnamon 64 bits GTX650:
Main Menu, search for "Driver", start "Driver Manager", the window is empty and it says "No proprietary drivers are in use".
I have another computer with Mint 16 Cinnamon 64 bits and an older Nvidia card (a GTS450) and it shows up fine (nouveau is installed and I have the proprietary driver as an option).
This makes installing the Nvidia proprietary driver for the GTX650 difficult.

[roblm]

elod,

Try adding the PPA xorg-edgers to get the newest Nvidia drivers to display in Driver Manager. Open the Terminal and type:
sudo apt-add-repository ppa:xorg-edgers/ppa && sudo apt-get update

Then open Driver Manager and look for the nvidia-334.21 and 337.19 drivers.