New Build-Advice needed

[RCND]

Howdy All:
Doing a new build. I am going to use an ASRock 990FX Extreme4 AM3+ AMD 990FX SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.0 ATX AMD Motherboard.

This board is my only option as it has both IDE and Floppy connectors in a FX 990 chipset board, I have a lot of magnetic media that needs to be put on optical.

I am currently using an AMD X4 945 CPU. Looking to use an AMD FX-8120 Zambezi 3.1GHz Socket AM3+ CPU. This may be my last build (Desktops are supposed to become obsolete, this maybe prophecy, I am an oldtime SW listener and have seen this hobby die off) and I would like it to be a "HOTROD".

I plan to use a Western Digital Caviar Black WD1002FAEX 1TB 7200 RPM 64MB Cache SATA 6.0Gb/s 3.5" Internal Hard Drive.

I plan to use G.SKILL Ripjaws X Series 8GB (2 x 4GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1600 (PC3 12800) Desktop Memory Model F3-12800CL8D-8GBXM memmory.

Gaming is not something I do, but have Grandchildren and would like to explore this option for myself.

Of course I plan on using Mint 13, really like Cinnamon but seems to be not quite ready. Tried Mate on a Samsung laptop but it had crashes after leaving it over a weekend. This was several weeks ago, upgrades may have changed thing.

OK, those are my current choices, any and all comments are welcome and appreciated.

Now to my dilemma, I am trying too decide what video card too use. First choice is a GeForce GTX 550 Ti (Fermi) 2GB 192-bit GDDR5 PCI Express 2.0.

NVIDIA seemed to be the only choice when using Linux but now I read that the NVIDIA drivers are causing the Flash player crashes that myself and others have been experiencing lately.

My second choice is a Radeon 6000 series card but I have always read that Radeon did not "play nice" with Linux.

I really need some advice and recommendations here, I want to place my order, but don't want to screw the pooch.

Later.
Robert

[sagirfahmid3]

GTX 550Ti is a great choice IMO. I recommended that card to my friend a month ago and he couldn't be happier--it plays Skyrim maxed out (I believe he has a 1920x1080 monitor), Crysis 2 on highest settings, and most of the high-spec games with no sweat. Also, it overclocks quite a bit on stock voltage so that's a plus. I'm getting the card myself coming January (when its my birthday), but at the moment I have a GT430 ($50) which can comfortably run Crysis 2 at 1440x900 25-30FPS thanks to my quadcore AMD Athlon II X4 600e 2.2GHz, no antialiasing enabled (who needs it anyways). Did I mention NVidia cards have great compatibility with Linux, not to mention ease of use? the driver installation is so easy, a caveman could do it. Also, you can SLI 2 GTX 550Ti's and they would outperform a GTX560Ti for a lower price (GTX 550Ti is like $120, GTX560Ti is $255-$260). I am not sure if SLI in Linux works perfectly though--I think you can only use one gpu in Linux.

[RCND]

Howdy sagirfahmid3:

Thanks for the quick reply. the GTX 550Ti I am looking at has 2 Gig memory. Your enthusiasm has me convinced my first choice is right.

My only concern is that for Linux 13, the Nvidea cards seem to have problems with the current Flash player.

Later.
Robert

[sagirfahmid3]

That's odd. Did you try the Flash in Opera or Chrome and see if they also crashed?

[RCND]

Howdy: sagirfahmid3

Yes the problem showed up in Opera, I do not use Chrome. However Opera has recently upgraded so maybe the crashing is gone.

These are minimal issues, It is the NVIDIA probs that I am reading about that have me concerned.

Later, Thanks
Robert

[Oscar799]

Moved here by moderator

[sagirfahmid3]

Does it also happen in other distros? I use Debian Squeeze and have no problems with Flash, using the GT430.