Basic video card for Minecraft

[mwshook]

Short version:
I want suggestions for a graphics card with:
1. Plug-and-play compatibility with LM 19.x
2. Can play Minecraft full-screen at 1440x900 with a good playable framerate.
3. Costs less than $50 used

Long version:
In 2010, I assembled a desktop computer, installed Linux and have been using it for various purposes since then, mostly as a server. It's a file server, print server, Plex Server. I use x2go to access Chromium from work. Pretty low-demand stuff.

For Christmas I got Minecraft for my kid and installed it on that computer. It runs OK but the framerate gets kind of rough, especially at full screen. For graphics it is using the integrated AMD unit on the motherboard. (I copied and pasted my inxi below). I'm assuming a real graphics card would help this. It can't really run full screen 1080p movies well either, but I don't really use it for that. I'm not planning on using this for any other games and don't want to spend more than $100. Less than $50 would be ideal. I haven't shopped for a graphics card for well over 10 years and I know a lot has changed since then.

Obviously Mint compatibility is the highest priority. The built-in AMD unit doesn't need any driver configuration, so I hope an AMD card would be the same. The slot is "PCI-E 2.0 x16." I don't want anything that needs an extra power connector because my 8-year-old PSU probably doesn't have it. There's not a ton of room in my case, so an extra long card might be hard to squeeze in. A double-wide card probably wouldn't be a problem.

Something 5 years old would probably be a serious upgrade. Any suggestions?

ETA:
I looked through this sticky thread about AMD GPUs. If I'm reading right, the compatible cards listed are newer models that can use a proprietary AMD driver. My APU runs Minecraft with the open source driver without problems (other than jerkiness/low framerate). I'm assuming the proprietary driver is mostly used on newer GPUs with newer games.

I'm guessing an older used AMD card with 1-2GB of RAM off Ebay using the open source driver would be good. But that's just a guess so I figured I would ask here first. I'm wary about adding a bunch of driver headaches to my functional system.

Code: Select all

System:
  Host: zombiebox Kernel: 4.15.0-43-generic x86_64 bits: 64 Desktop: N/A 
  Distro: Linux Mint 19.1 Tessa 
Machine:
  Type: Desktop System: Gigabyte product: GA-MA785GM-US2H v: N/A 
  serial: <filter> 
  Mobo: Gigabyte model: GA-MA785GM-US2H v: x.x serial: <filter> BIOS: Award 
  v: F11 date: 05/17/2010 
CPU:
  Topology: Dual Core model: AMD Phenom II X2 555 bits: 64 type: MCP 
  L2 cache: 1024 KiB 
  Speed: 3214 MHz min/max: N/A Core speeds (MHz): 1: 3214 2: 3214 
Graphics:
  Device-1: AMD RS880 [Radeon HD 4200] driver: radeon v: kernel 
  Display: server: X.Org 7.0.0 driver: ati,radeon 
  unloaded: fbdev,modesetting,vesa resolution: 1920x1080~60Hz 
  OpenGL: renderer: llvmpipe (LLVM 6.0 128 bits) v: 3.0 Mesa 18.0.5 
Audio:
  Device-1: AMD SBx00 Azalia driver: snd_hda_intel 
  Device-2: AMD RS880 HDMI Audio [Radeon HD 4200 Series] 
  driver: snd_hda_intel 
  Sound Server: ALSA v: k4.15.0-43-generic 
Network:
  Device-1: Broadcom Limited BCM4352 802.11ac Wireless Network Adapter 
  driver: wl 
  IF: wlp3s0 state: down mac: <filter> 
  Device-2: Realtek RTL8111/8168/8411 PCI Express Gigabit Ethernet 
  driver: r8169 
  IF: enp4s0 state: up speed: 1000 Mbps duplex: full mac: <filter> 
Drives:
  Local Storage: total: 4.70 TiB used: 2.02 TiB (42.9%) 
  ID-1: /dev/sda type: USB vendor: HGST (Hitachi) model: HUS724030ALE640 
  size: 2.73 TiB 
  ID-2: /dev/sdb vendor: Samsung model: HD204UI size: 1.82 TiB 
  ID-3: /dev/sdc vendor: Corsair model: CSSD-V32GB2 size: 29.82 GiB 
  ID-4: /dev/sdd model: SPCC Solid State Disk size: 111.79 GiB 
  ID-5: /dev/sde type: USB vendor: Patriot model: Memory size: 14.91 GiB 
Partition:
  ID-1: / size: 102.12 GiB used: 33.50 GiB (32.8%) fs: ext4 dev: /dev/dm-0 
  ID-2: /home size: 29.22 GiB used: 9.79 GiB (33.5%) fs: ext4 dev: /dev/sdc1 
  ID-3: swap-1 size: 7.50 GiB used: 1012.2 MiB (13.2%) fs: swap 
  dev: /dev/dm-1 
Sensors:
  System Temperatures: cpu: 34.0 C mobo: N/A 
  Fan Speeds (RPM): N/A 
Info:
  Processes: 303 Uptime: 4d 11h 20m Memory: 7.29 GiB used: 5.43 GiB (74.4%) 
  Shell: fish inxi: 3.0.27

[Hoser Rob]

Something 5 years old may be a serious upgrade but it'll also be going into legacy pretty soon, even with Nvidia, which has the best Linux support. AMD's is, ahem, not so great. Going into legacy means not only poor performance but bugs that are not going to get fixed.

Bleeding edge hardware isn't what I'd choose for Linux either because the driver support is slower.

What I'd suggest is one of those discount chains/whatever that sell last year's model at a discount. Get the cheapest Nvidia card you can get there.

[mwshook]

That's good food for thought. Is this this Nvidia GT 1030 card along the lines you were describing? It looks like it's of the previous generation, the cheapest model, released in 2016. Hopefully I could find something cheaper used. Or get the newest sub-$50 thing I can find.

I had been under the impression that AMD support under Linux was better, but I realized I wasn't basing this on anything concrete. My current desktop's integrated AMD graphics ran Ubuntu/Mint without a problem, which was a huge step up from my previous experiences. The AMD chip works for me! AMD must be awesome! But I had never asked that chip to do very much until now. Like I said, it can't play a 1080p h264 file well.

I hadn't thought much about legacy support of older components. Support for old junk on Linux has always been excellent for me, but I guess in this case support is coming from Nvidia. One of the benefits of Linux, I have always used a computer until the parts broke down. Windows and Mac machines seem to be used until the OS becomes too bloated to run on the older generation of hardware.

On an unrelated note, one of my Mac laptops stopped getting security updates; that hardware was no longer supported. So when I boot it, it starts scanning ports and trying attack the other machines on the network. The known vulnerability won't get patched, so the laptop is worse than unusable. I need to get around to installing Mint/xfce on it.

[mwshook]

We discussed something 5-years-old or 1-year-old. In order to hit my $50 price point, I split the difference and got a new 3-year-old card. I would have only saved $10-15 by buying used and I had a gift card for Newegg. EVGA GeForce GT 710.

I thought a lot about my upgrade path for this machine and this video card is probably the end of the line. The processor and RAM are maxed out. It's never going to run something more complex than Minecraft, no matter what card I put in it. I thought about spending more on a newer card and putting it on whatever my next motherboard is. But I can't predict when that will be or how good the integrated graphics would be at that point. I just didn't feel like spending more than $50 to run a $27 game.

After I get it installed, I will post with an update on my results.

[mwshook]

I'd like to give an update after upgrading my graphics card.

I bought an EVGA/Nvidia GT 710 for $45, new. Configuring it entailed going to Administration>Driver Manager, clicking on the Nvidia driver and restarting.
Framerate went from 10-20 with the integrated graphics to a much more playable 30-50fps. I was hoping for a little better, but it is a pretty cheap card.

[Chrisj01]

Bit late, but an AMD RX 460 used is probably around $50-$60 and would give much much better performance than that card you bought. Also works great with the open source AMDGPU drivers.