I'm throwing together a decent box "2.21GHZ Athlon 64, 512mb ddr" for linux experimenting and was wondering which of these cards would be better choice: ATI Radeon 9200 SE 8X 128MB with DVI and TV Out or nVidia FX5500 8X 128MB with DVI and TV Out Both are $34 each. I will be toying around with different distros like Fedora 7, Debian, etc. till I find one I like. I need a agp card that is more widely popular with linux. MSI K8N Neo AMD Athlon 64 3200+ @ 2.21ghz 1GB DDR 3200 nVidia 128mb FX 5200 WD 120gb SE NEC ND-3500AG DVD R/RW

Considering you won't be gaming on the Linux box .... you don't need anything more than basic display & even integrated video can deliver that.

The computer has no on board or integrated video, just an agp slot. The only video cards I have lying around are old 2-4mb pci & 2x agp. I don't mind buying a cheap card for this build I would like one that works well with linux though. The only games I may play would be the ones that come bundled with linux. MSI K8N Neo AMD Athlon 64 3200+ @ 2.21ghz 1GB DDR 3200 nVidia 128mb FX 5200 WD 120gb SE NEC ND-3500AG DVD R/RW

Both ATI and nvidia graphics adapters are well supported in Linux. Based on your post both adapters appear to be equally equipped and priced. Compare their reported capabilities. Check to learn if there is a difference in the quality of the chip sets. If both still appear equal, make a subjective choice. If I had to make the choice, I would choose nvidia if for no other reason than nvidia adapters worked well in Linux back as far as the TNT cards (meaning nvidia has supported Linux for a long time). HTH, Ernie Registered Linux User 247790 ICQ 41060744

Select the best performer out of those old PCI & AGP cards that you have laying around & use it. My expectation will be on the 2x AGP card ... it ought to be more than adequate enough for the test machine.

Of the two cards listed, the FX5500 has the better performance.

I would recommend the 5500 card too. At this moment the nvidia card drivers are bit more stable. There are some cool games for Linux especially some online FPS games. So I would get the best nvidia card you can for the money you want to spend. A nvidia 7600 has good performance and can be had for well under a 100 dollars and would allow you to play Linux games as well as give you overall good performance if using Beryl etc. After using Linux you might decide you like it.