What graphics card is actually needed?

[Dizzy611]

I read the Ubuntu Wiki article about Steam on Linux and came out more confused than I was coming in. I went on the #ubuntu-steam channel on freenode and was met with a channel with no ops around and nobody actually talking about anything. So I come to you, Steam Discussion Forums, to ask my question.

The wiki article says a minimum of an "nVidia series 6 or AMD series 5" card. That... has absolutely no meaning to me. There are two nVidia card series with a "6" at the front of them, and at least 3 if not more AMD/ATi card series that could be considered "5".

On the ATi/AMD side, we have the RV520 chip (used in the X1300-X1950) which wouldn't actually be known as the "series 5" to anyone other than a developer, the X800-X900 which were actually the 5th radeon cards released in total, and the HD5000 which would seem a rather high requirement.

On the nVidia side, we have the GeForce 6xxx series and the GeForce GT/GTX 6xx series. The former doesn't work for the contents of the article because it suggests installing the experimental 310.xx drivers, which don't work on the GeForce 6xxx (or 7xxx for that matter), and the latter doesn't work because that would be an astronomically high minimum requirement for just running steam.

So, yeah. What? What exactly is meant there? What are the *actual* minimum requirements, in terms of actual graphics card models?

[TwinGeek Cianta]

8 series GT+ or 550+ will be more than enough for the current games. The performance of openGL, at least on nVidia cards, is the same if not better than DX.

[Dizzy611]

Got a response on #ubuntu-steam finally, copying here for anyone else curious

03:08 < Plagman> Insidious: It's Geforce 6 and above
03:08 < Plagman> so geforce 6000, 7000, 8000. 9000. GTX 200, 300, etc
03:08 < Plagman> are all good
03:08 < Insidious> Okay.
03:08 < Plagman> and for AMD I suspect it's HD5xxx and above
03:09 < Plagman> because under that it's only their legacy driver that's
supported
03:09 < Insidious> Thats what I figured. That should probably be clarified and
a note added saying not to do the 310.xx drivers on the
6000/7000s as 310.xx is slowly phasing out support for those
models.

Thanks Plagman.

[s.plisskin [Linux Decker]]

I'm running a GeForce GTX 560 TI with the 313.18 drivers. Works fine without any troubles here.

[FrostedSaber]

Hi Dagoth Ur, I know you're looking for the absolute minimum graphic card requirements. By the 'nVidia series 6', the wiki may have been referring to the GeForce 6 series, which came out in 2004 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geforce#Generations). Anyway, in practice, maybe some examples of lower power/older cards will help you also. In my machine I've got an nVidia GT 240 1GB GDDR5 (from 2009), using the 310 beta drivers. Games run well, with Team Fortress 2 and Killing Floor on medium-high settings for a nice balance between graphics, frame rate, heat and fan noise. It is also a lower power card, using no extra power source other than the PCI-e slot. I can imagine my PC's onboard GeForce 6150 LE (part of the GeForce 6 series) would be just on the very bottom end of nVidia's new driver support. What do you think? Hope this helps.

[sounds like a wooosh]

I currently have only a laptop with an Mobile Intel GM45 Express Chipset.

I would say that most games work fine with it.

Some do not! – One example from the Linux native games list: I can not use Trine2 sadly. - Trine1 works under Linux with wine (a bit slow though, but playable).

[Tronic]

AMD radeon hd 6650m works perfectly :)

[Cool Chulainn]

I'm running ATI mobility radeon hd 4200 (legacy driver). The Steam client runs perfectly without a hitch. Most games run fine (can't run TF2, a well-known and well-worn issue), Trine 2 is a little laggy as well as Serious Sam 3. As long as I put my games on the lowest settings, I get decent enough frame rates and don't really mind the cut in quality for most games. I'm going to buy myself a powerful notebook in two years when I finish grad school though with a top-quality nvidia card.

[Artemis3]

The Nvidia 460 works perfectly with many games (including wine), some equivalent such as 560 o 660 should do even better. The middle number is very important, a 520 is crap compared to the 460, for example.

[Tele42]

It should be noted that the ATi Catalyst 13.1 for legacy driver has made Radeon HD 2000-4000 viable, this is ignoring the actual capabilities of the individual card model.