eMachine upgrade to Gaming PC?

[Videodrome]

Link to my eMachine specs: http://www.cnet.com/products/emachines-el1852g-52w-pentium-e5800-3-2-ghz-3-gb-1-tb-lcd-20/specs/

I recently got some steady work and I've decided to do a budget PC upgrade. Partly for self education in Hardware, but also would like to try gaming on Linux as well as just having a better machine with HDMI.

My eMachine has a 3.2 GHz dual core and I've already upgraded the RAM to 4 GB. I think that may be the memory limit of this board even though this is a 64 bit machine.

http://www.memorystock.com/memory/eMachinesEL1852G52w.html

The main issue I'm now addressing is the low profile form factor and the weak power supply which is only 220 watts. I found a large old eMachine Tower Case at a PC Shop in town and I've transferred the motherboard and everything into it. It was a little weird connecting the new power button on the new old case, but everything is working.

I figure I now have much more room to put in a power supply and video card.

The old Tower did have a 350 watt power supply, but I haven't tested it yet, and it has old style Molex connections while my eMachine parts use SATA power. Wondering if it might be worth getting power adapters to just use this old PSU. Then I could get a midrange video card.

Lastly, I suppose the main question I have is for any recommendations for a video card or brand name that will work with Linux or have minimal issues getting a driver.

I'm currently running Sabayon and there probably won't be any real reason to change distros. I'll likely start out looking for games on Steam, so as long as I have the Steam client and drivers for the video card I should be okay.

 

[Yesyesloud]

I have a spare 7970 with the best aftermarket air cooling system available for it (gelid icy vision). As I upgraded to a 7990 (dual gpu) and my current PSU won't handle three cards, I'm probably selling it. Mint condition, kindly nurtured.

Let me know if you're interested, I'll try to favor the Linux community on this one.

PS: Your cpu may limit the performance of a 7970 a little, but you can keep that card on the long run (it will run games on high/very high for a while). I've never had problems with AMD gpus on desktop pcs running Linux.

 

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I wound up picking up a card. Radeon R7 260x.

A local shop had it and it seemed like a good mid-range card for my budget. I decided to go basic and installed Linux Mint plus the driver from the repos. Powered off, installed the card, and powered up no problem. Now plugged into a HDMI TV.

 

[Yesyesloud]

Good choices.

That card seems nice, it'll probably run fine off a 350W PSU, maybe even overclocked. A 7970 would pull 230W+ due to its massive hardware, I didn't take that into account at first.

Ubuntu-based distributions make gaming easier on linux, everything is well packed for them.

 

[Videodrome]

When I put in the card I installed the package fglrx. So I think I'm basically operating on the FOSS drivers.

Should I keep running that way or attempt to install the drivers from AMD? I've had some trouble with some games like No More Room In Hell or TOME. However, Star Conflict seems to run just fine. If that is just my graphics limitation for this machine and this card, I guess that okay. I'm still happy just getting HDMI and some halfway decent 3D graphics.

 

[Yesyesloud]

Fglrx is proprietary actually, but maybe Mint's default repositories won't provide you with the latest stable version from AMD.

On my laptop, I usually experience better results when installing amd video drivers manually, specially when it comes to *buntus. My desktop machines never suffered from driver issues though, even when installed from default GUIs.

Test those video drivers available on the device driver manager gui, ubuntu distributions tend to ease that sort of stuff. Try fglrx-updates/testing/dev.

Manjaro is another fine option, with lots of caring for driver management. Probably more well polished than *buntus.

Good drivers will make your games perform better.

As to performance itself, you should know that your card is able to max out No More Room In Hell. Your CPU could be the bottleneck, but that game isn't that complex, so I doubt it. Your gpu would definitely benefit from higher cpu clocks though.

Maybe Steam OS can solve the trouble out of the box.

As a last resort, test those games on windows, just for comparison sake.

 

[Videodrome]

Yeah I'm happy the HDMI works, but it seemed like this card should be able to handle more. I wondered if I set it up right. Oh well, could be a good weekend project.

 

[Yesyesloud]

Just make sure you fit that card into the pci-e x16 slot.

Hey, I couldn't quite make out whether the motherboard has a pci-e x16 2.0 slot, maybe it's 1.x, in such case it would cut your gpu bandwidth by half. Let's hope the manufacturer was reasonable.

Anyway... Did you put that 350W PSU into use? Modern video cards demand steady electricity supply, even if they're not so power-hungry.

Good luck with your weekend project by the way. I am also tuning my desktop box.

 

[Videodrome]

Just make sure you fit that card into the pci-e x16 slot.

Hey, I couldn't quite make out whether the motherboard has a pci-e x16 2.0 slot, maybe it's 1.x, in such case it would cut your gpu bandwidth by half. Let's hope the manufacturer was reasonable.

Anyway... Did you put that 350W PSU into use? Modern video cards demand steady electricity supply, even if they're not so power-hungry.

Good luck with your weekend project by the way. I am also tuning my desktop box.

The 350 watt PSU only had old style Molex connections. I shopped around for other options and a friend at a PC Shop sold me a 700 Watt PSU including SATA power connections. So I think the power should be covered.

It's possible the slot is PCI 1.x.

 

[Videodrome]

Okay during the work week, I did a halfassed research job on installing this card and driver. HDMI seemed fine, but had the nagging feeling this install was incomplete.

I started over following good comprehensive directions at this site: http://wiki.cchtml.com/index.php/Main_Page. Credit goes to a Spatry video for pointing me in this direction.

Strangely at first, No More Room in Hell didn't seem much better. The irony is this is because I had previously tuned all the setting way down. I turned the settings back to one's flagged as recommended for my system and there was a vast difference in improvement.

I still think the melee in that game is a little wonky, but I was able to grab guns and get zombie head shots while having no graphics issues and no more choppy video.

I'm am now feeling very satisfied with this whole video upgrade project. 1080p YouTube vids look amazing(watched the HD trailer for MAD MAX). I also tested DOTA2 which didn't even run before but is fine now.

 

[Yesyesloud]

Nice that you managed to install a better, clean driver and felt satisfied with the project overall.

Modern cards misbehave on video settings too much lower than what they can handle on games, specially regarding resolution. Find the sweet spot and you're good.

Your gpu in itself can run all the games you mentioned on maximum video settings smoothly (1080p @ ~60fps).

As your motherboard and cpu probably bottleneck it, it's difficult to check out remaining software limitations to performance, even after driver updates.

Running those games on Steam OS or Windows might rule out further performance doubts anyway.