I am going to buy a graphics card for my computer (heh, what else would it be for?). I run Mepis Linux andhave no AGP or PCI-E slots. I've found the following link and would like advice about it:

This is it
1.) It says it can cope with OpenGL for Windows. Does that mean it can cope with OpenGL or only OpenGL on windows?
2.) Is it actually a PCI card or is it a mistake and it's actually PCI-E?

Also, any other recommendations of a cheap (<£40) graphics card that is PCI and OpenGL? Preferably ATI as I don't like NVidia after the driver issues.

EDIT:
I know it's out of stock, but I can just type the name into eBay.

First; whether or not a card can do OpenGL is not inherent to the card, but depends on whether or not there is a suitabl OpenGL implementation. And of course, a better card can do more things in hardware, thus the opengl implementation will be faster and offer more features.
Then; about the PCI:

I take that to mean a regular PCI slot, according to at least the PCI 2.0 specs. IIRC, this means that it should feature things like bus mastering. Without that, you won't get any decent performance anyway. You don't mis-type PCI-E as PCI twice in one page.
Finally, the linux thing: for all I know, nvidia tend to have the best linux support, and due to their "one-driver-fits-all" approach, my guess would be that this one would run fine under linux. No hands-on experience though. I suggest that you look for linux drivers for any card you intend to buy first. The fact that they put "OpenGL for windows" on the box probably means that the card ships with windows drivers only, so it doesn't have generic OpenGL support on other platforms out-of-the-box.

I see.

A normal PCI slot has that, yeah?

There is only one ATI driver too. I just thought there was some issue to do with NVidia refusing to co-operate with FOSS, while ATI were fine with it. I dunno...

EDIT:
Forget the manufacturer thing.

Yes. Unless it's antique. Or rather, unless the BIOS is antique (Pentium-1 era).

Frankly: Neither do I. I'm not a linux expert at all, so I wouldn't know. All I know is that both the nvidia cards I have (GeForce Go on one laptop, GeForce Ti4200 AGP 4x on my desktop) as well as the ATi mobilesomething on the other laptop work fine with knoppix and debian (provided you don't set anything higher than 1280x1024; at 1600x1200 somehow x refuses to work properly).

I use 1600*1200 at the moment, but I'm not too bothered. I have a Celeron so I should be OK, and neither the board nor the BIOS are antique (about December 05).

EDIT:
I just ordered one off eBay so we'll see what happens. If it don't work it's your fault (Only kidding)

Wait, you're going with ATI for OpenGL conformance?? Did I miss something?

Umm, ok. If you say so.

Well you guys do have that exploit in your binary linux driver....

Wasn't it fixed in the latest 9xxx beta series?

Btw, I just booted up with 9626 drivers. Time to test AIGLX

Yeah, except it was fixed months ago, and it's the only time anyone found a root exploit in our drivers, unlike (say) the Linux Kernel.

Avoid ATi like the plague, especially if you want to run it on Linux.

And that is a regular PCI card. If it were PCI-E, it would say 16x, and it would be a LOT better of a card. Good (read: newer top of the line) cards just don't come on PCI (even AGP) anymore.

I second BAF. Avoid ATi, even if you were using Windows.

thirded

Let us know. I don't want to waste a week if it turns out it doesn't work.

I can't believe you going for an ATI card... they are pants... and linux support for these cards is dodgy to say the least, NVIDIA support rules on Linux, I have never had much trouble setting up my Gefore440MX and 6600GT on linux the driver installers make it a doddle and make it easy to upgrade or remove them from the system.

I have never liked ATI... cheap nasty cards.

+ can't believe you don't have at least an agp port... man your machine must be ancient.

Asam:-/

Did you even read the thread?
I am actually going for an NVidia card and my machine is December 05 - it was the cheapest available.

Glad to hear that

Theres two. In both senses.

Theres a Windows Radeon driver, and theres the Linux fglrx driver.

Also, theres two linux ATI drivers, the fglrx binary drivers, and the open source r300 radeon driver thats a part of the xorg and mesa projects.

The reason theres any sort of ATI driver is ATI will open up the specs to the basic bits of its cards, after they are obsolete. Like the mach and rage cards, and I believe they have specs for cards up to and including the radeon 9200 (which is really a 8xxx based card).

Nvidia however, has never and likely will never release any kind of specs for any of its hardware. At least thats the feeling I've had.

And yeah, for linux, stick with an nvidia card till ATI starts putting more effort into their drivers. Its a shame really, seems like theres one person on the entire fglrx "Team".

I personally wouldn't have a single issue with the fglrx drivers if it weren't for them not being able to handle dual display and 3d rendering properly. I've even put in a bug for it, and a few other things, and so far, everything else was fixed. Now its just the "off set" rendering, and the bit of corruption I get when my mouse hovers just below the bottom of my smaller screen. well at least the corruption goes away, it follows the mouse.

edit,

Oh, and the new x10k radeon's all no longer have 2D hardware it seems. They've totally replaced it with the 3D hardware and some emulation.

Isn't the Linux driver for ATi separate from Windows? AFAIK (correct me if I'm wrong) nVidia's Linux driver is based on the same code as Windows (the same binary communication driver stuff, with different code to connect to the kernel depending on if you are on Linux/Windows/etc).

I've been turning more to NVidia lately

I loved ATi, but these days they're falling short of my expectations now. Price/Performance is not nearly as good as it use to be in the 9XXX days and drivers are starting to become an issue (where they never were for me in the 9XXX/8XXX days).

NVidia has always had usability issues for me along with driver problems. From the 4600 Ti and up to their current models. Their control panel is a nightmare. However, ATi now suffers from the exact same problem. I sooooo miss ATi's classic control panel

As for linux, I've never used it for games.

I had you figured for a Voodoo person Derezo.

I just said that

NVidia swallowed up 3DFX, which is why all of NVs cards started running hot and using up kilowatts of power.

Thomas, by 'one driver', I meant there is not a different driver for each card. One driver for all card is what I should have said. No matter what driver you use the same one will (should?) work for all ATI cards. Any more nitpicking?

Oh, I don't think either of nvidia's or ATI's drivers qualify under that deffinition anymore. ATI has dropped all pre 9000 (including 9200) cards from their main drivers iirc. (at least they have for linux/fglrx)

And no, it seems nvidia has 4 different driver sets for their various cards.