Low-Profile Graphics Cards?

thebrix asks: "I've acquired a Dell OptiPlex GX150. It's a pleasant machine to use - small, quiet and uses only 145 watts at full tilt with my flat panel - but its Achilles heel is the feeble i815 on-board graphics which steals RAM from main memory and plasters black bars onto my KDE desktop at inconvenient moments. There's a 4xAGP slot, but it's low-profile because of the small chassis and finding a low-profile graphics card is proving difficult because, invariably, manufacturers are more interested in listing whizzo features than how big the card is. So far, the Matrox G550 Dual DVI is the only card I've come across which definitely fits. Does anyone know of others?"

Comments

Try the Asus V7100 Pro

[Mifflesticks]

Check out http://navasgrp.home.att.net/tech/low_profile_vide o.htm

He says that the Asus V7100 Pro (http://www.asus.com.tw/vga/agpv7100pro/overview.h tm) will work (he has even more stringent requirements than you, it seems)

Stick with the G550

[brejc8]

I say stick with the G550. I have one in the office and its very vice with two screens.
By the way The VGA/DVI version is low profile too.

Re:Stick with the G550

[brejc8]

The best thing was it came with linux software on CD.

NLX vs ATX card styles

[dpilot]

I believe I may have run into this, before.

You may want to look for cards that advertise 'NLX' compatibility. The NLX I/O shield is half as high and twice a wide as conventional card IO shields. (also known as ATX, perhaps overloading the motherboard acronym) A few years back I installed a G400 in a system at work to replace the planar video, and it came with an NLX shield in the box. A few moments to change shields, and it was in and running.

Had a similar problem with an i810 card

[Dave114]

Someone else discovered that adding Option "XaaNoOffscreenPixmaps" "Yes" to your video card config in xf86 v.4 would solve that problem. Maybe it'll also solve your i815 problem.