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Fedora 10, Dell GX270 and Nvidia Cards

The on-board Intel graphics simply can't cope with a 1920x1200 desktop and KDE 4.x, but the Dell has a AGP slot. An Nvidia XFX 6200 low-profile card is ordered.

1.

Card

The card is low-profile, but the bracket is not — it has VGA, DVI and TV-out sockets. Order a low-profile bracket (which means VGA is not available --- no problem.)

Physical installation is ok, though the Dell's lid will not close. Xorg probes the card and all is well — sort of. The desktop is much faster, but it does not fit the screen (and cannot be adjusted to fit) and there are some odd effects noticeable on-screen: vertical bands where it looks just as though n-pixel-wide things are stretched over +1 pixels (whcih is consistent with the too-wide screen issue).

2.

Cable

Switching from a VGA cable to a DVI-2-HDMI cable sorts out the bad screen effects.

3.

Nvidia Non-Free Drivers

Fedora does not include the non-free Nvidia drivers — only Xorgs own. Add the RPMFusion repos and: 

  yum install kmod-nvidia xorg-x11-drv-nvidia-libs
which brings a small number of dependencies including 
    livna-config-display

livna-config-display generates an /etc/X11/xorg.conf file: 

# Xorg configuration created by livna-config-display

Section "Files"
        ModulePath   "/usr/lib/xorg/modules/extensions/nvidia"
        ModulePath   "/usr/lib/xorg/modules"
EndSection

Section "ServerFlags"
        Option      "AIGLX" "on"
EndSection

Section "Device"
        Identifier  "Videocard0"
        Driver      "nvidia"
        Option      "AddARGBGLXVisuals" "True"
EndSection

Section "Extensions"
        Option      "Composite" "Enable"
EndSection

Reboot and lsmod presents 

  nvidia                        7223024  46
and the desktop is noticably faster — much faster with KDE 4.x desktop effects enabled and XRender composite. (OpenGL still does not work. . .  )