Graphics Card recommendation?

[raro]

after good experience with Mint 18.1 on my laptop it's just a matter of time until I will boot out win10 from my desktop computer as well. 

 

I like a two (or better three.... ) monitor setup, mostly for office work. No gaming whatsoever. 

 

The onboard card is getting quite slow once two monitors are connected, so I'm thinking of getting me a graphics card that can handle this job. What affordable recommendations that work under Linux without writing a new driver by myself do you guys have? 

[RKASA]

Most any of the new cards 500 > series or the AMD type should be plug and play.  I have some older cards that have lost support in the 200 < series but even they can be made to work by downloading the older support package from repo.   You should not really have any problem installing a new card at all.  Worse case you might have to tell it to look at hardware during boot one time first time - the forum should have an instruction on that - never had to do it yet in mint 18 KDE5.  Someone on Mint forum should know the out of box range of cards supported for your desktop environ of choice.

[JSixpack]

Nvidia has better Linux support than AMD. Nvidia all the way.

[RichCor]

Since this isn't for gaming, there are also USB-based graphics adapters to connect HDMI displays, or even USB-driven display monitors that have the USB interface built-in.

 

DisplayLink Adapter

 

How to Add an Extra Monitor to Your Laptop

HowToGeek | Jason Fitzpatrick | 2014-08-07

 

Caveat:

Note: If you’re shopping for a USB adapter we strongly recommend really poring over the reviews and comments for the model you’re looking at. Many highly ranked adapters, for example, have poor driver support for the latest OS releases. A three year old adapter with hundreds of 4 star reviews left by Windows 7 users isn’t much good to you on Windows 8.1 if the manufacturer hasn’t updated the drivers.

 

 

[dave_boo]

A second vote for Nvidia.  I'd actually recommend the 950 or 1050 if you aren't planning on playing games.

 

As you can see on my GT650M it's fairly trivial to set up monitors; even using underscan for a TV.  The reason for the 950 or greater recommendation is due to the VDPAU support; as you can see I have no hardware x265 support.

[Richard-BKK]

Most desktop computers, based on an Intel processor, that have been sold for the last few years have enough graphical punch to run Linux. Even with most Intel based mainboards it’s possible to have two monitor setup. Of course the newer the mainboard and processor the smoother it works.

 

If you have one of the early Sandy Bridge mainboards based on a Intel P67 chipset (Asus P8P67-Pro for example), it’s possible that you have no graphic connectors on the mainboard at all. In that case I would recommend a simple Nvidia graphics card, you can has a GTX750Ti (2GB GDDR5) for 3500 THB that is fast enough to do anything you would ever need in a office situation.