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Liquid Cooled X1900 XTX Card Reviewed
An anonymous reader writes "TrustedReview's Andrew Miller has posted a review of the new liquid cooled Radeon X1900 XTX card. There have been a few reviews floating around based on engineering samples of this product, but it sounds like the actual card turned out to be quite a sight to behold." From the review: "If you are seriously considering buying an X1900 XTX, then it is well worth paying the extra money for this card as the noise reduction is dramatic. The extra performance is just an added bonus. However, the 7950 GX2 is simultaneously faster and quieter for the same money. The X1900 XTX on the other hand has the option of HDR and FSAA as well as the possibility of running in Crossfire (assuming you can get hold of a similarly cooled master card).
Is there a usable Linux driver to accompany that card when it's released? Yeah I know I know, the core gaming market is Windows, but some Linux users DO want fast video cards.
The Christian Right is Neither (Christian nor right). See: Matthew 23, Matthew 25, Ezekiel 16:48-50
does it run on linux? how well?
Does it run Linux?
...how are the latest Linux drivers coming along?
Oh, well. Looks like a neat card, too bad it's still slower than the top of the line nVidia board. Expensive as all hell too!
Maybe once they get the liquid cooling thing down we'll see a good bump in clock speed.
---
http://www.burningserver.com/, for all your blank web page needs!
The X1900 XTX on the other hand has the option of HDR and FSAA as well as the possibility of running in Crossfire (assuming you can get hold of a similarly cooled master card)
What a completely pointless statement. Not only does the GX2 have HDR and FSAA (as have all cards since the 7xxx and Xxx series - perhaps even the 6xxx series) but you can (probably) run a GX2 in SLI mode. Recently a friend was upgrading and we looked into Crossfire. The motherboards are hard to get (here in Oz), and they're expensive (~$290 for a crossfire versus ~$160 for SLI). But at least ATI have moved away from the "Master" and "Slave" cards...
dnuof eruc rof aixelsid
As you can see, he was truly shocked.
// i believe these figures from the article specify metal nipple rendering in the tera-nip range.
///totally sweet
/ probably at his sweet new ability to render metal nips
They're there affecting their effect.
Noise is more important than better graphics. Can someone tell me WTF is going on?
assuming you can get hold of a similarly cooled master card
Indeed, my MasterCard will need some cooling off time after I purchase one of these babies.
I'd rather see such cooling techniques used to make silent mid-range cards with good performance, rather than having it only available with hideously expensive high end cards.
It's not a pointless statement. AFAIK, no current Nvidia card is capable of doing "true" (floating-point) HDR and FSAA simultaneously. Say what you want about ATI - their latest-gen cards have at least that single advantage over Nvidia's current offerings.
Went and looked at the OC results and well, it's like nil. Why bother with watercooling when you can't squeeze more clocks out of it. I believe the vid fan isn't the noisest part in the box?
I imaging plenty of universities use 3D acceleration in Linux for their work, among other places. Then again, they probably use one of the BSDs or Unix...
Any time I look at buying a card, ATI gets completely ignored because Nvidia's Linux support is so much better.
Why is it that when you believe something it's an opinion, but when I believe something it's a manifesto?
I have an excellent graphics card called the ATI Rage 128. I run at 1600x1024, 24bit color, which means no 3D at all.
It doesn't heat the room. It has no moving parts. (neither does the heat sink on my CPU -- damn hard drive moves though, until I replace it with solid state)
I'm completely happy with my video card. I will remain happy... until a Linux desktop requires a god-damn 3D accelerator just to display a few dozen xterm windows and a dozen Firefox windows. There is absolutely no reason I should ever need 3D acceleration. I'll only consider it because various bastards have started abusing 3D pipelines for plain old 2D compositing. I'm told that this is because wankers need see-through windows...? Any non-opaque window is a serious bug that detracts from usability, so WTF is going on?
Here are links to the company websites, look for "Silent-Pipe" or "Silent" in the name...
http://www.giga-byte.com/Products/VGA/Products_Li
http://www.giga-byte.com/Products/VGA/Products_Li
http://usa.asus.com/products2.aspx?l1=2&l2=8
http://usa.asus.com/products2.aspx?l1=2&l2=6
I always wonder what the energy consumption for water cooling is compared to air cooling. Does anyone know anything about that?
-- Cheers!
This is EXACTLY the card you need when trying to prove to a bunch of your friends that you definately have spent the most money on a computer that can't quite outperform their slightly cheaper PC's...
The real question is how can I waste even more money now that I've water cooled my 4 multicore intel's and my video card, ive got a freon injector over my 48channel sound card and my LCD monitor requires three projector screen stands just to hold it in place...
Wait there's some external storage drives shaped like lego and a USB hub that looks like a smurf villiage - that it - BRILLIANT!
...on this caliber of subject matter appearing on Slashdot's front page. Guys... a video card cooling review? ffs.
"If you don't have eyes you shouldn't have wings" -- Carl Pilkington
So I'll get a video card instead.
What are you talking about? Maybe it's a but harsh to mod the parent uninformative, but he's certainly misinformed. There is no hotfix required on "ATI cards" to get Oblivion working. It works out of the box just fine on seemingly every card. I even googled to double-check.
Perhaps you were referring to the "Chuck hotfix patch", which adds the ability to do AA and HDR simultaneous. It's currently hardware-incapable for nVidia to do both at the same time. In any case, it's hardly a required hotfix, and the parent is just plain wrong on this one.
Water cooling pumps don't need a lot of wattage to run, neither do air cooling fans. In general water cooling probably uses slightly more power since usually the water cooling radiator is air cooled, so you've fans and a pump. However it's just not a significant amount of power next to the other draws in the system.
Rememeber all the power is needed for is moving things around, either air or water. There's not a compressor or anything.
nVidia implemented their pipline in such a way that one part does both, or maybe only one of them can be on at the same time, so they are mutually exclusive. Arguable how much difference it makes since, in general, HDR uses power to the point you've not got enough left over for AA without too much framerate loss. However, in an SLI configuration you do, and that might be one of the only reasons to spend such an amazing amount of money.
There may very well be, however it won't last long.6 854 ).
ATI have a new policy of pulling support for their products even while they're still selling new in the stores. They recently dropped support of the R200 ( see http://www.rage3d.com/board/showthread.php?t=3385
This may be marked as a troll, and maybe this wouldn't be out of line, but I still warn you:
Do not buy ATI products if you use or intend to use Linux . Otherwise you will be sorry.
How wrong can you be?
/. actually do any research at all...
I just finished Oblivion and guess what? ATI Radeon 9800XT.
But then again, since when did anyone commenting on
"It does not do to leave a live dragon out of your calculations, if you live near him." - Tolkien
Thermaltake tidewave
For anyone who wants this for the cheap. It's what Saphire have used in this card and you can get them for about £45.
Warter is essential, haven't found a top end card yet which dosen't get too hot on a day like today.
For mainstream water cooling.
http://www.hardwaresecrets.com/article/295
All this fish tubing crap is amateur hour. Switching to nitrile or metal hoses makes the system a lot more palatable and reliable.
I expect this Intel solution will be rolled out with Woodcrest. I can't see another way they're going to get two dual-core chips into any regular case and have it quiet. Apple will probably insist on a system like this for their towers anyway, because its quiet.
http://lkml.org/lkml/2005/8/20/95
Prior to the mid-1990s, I just used the Linux
/* read 1 byte from fd 0 */
text console. 80x25 was OK for browsing the web
with lynx.
And yes, there were porno videos. There is a
great one out there called dirty.vt (google
will find it) that plays well at 9600 baud in an
80x24 xterm. On a Linux box with a 100 HZ clock,
the following code does a decent job of playing
it at the right speed:
#include <unistd.h>
#include <stdio.h>
#include <stdlib.h>
#include <string.h>
int main(int argc, char *argv[]){
int buf;
while(read(STDIN_FILENO, &buf, 1)){
write(STDOUT_FILENO, &buf, 1);
usleep(0);
}
return 0;
}
s/so much better/sucks less/
dragonhawk@iname.microsoft.com
I do not like Microsoft. Remove them from my email address.
I had a bit of trouble understanding your "copying text or using one window as a reference while writing in another" comment, because it just doesn't make sense... until I realized that your window manager settings are probably click-to-focus and raise-on-focus.
Switch to focus-follows-mouse and autoraise disabled. This should be trivial for a Linux box. For Windows XP or Vista, I think you need to look for a "tweakUI" tool that Microsoft has available for download.
Now, put the window you want to read on top of the one you want to type in, with something like a 95% overlap. Put your mouse over the lower window. Now your typing goes to the lower window while you read the upper window.
As a bonus, focus-follows-mouse is faster and is less repetitive stress on your mousebutton finger.
Well i can say that for the last couple of months or so Nvidia and Ati have been showing some very impressive progress in their offerings. but you know what would impress me more ?
well i will tell you, i would be more impressed if they could develop a video card that has a common seris socket for the GPU and Ram like a Motherboard that way i can upgrade the Chip and the ram like i do with my computer !.
i mean come on Nvidia already has a Unified Driver Architecture so why not that too, a card like that would cost effective and can be made in various styles just like computer motherboards are right now that way you can truely build everything from scratch.
Okay i am done dreaming, some can come along and tell me all of the things wrong with this idea and how flawed my thinking is.
CH
What kind of power supply does this require? (The pump and such has to draw a bit of power?) Does the pump run all the time? Or just when it is needed? How much more power does this draw then a normal card?
:D