Would you recommend the product? yes | Price you paid?: $175.00 | Rating: 9
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Kernel (uname -r):
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2.6.19-gentoo-r5
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Distribution:
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Gentoo 2006.1 (amd64)
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The x1900GT is a pretty fair card and it was an excellent deal when I bought it. I have a version 1 card with the higher GPU core clocks. The version 1 card is almost always faster than the version 2 card. I run the x1900GT driving two 1600x1200 20.1" LCDs and it works very well. The card is a high-end card and makes some heat, so an aftermarket cooler is suggested unless your x1900GT came with a two-slot cooler. Mine didn't, so I installed a Vantec Iceberq 6 for $30. That greatly quieted the card and reduced the case and GPU temp significantly. The ATi drivers are actually pretty decent and I found them easier to install and set up than NVIDIA's. The installer is solely GUI and setting up dual-head is as easy as:
aticonfig --initial --dtop=horizontal --resolution=0,1600x1200 --resolution=1,1600x1200
Restart X and then you're good to go. You will have to use ATi's driver as the open-source "radeon" or "ati" drivers tdo not support any R500/x1000 series cards yet. Performance of the card isn't as good compared to NVIDIA's cards of a similar price, but performance is still very good. I run the FPS game Sauerbraten/Cube 2 at 1600x1200 with all of the eye candy enabled and rarely drop below 60 FPS, usually hitting the cap of 199 FPS. Image quality is wonderful, much better than the NVIDIA G60 card I had in my system before.
So in short, don't be afraid of ATi's drivers as they are far better than they used to be. Just be mindful that the x1900GT like any high-end card, can make some serious heat and plan accordingly.
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