I have decided I want to build a new computer. The previoius (first ever) computer I built 7 or so months ago had a 9800xt agp 8x

Now I see (xpcgear.com/a8nslideluxe.html) Dual PCI-X Socket 939 for AMD 64 bit processors. . *drool*.

Those would play Doom III SO NICE. After looking at the results, Dual 6800 Ultra stomping on an overclocked X800xt (which was so overclocked it was unstable) something like 1100 to 700, and these dual cards mean quadrouple monitors, I want it I want it I want it.

ATI has been a pain to install, the more I read about ati and Linux (even though I am so new to Linux) the more I hate ati for how poorly they support us.

Two things: Nvidia all the way, and Dual PCI-X, damn. . .

So, does anyone have any opinions on the performance of these on Linux ? Can this even be done yet with Linux ? Is Linux able to do this with one head ? And, if more than one, what's the chances on four heads, will there be four heads in the future ?

I need all the information I can get on this configuration's functionality with Linux.

Thanks guys.

Its not PCI-X. Its PCIe. PCI-X is the enhanced PCI slot that can be clocked up to 133 MHz and it can be either 32-bit or 64-bit slot.

What nForce3 or nForce4 chipsets do is SLI (depending on motherboard manufacture). It is an old and very complex technology. It was created with Voodoo Banshee back in the old days when 3D games started to get big. I think SLI was create a lot sooner than Voodoo Banshee for flight simulators. It will take some time for nVidia to make software (modules) to take advantage of SLI in Linux. Gigabyte has a video card with two GPU on one video card that uses nVidia's SLI lines, so you do not have to find a motherboard that has SLI feature. Though Gigabyte's video cards with dual GPU on one board and probably modules (drivers) that support SLI is not out yet.

If you have the money to spend on two nVidia 6800 Ultra video cards (about over $1000) and you do not mind tweaking SLI for each game, SLI should give you double the performance.

Linux is able to support as many video cards you can put in the computer. In the days of one AGP slot and many PCI slot, people do not want to mess around with multiple graphics cards. This is because the PCI bus was not fast enough to handle 3D graphics and some games are picky with a mixture of PCI and AGP video cards in the computer. PCIe is much faster for multiple video cards but now the processor throughput and main memory bandwidth will have to catch up.

In 2005, there should be more of a selection of 939 socket motherboards. I suggest waiting a few months. If you need a computer very badly, you can start looking for parts.

Now I know what some of the articles were referring to when they talk about how this brings back the feeling from the voodoo cards.

The "pci-x" comes from "pci eXpress", I suppose it's just slang.

Is X currently able to support more than 2 monitors ?

The PCI-X, an enhanced PCI, slot is for workstation and server evironments. No its not called PCI Express. PCIe (called PCI Express) is for desktop systems and above. Also notebook manufactures are switching to PCIe because it is a lot smaller and faster than mini PCI.

If you are talking about X Window System. I already told you it can support more than one monitor. It depends how much time you have to configure it.

IMHO, SLI creates more problems than it fixes. Graphics are serial processing, so to make SLI work at its best. The 3D programmer have to come up a way to help SLI work at its best. In certain games SLI is slower than normal nVidia 6600. If video card companies like ATI and nVidia can use IBM's cell processor, video cards will be much, much faster than today's video cards. If nVidia want to take advantage of SLI, I think one video card to be set as master and the other as slave. Then combine the registers, texture, and brushes instead of spliting the screen in to two.

Go to http://www.pcisig.com/ to learn more about the PCI bus technologies.

Thank you

Also you don't need an SLI enabled Mobo. Nvidia makes an SLi connector to place on the top of 2 graphics cards that are in PCIe slots that are next to each other.

I read one of your posts (or replies) a while ago. I can't remember when it was a while back. It was useful.
I remember seeing your laptop needs, you said you needed stuff and you had to work with what you had.
I have an iBook with a broken HDD, broken DVD-ROM, the battery sucks, I actually am forced to use it time to time.
I know what it's like. Sucks for us.