Be Excellent To Each Other

Hello, chums.

I'm looking at swapping out this silent running x1950Pro (it's the one with the whopping big silent cooling fan on it) for something a little more NVidia. The reason for this being the FGLRX (Linux ATI driver) is a big pile of cackypants and it's making me reboot to Windows to get games running properly. NV apparently doesn't suffer from the same problems...

I've never owned an NV card in my life, so any recommendations welcome.

Needs:
Quiet (if possible)
More powerful than X1950Pro (no point upgrading to a less powerful card)
About the £150 mark (inc. VAT)

Not worried too much about DX10, because I don't plan on running Vista any time soon. It's a nice feature to have, though. It also doesn't particuarly have to be SLI either, although again it's nice to have the option. Doesn't need anything much fancy apart from a nice bit of power.

Gaming will be at resolution 1440x900, my monitor won't go higher.

Any recommendations, caveats, or comments welcome, as I don't really know anything about the NV series of cards.

NV cards aren't quiet, in my experience.
The 8800 is an awesome card (especially the GTX) and the GT version costs about £130.

You are running this on Linux? I have had a couple of issues with my Nvidia card on linux, I can't get the resolution to stay the same for more than 2 boots in a row, and the frequency of the monitor is only set to a limited amount per resolution, so I can't get rid of the wavy lines. This could just me being shit though.

Also, I can't tell you what card it is, but it isn't anything special (I want to say 6600 GT PCIe, but this may be wrong, I bought it a while ago so it will be well below your budget now).

Not sure if this is any help at all.

I was looking at the 8800 GT and GTS on various stores.

Do they do those aftermarket coolers for them? The rest of my PC is utterly silent so I'd be happy to spend a few more pounds and change the cooler on it. I did that with my X800XL and it worked like a charm. Or else something like the ATI style "spin the fan down when not being used".

I guess I could just buy the card and see how loud it is.

I will go read a load of stuff later, as I always do, but offhand which is the better buy out of the GT/S/X versions?

Ah, they do that.

Depends on how you want to look at things. The best buy is two GTXs running in SLi mode, but value-for-money wise, the GT is probably the wise buy.
What games do you want to play?

You try running the ATI drivers on Linux then!

Actually, SuSe's YAST tool automagically does the refresh rates and things by itself, it picked up all the stuff from the monitor 100% right and added it all to Xorg.conf. It even chose 1440x900 by itself. The reason I want to switch is ATI keep messing with the FGLRX drivers, and now it doesn't work with WINE for any DirectX stuff. OpenGL stuff works fine, I can play Quake Wars and City of Heroes but try running EvE and it craps out. Also the "official" EvE client (which is a Cedega wrapper around the Windows client anyway) has white space instead of black, which is kind of offputting and hard to play with. NVidia drivers also let you have the Special Effects on the desktop without stopping games from running.

ATI drivers are kind of getting there but they are so immature and making ham-fisted mistakes. Linux is so mature now that the only thing I have to reboot to Windows for is gaming, and it's only ATI's drivers stopping me from getting the ones I play running at the moment. Of course, it'll always be a little glitchy as it's the nature of the beast but I mainly play on the Xbox anyway. It's just nice for the missus to be able to play World of Warcraft and things without it being crappy and crashy or having to reboot to Windows.

Um... Is it worth £150 to not reboot a PC from time to time, then? I reboot into XP each time I want to play games on my PC (I code in Vista).

I don't have an SLI mobo, so a single card only at the moment. It's all about bang for buck. If it's more powerful than the X1950 it's probably powerful enough, I don't play many "hardcore" games.

The main thing is it needs the grunt to be able to handle playing stuff in Linux, which usually means a little more power than the Windows side would need. My current most played list includes World of Warcraft, City of Heroes, Command and Conquer 3, Lord of the Rings Online, Bioshock, and various other bits.

It's mainly the MMOs I need running though, and the NV cards have a reputation for being able to handle at least WoW and CoH almost 100%. Once WINE gets more mature I can probably make the other games work as and when.

I just hate it when you buy <Card X> and someone tells you you could have had <Card Y> for an extra £10 that is half as fast again and has more onboard RAM, y'know.

<edit> £150 to reboot? No, not really. But a) I am planning on merging the current card with Shewolf's computer so it gets much needed boost so some of the money is coming from that, and as that would make my machine need a new card I thought I'd try one with the extra convieniance factor while I have the choice. And if it's crappy in Linux as much as ATI is, I can reboot anyway and have a faster card than I had before as any upgrade would.

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showprodu ... CI-Express)%20-%20Retail

This looks almost suspiciously cheap. Is it one of those "Let's put the same number on but make it really crap" type things like the GeForce 4 MX thing? If not, I might get one of those.

Overclockers are racist homophobes? Did I miss a thread?

Actually, http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showprodu ... -GI&tool=3 looks good, quiet, and powerful for not that much more moneys.

I think that's the one for me, if no-one comes and tells me "it's crap, it won't do what you want".

Cheapest 8800GT 512MB I've seen is this one at eBuyer:

http://www.ebuyer.com/product/145605

£90 all-in and you're not buying from OCUK either, which is always a bonus.

Probably the best aftermarket cooler for an 8800GT would be an Arctic Cooling Accelero S1; they can be had for ~£15 and perform pretty well despite being fanless:

http://www.hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=1261100

My Jesuscomputer has an 8800 in it. However I'm not using it for games but for other GPU uses (Motion and Colour) so can't comment how speedy it is for the latest games such as Harrier Attack and Sultans Maze.

However it is a big bastard card, however in the grand scheme of things it's not noisy. And the fact it supports Jesuscomputer probably bodes well for Linux.

I believe it supports the 4096-colour modes so you'll have no problems playing Burnin' Rubber and Navy SEALS.

Well bugger me. I found the archives via Google and it would appear that that *is* a bit...stupid...of them.I guess with quite so many viable alternatives I can justify not giving them business after that, as they generally aren't the cheapest anyway.

Thanks to tossrStu btw, for his Ebuyer link and a most excellent suggestion for quiet coolage. I think I'll pick the card up by itself for now, and see how it is as the reviews say that fan is "silent". It probably isn't but no point wasting money if it really isn't too bad. After all, when I'm playing games I'll have my speakers up, and these babies aren't quiet