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Liquid Cooled X1900 XTX Card Reviewed

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on Mon Jul 03, 2006 11:27 PM
from the big-barrel-of-oil-so-much-more-fun dept.
Graphics Software Hardware
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).
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Liquid Cooled X1900 XTX Card Reviewed 25 Comments More /

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  • But. . . (Score:3, Insightful)

    by kimvette (919543) on Monday July 03 2006, @11:31PM (#15654396) Homepage
    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.
    • I don't mean to sound trollish (ok, maybe just a bit), but given ATI's track record, I doubt there's a reliable Windows driver for this card. And in all seriousness, what would you need to run in Linux that requires such a high end video card. Personally, I think it's just a bit overkill for Tux Racer.
      • Doom 3, Unreal Tournament, CS (via wine), games that run in cedega.. there might not be a slew of games for Linux and I know I'm missing some, but there are great ports out there that the troll community just likes to ignore for their own sake.

      • Universities (Score:2, Interesting)

        by sowth (748135) *
        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...
    • I'd be happy if ATI released an Xorg 7.1 compatible driver; I've had to mask Xorg 7.1 in Gentoo since I run Xgl and need the proprietary driver. To be fair, ATI tends to be relatively quick in supporting their latest cards with their Linux drivers. For example when I got my Dell D610 with the mobile X300 in Feb. 2005 (the D610 was one of the first machines with the new PCIe vid cards on a laptop), there was a compatible binary driver within a month. Unfortunately, the driver had a bug and hung on systems

    • Just ignore ATI (Score:5, Interesting)

      by idonthack (883680) <idonthack.gmail@com> on Tuesday July 04 2006, @12:34AM (#15654605)
      Any time I look at buying a card, ATI gets completely ignored because Nvidia's Linux support is so much better.

    • Re:But. . . (Score:5, Interesting)

      by mcpkaaos (449561) on Tuesday July 04 2006, @12:41AM (#15654633)
      Is there a usable Linux driver

      As long as you plan on staying with Xorg 6.8.x, you should be fine. Anything greater and you might be one of the many, many people (myself included) who suffer hard lock-ups when X shuts down or you switch VTs while X is running. I have tried many combinations of kernels and versions of fglrx against a couple versions of Xorg (6.8.2 and modular), and only 6.8.2 was stable. YMMV, but this has been a fairly common issue for a number of folks. Although this makes it sound like Xorg is the problem, I don't believe it is. IIRC, someone over at the Gentoo forums traced it to a call made within the driver.

      I've since given up on running modular X with my ATI card and chose to mask it until my next upgrade (which will be NVidia, no doubt). It's been a month or two, so this may have been fixed (though I doubt it). If anyone has an update on that, please do tell.

      Good luck. :)

  • Shocking metal nips. (Score:3, Funny)

    by LordOfTheNoobs (949080) on Monday July 03 2006, @11:42PM (#15654439) Homepage
    As you can see, he was truly shocked [trustedreviews.com].

    / probably at his sweet new ability to render metal nips [trustedreviews.com]
    // i believe these figures from the article specify metal nipple rendering in the tera-nip range. [trustedreviews.com]
    ///totally sweet

  • Assuming... (Score:5, Funny)

    by knifeyspooney (623953) on Monday July 03 2006, @11:57PM (#15654502)
    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.

  • Mainstream liquid cooling. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by A Nun Must Cow Herd (963630) on Monday July 03 2006, @11:59PM (#15654515)
    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.

  • Pathetic. (Score:2, Interesting)

    by bronney (638318)
    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?
    • Moving parts in my computer:

      1. hard drive platters
      2. hard drive heads
      3. keys on keyboard
      4. mouse
      5. speaker cones, as desired
      6. DVD

      That's it. Not even the power switch moves, as it is a capacitative switch that just senses the presence of my finger.

      I intend to fix the hard drive problem. At least I got rid of the ball bearings with the last upgrade. I think I can cram all my stuff onto a 20 GB solid state device. That will run cooler, and the failures will be sector-by-sector instead of everything at once.

      Wh
    • Thats the point, the video card fan shouldn't be the noisiest fan in a system, unfortunately a X1900XTX fan is.

  • Energy consumption (Score:5, Interesting)

    by tsa (15680) on Tuesday July 04 2006, @01:02AM (#15654688) Homepage
    I always wonder what the energy consumption for water cooling is compared to air cooling. Does anyone know anything about that?

    • It's a fairly trivial difference (Score:4, Informative)

      by Sycraft-fu (314770) on Tuesday July 04 2006, @03:54AM (#15655111)
      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.

  • The Playstation 3's price is outrageous... (Score:5, Funny)

    by vijayiyer (728590) on Tuesday July 04 2006, @01:57AM (#15654814)
    So I'll get a video card instead.
    • Both ATI and Nvidia are going to be making DX10 cards this fall. New games that will truly require a next-gen card are coming out before the holiday season. Vista is coming out sometime in 2007. All the performance from here on out is going to be geared to DX10, so it isn't worth it working on pumping up the power on DX9 cards. Obviously, DX9 users will see advancements with DX10 cards, but the point is sort of that games in two years won't run on DX9 cards, so releasing stronger DX9 cards now is silly.
    • They are suggesting buying this card over an equivalently powered, but air-cooled, card. Thus, even if the performance were the same, you should get this - but the performance is actually better, (because it can be clocked higher due to the cooling) so thats the added bonus.

      That said, Id personally take a hit to performance for a passively cooled card any day.
    • 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 ne

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