Radeon HD 3870 open source driver support?

[Thomas Ilnseher]

Am Dienstag, den 01.04.2008, 14:16 +0200 schrieb Nicolas Mailhot:
> Le Mar 1 avril 2008 01:22, Dennis Jacobfeuerborn a écrit :
> > Hi,
> > what is the current state of support for the Radeon HD 3870 cards? I
> > intend
> > to buy a new card soon and I'm aiming for either a 3870 or an NVidia
> > 9600GT.
> 
> I had the same dilemma last WE.
> Went for a 9600GT because no vendor I trusted had the 3870 (ie there
> was an inverse correlation between the level of trust I had in
> computer part shops and the probability of them having a 3870 instead
> of a 9600GT.
> 
> I can tell you nv is a pig right now with the 9600GT. Slow as hell
> (massive software rendering) *and* making the hardware red hot (15 min
> of simple 2D in Linux raises the GPU temp more than a few hours of
> heavy 3D in windows. Which shows up on my system since the card shuts
> the system down when it reaches an unsafe temperature level).
I got an 8800GT, and I'm glad with it. Temps are ok, like 45°C after a
few hours of gaming, in 2D the temps are around 38°C.

I have applied a waterblock on the gpu, and use a passive 240x120mm
radiator to dissipate the power of CPU+GPU. Rams and voltage converters
are passive cooled. 

When I got the card, I tested it with the "stock" cooler, and temps were
even LOWER! ("stock" cooler means accelero S1 + Turbo module).

So Even if you don't intend to do watercooling, I'd recommend getting
this card (ECS 8800GT). The drawback is that the "stock" cooler is
pretty large (higher than normal, and uses 3 slots in total [yes it's 3!
not 2]).

when I disable lighting, I can get >200fps in nexuiz, at 1920x1200, so I
cant't see any slowness.
> 
> Thus I don't know if the 3870 is a good choice, but the 9600 GT is
> nothing I'd advise on Linux right now.
> 
> -- 
> Nicolas Mailhot
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-- 
Thomas Ilnseher <illth at gmx.de>