Rv700 ???

[MNKyDeth]

Just saw the preview review over on anandtech.com http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=3354
I know by reading here on these forums that crossfire is not yet supported on Linux just yet as well.

My question about this card is once it is released are we under Linux able to take advantage of at least one gpu on this card until we have crossfire support?

I have never ever used an ATI card under linux and honestly have never considered an ATI card for my linux use. But since this is a single pcie slot card I am honestly very interested in it. With most of the good reports from ATI on this site I am starting to constantly flip my coin trying to decide if ATI is going to be my next purchase.

I am a very heavy Linux only gamer. I don't use wine or cedega. I own over half of all games from Tuxgames.com and I play wich are imo the two most heavy graphic intensive games available for Linux. ET:QW and Savage 2: A Tortured Soul.

I honestly am starting to see the limits of my 8800gts 320 especially with Savage 2 and am getting very close to considering the next cpu and gpu for my machine. Most likely I will stick with my setup but just move to a quad core Intel cpu for now to keep my cost down but the gpu market I am just having a really hard time deciding on right now. Any info related to the RV700 for Linux is greatly appreciated as I am seriously considering this card for Linux once it becomes available.

[d2kx]

Are you sure you really need the performance of that card? The AMD Radeon HD 4870 (RV770) would be a great improvement already and it should do ET: QW etc. at any settings without a problem (your card may have too few VRAM so it limits at doing higher resolutions/AntiAliasing).

[MNKyDeth]

Yes, I agree about that my current card is mostly effected by limited vram 320mb vs most other cards that are 512 or greater.

I mean, I bought my 8800gts 320 when it was $300USD. I usually try to snag a card that fits my gaming needs at that time and heck I thought it was a good buy. I love my 8800gts 320. But, honestly I don't want to upgrade for another little bit after I get a new card and was figuring this new card from ATI might be worthwhile in terms of future-proofing a little bit.

Buy the card, use one gpu core on the card, then eventually down the road the second gpu will get enabled and it will be like a whole new refresh for me. My mobo only has one 16x pcie slot on it and to me that is why this card is so tempting. It allows me to get two gpu's without swapping out my mobo and my mobo can still support a bigger faster cpu still from Intel. Upgrade to a quad core and a nice healthy OC on it most likely better than I get from my current E6750 cpu at 3.2ghz and I hopefully would still retain enough cpu horsepower to hopefully fuly utilize this gpu.

[Melcar]

The thing is, not even the HD3870X2 works "with one core only" under fglrx, unless you do some patching (or so I've heard). Crossfire should come soon, but investing on such a card without really knowing how the support will be is rather foolish. I guess radeon/radeonHD could work with the card, without acceleration and with only one core. If you really want a new card (and plan to use it) I would go for a HD4870.