"Rob" wrote in message
ster.com...
I'm an engineer, not a game player, damnit! My current machine has a
humble yet lovable FX5900 agp4x in it and I'm ready to build a new
workstation based on the WestmereEP 6 core CPUs.

The specs I've read about the consumer oriented nvidia cards (wikipedia)
show that the vertex and texture generation speeds of the gtx295 are as
good as (or better than) the new (EXPENSIVE!) 480 cards. Thing is, not a
single vendor in the US seems to have the 295 anymore. WTF?!

Someone suggested that the ATI 5870 might be a good alternative but I
almost exclusively do openGL stuff in Linux and I have heard BAD THINGS
about linux support for the ATI cards.

what I want:

1) lots of vertex/pixel computation firepower
2) decent texture performance
3) efficient support for shared memory x11/xover infrastructure in the
driver
4) hardware support for a VESA level framebuffer driver (for
compatibility with older CAD/CAM applications)

Things I couldn't care less about:
1) SLI (not enough room in my machine requires too much power)
2) fancy antialiasing, shaders, or photo-realism enhancements

Thoughts?

I'm a retired engineer, and would like a little mo

A computer with a motherboard, power supply, and set of fans
that can handle 8 GTX295s, or possibly 16 GTX470s, a computer
room with enough cooling to handle it without overheating,
and enough electrical outlets in the room that I can install a
window air conditioner and still have enough power for the
new machine and my current three computers, and of course
enough of the high-end Nvidia boards to fill up the new
computer. Here's what I'd use them for:

http://www.gpugrid.net/

Probably some other BOINC projects related to medical
research as well, as they become available.

Doesn't look like I'll get what I want, though.

Robert Miles