[NTLUG:Discuss] need video card advice

[steve]

ntlug at levelofdetail.com wrote:
> I'm thinking of building a machine with this fancy video card:
> 
> http://www.newegg.com/product/product.asp?item=N82E16814121201
> 
> I assume that with the 2 DVI ports I can have a dual monitor setup with
> the one card. Is this correct? (duh!) Would there be some reason to go
> with two video cards instead?
> 
> This will be for a fresh install - probably Ubuntu or another
> Debian-based distro. I don't know whether distributions generally
> recognize and configure two monitors on installation.
> 
> Where is a good resource for how to have a dual monitor setup in Linux?

You should probably use the latest & greatest nVidia driver - which
you can download from www.nvidia.com - that comes with pretty good
documentation - which I'm fairly sure covers dual monitor setups.

You'll also need the latest driver in order to get the best
performance from the 7800-based card.  I have a bunch of these
in a cluster-computer at work and before we added the new drivers,
the performance of the 7800 card was worse than the older 6800.

nVidia do a great job of making installation easy though - I doubt
you'll have any problems.