5900 Ultra and Dell's 2405 fpw

[JonHelton]

Most of you have seen the good price on Dell's 2405fpw this week. I would like confirmation if anyone knows, that a Nvidia 5900 Ultra works with this. I have talked to Dell and searched, but I cannot find anything on it. On Dell's website it does not list the FX series. So maybe I can't, anyway..thanks guys

 

[batmanuel]

Here's an article from ExtremeTech that tested the DVI quality of the FX 5900 cards, and as you can see the TMDS transmitter that is built into the retail cards tends to be of poor quality and fails DVI complaince testing at 135MHz. This means that it doesn't supply a good enough quality of a signal over DVI to run anything over 1280x1024 reliably.

Your brand of FX 5900 might have had a better transmitter (nVidia didn't start integrating them into the GPU chipset until the 6 series cards, so for the FX cards the quality of the transmitter used was up to the card manufacturer), but it is likely a crapshoot. Yours may work, it may not, or it could give you intermittent problems. It's hard to tell, but I kind of doubt it. I had a cheapish build I did for someone using a FX5200 on a Dell 1905FP and the monitor seemed to work fine at first but sometimes it just wouldn't detect the display when the computer booted up and other weird issues. When I replaced it with a Radeon 9600 (which had a higher quality integrated TMDS), all the problems went away.

 

[JonHelton]

Hmmm, Ive had the card going on three years now, so maybe its time for an upgrade. I like the evga 7800gt, but Ive never done any install work. So I hope it is easy

 

[seanp789]

I ran a 5900FX with a dell 2405 for a while. It worked but I wouldnt say it was ideal. I would have to re-autocalibrate by switching resolutions back and forth after each boot up.

 

[Adul]

Originally posted by: JonHelton
Hmmm, Ive had the card going on three years now, so maybe its time for an upgrade. I like the evga 7800gt, but Ive never done any install work. So I hope it is easy

you will need a PCIe slot to support this card. More then likely ore running on a AGp slot for graphics.

I was able to upgrade to a new mb and video whichout having to get a new cpu.

 

[Geomagick]

Originally posted by: JonHelton
Hmmm, Ive had the card going on three years now, so maybe its time for an upgrade. I like the evga 7800gt, but Ive never done any install work. So I hope it is easy

Might be a good thing to do.

Before you buy anything check to see whether you are using a PCIe version of the FX5900 or the more common AGP varients. The 7800gt is PCIe only, the AGP version is the 7800GS.

 

[imported_Kiwi]

Originally posted by: George Powell

Originally posted by: JonHelton
Hmmm, Ive had the card going on three years now, so maybe its time for an upgrade. I like the evga 7800gt, but Ive never done any install work. So I hope it is easy

Before you buy anything check to see whether you are using a PCIe version of the FX5900 or the more common AGP varients. The 7800gt is PCIe only, the AGP version is the 7800GS.

FYI, any date close to two years ago, you couldn't buy PCI-e anything; more recently, the FX's with a PCI-e bridge chip are renamed to "PCX-5900", and on down. As best I understand the speeds and capabilities of various VGA cards, even a 6600GT should be a sizable improvement on a 5900 (I have a vanilla 5900 in one PC here). I looked for a 6600GT recently, at a sufficient discount that I could afford it (I have a tight budget), and ended up with a Radeon 9800XT, new, from eBay, in roughly the same speed class.

 

[JonHelton]

Is the 7800gs a sizeable upgrade, is it a good card?

I would like to just upgrade to it, instead of a new mobo among other things

 

[Twsmit]

the 7800GS is a sizeable upgrade, but its a poor value compared to a <$300 7800GT for PCIe. Its one of the best you can get for AGP however. You might want to just pick up a radeon card if you can find one for cheap. X850 class cards are still good for AGP.