RSS 
So my Nvidia 5900 video card seems to have fried itself. The computer beeps one long beep and 8 short beeps when I turn it on and nothing happens. No CMOS/BIOS, no nothing. This wasn't unexpected, the video card has been misbehaving on occasion leading up to this, but it always righted itself (some times it would screw up one of the monitors or lock X).
Sadly, the only thing I have ready for a spare is an old ATi Rage 128. And now I remember the reason it was in my old video card pile and not in one of my computers. The r128 driver for X still has some weird issue where at high resolution there is a lot of static on screen any time anything changes. Move a window around, lots of white noise else where on the screen. Window contents change, white noise on the screen. Incredibly ugly and some what annoying. Still, it works which is better than no monitor. Also, of course it only has one video socket so my two monitor twin view setup is cut in half. So I now have half the desktop real estate and what I have has lots of static noise when ever I actually do anything.
I am not thrilled. Probably time to bump up my buying a new computer plan from 'soonish' to 'priority'. (A new computer instead of a just a new video card, though the new computer will certainly have a new video card, is because if I am going to put down a lot of money for a new card, it should be PCI-E but my current old computer is AGP so I need a new motherboard too which just means it's new computer time :))
Ah, so one question to the crowd: Up until recently I'd been thinknig new video card would be a no brainer, something NVidia. Intel doesn't yet make discret cards, and ATI drivers aren't good enough for new games and new desktop bling. NVidia, while closed source, can do the games, and sort of handle the bling, and hopefully will be able to handle the bling flawlessly soon (though this highlights why I'd prefer open source drivers). Anyway, now AMD has been saying they are really serious about open sourcing the ATI drivers. Anyone buy this and think it's a reasonable idea to get an ATI card now or soonish? Also, how easy is a dual screen setup on ATI cards? Finally, are there dual video port Intel motherboards out there. I know even the i965 isn't a gaming powerhouse, but the open source drivers are appealing and obviously it's less of a money investment now and easily upgradeable later.
