Just setup my Dell 3007WFP - Initial Impression

[houkouonchi]

for anyone who wants to know if their video card can do dual link, I would recommend downloading a linux boot disk with nvidia drivers like pclinuxos livecd with nvidia. after you login as username root, password root, with a different LCD hooked up through the DVI-D do cat /var/log/Xorg.0.log and look for the info, I did this to check if my geforce go 7800 GTX on my laptop was dual link or not for when I get this display when it comes down to <$1500

Ok, so here is my loigc. I started thinking on a way to figure out if the xps gen 2 has a dual link DVI ( I am sure the 9300's are the same). Then remembered that in linux the xorg log will say if its dual link capable/etc and what the max clock is I took a quick look at my mythbox which is hooked up to a DLP HDTV and saw this:

(II) NVIDIA(0): NVIDIA GPU detected as: GeForce FX 5900XT
(--) NVIDIA(0): VideoBIOS: 04.35.20.38.65
(--) NVIDIA(0): Interlaced video modes are supported on this GPU
(II) NVIDIA(0): Detected AGP rate: 8X
(--) NVIDIA(0): VideoRAM: 131072 kBytes
(II) NVIDIA(0): Using ConnectedMonitor string "DFP-0"
(--) NVIDIA(0): DFP-0: maximum pixel clock: 165 MHz
(--) NVIDIA(0): DFP-0: External Dual Link TMDS

Ok, it says dual link but its external, that seemed weird, also the maxmimum pixel clock was only 165 MHz which is single link.

So i restarted xorg on my laptop with the LCD outputting instead of an external CRT and looked at the log file, and here is what was listed:

(II) NVIDIA(0): NVIDIA GPU detected as: G70
(--) NVIDIA(0): VideoBIOS: 05.70.02.19.12
(--) NVIDIA(0): Interlaced video modes are supported on this GPU
(II) NVIDIA(0): Detected PCI Express Link width: 16X
(--) NVIDIA(0): VideoRAM: 262144 kBytes
(II) NVIDIA(0): Connected display device(s): CRT-0, DFP-0
(--) NVIDIA(0): DFP-0: maximum pixel clock: 284 MHz
(--) NVIDIA(0): DFP-0: Internal Dual Link LVDS

Hey, its over 165 MHz, great, it says internal dual link, looks good, however that is for LVDS which the flat panel uses.

I decided to hook my laptop up to my DLP HDTV and look at the log file again when its going through DVI which is doing TMDS and I get:

(II) NVIDIA(0): NVIDIA GPU detected as: G70
(--) NVIDIA(0): VideoBIOS: 05.70.02.19.12
(--) NVIDIA(0): Interlaced video modes are supported on this GPU
(II) NVIDIA(0): Detected PCI Express Link width: 16X
(--) NVIDIA(0): VideoRAM: 262144 kBytes
(II) NVIDIA(0): Using ConnectedMonitor string "DFP-1"
(--) NVIDIA(0): DFP-1: maximum pixel clock: 330 MHz
(--) NVIDIA(0): DFP-1: Internal Dual Link TMDS

Alright! 330 MHz, exacly what it should be with dual link. and it says internal dual link TMDS. This makes me think for sure that it has a dual link connection. Since the other one said external I am guessing its because the cable was dual link but the card itself couldnt do it.

[houkouonchi]

also to clear up a little confusion, I know all 7800's are supposed to have dual link (doesnt mean they are) and I have seen some chips as low as a fx 5200 PCI with dual link, it just depends on the manufacturor, you definitely dont need a good video card to run this, its just hard to find a crappy one with dual link DVI.