Geforce 7950GT 512 vs Ati X1950XT 256

Hey ppl,

Im putting together a new PC for myself for a great variety of uses, and I'm deciding between the Nvidia Geforce 7950GT 512MB (Leadtek) and the ATi X1950XT 256MB (Powercolor), which are both in the same price range for me (~AU$450-500). I know that the ATi is roughly 10-15% faster in pretty much all games but my questions are:

• Will the extra RAM on the nVidia outweigh its disadvantage with any games soon? With many games being over 5gb these days, do they load such enourmous amount of textures etc.?
• Does anyone have any general ATi experience with Linux? Is it significantly worse than the (pretty good) Nvidia support?

All comments appreciated

If I was spending that much for a vid card I would not even consider a 256MB card. You will need the extra memory for the humongous textures new games use (good for 3d modelling too if that's what you're into).

Which raises a question. If your running linux it sounds like you are not game oriented. So why a top end video card?

Yeh, I ended up taking the 512MB 7950GT. From what I read, games like Oblivion and Doom 3 use >256 on Ultra-High quality, which I look forward to using, and I also heard that the X1950XT has an older, much noiser cooler (compared to the apparently excellent one on the XTX). Didn't quite have the extra cash to preorder a 8800GTS unfortunately. About Linux, I use it as a hobby OS, I've got XP Pro + Vista coupon which i will use mainly