I ran 1.6.2 and it runs very smooth and about 5% faster on my Ubuntu Jaunty, 3.0ghz, 2gb mem, and 512 mb nvidia 8400 gs card.
JB Skaggs
That’s great to hear!
It would be bad if it actually got slower. 
PS. Nice machine you have there.
Thats not the rendering machine that my wife uses- she has a 3.5 ghz, 4gb mem, Nvidia 9400gt with 1024mb. Then we have a laptop, and a Dell Hybrid Aspire (3.0ghz, 4gb mem, 512mb video) which is fast bt only has integrated intel- good for cross platform testing. Then a small 2.0 ghz 1 gb nvidia 5500 256mb used for less demanding stuff.
ANd you have the full computing power of my Family / Children’s home programming-development team.
JB SKaggs
Now you’ve made me feel ashamed with just my 2.5 Ghz Dualcore x64 GeForce 8600M laptop and another machine that isn’t even worth mentioning and a tiny ARM board that you can’t even call a machine. 
Yeah but you got computational power between your ears worth far more than our machines here. I dont have a red sports car- so I must be using computers for my mid-life crisis?
JB
Can I have a question?
Why do you have so powerful processors and so slow graphics cards?
I’d rate your performance ratio at 10:1. If I can reccomend you, then bye nvidia’s pro cards(Quadro/Tesla). It’s power for rendering is much bigger then in a typical GC. [size=75]It’s like the futuristic Nv!d!4 Geforce 390 GTSX2 4-way SLI versus old “Standard CGA” 320x200 Text-only mode processor for “super computers” running at mega-big 0,98 khz from 1975.[/size]
Then, I’d suggest you the new&cheap Ati radeon HD4770.
You don’t need that powerful processors, the OS won’t be faster if something like 8400 gs slows it down. Unless you are a magican that needs to calculate his magic numbers every [size=59]0,0000000000000000001/100[/size] seconds.
And what about the mainboard? 
You may find helpful checking some info about your problem on some tech/IT forums.
I dont plan it that way- it’s a money thing.
In the USA you can buy computers with fast cpus and loads of memory cheap- but video cards cost nearly as much as the computers themselves. So you get a computer for cheap upgrade video, then later upgrade again when you get more money.
For example at WalMart a 2.2 ghz with 2 gb mem computer cost roughly $300 +- $50 (that will usually have keyboard and mouse)
but to upgrade the video card it’s gonna run about $200 +- for a good one or $70 for a basic one. Since I only make about $2000 +- a month that means cpu first, then low card, then fast card.
JB
IMHO MentalDisaster is wrong. As a game developer you should never have the cutting-edge graphics cards. Rather the mid-grade (actually 8x00 is perfect.)
I originally had a GeForce 5200 FX. It just supported shader model 2.0a.
It was a slow thing (especially pixel shaders was a disaster) but there was a big advantage to programming on it. I was much more centered at optimizing the application and while being slow first (although very fast on new gpus), I squeezed out every microsecond and in the end it was fast even on my 5200 without much graphical tradeoff.
So, I don’t recommend you to downgrade - but if you develop a game on the latest video card, everything will run fast, and you’ll optimize your game to run fast on that card. Result: people with worse cards than you are out of luck and will play the game slow.
Agreed. My test platforms include relatively out of date laptops like the IBM T30 / T40. If my panda apps run well on these machines, they will run fine on more modern stuff.