Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

First R600 Review - The Radeon HD 2900XT

Posted by Zonk on from the tech-drool dept.

mrneutron2004 writes "Tweaktown seems to have the first review out of the gate on AMD's flagship R600 core. 'Our focus today is solely on the HD 2900 XT 512MB GDDR-3 graphics card – it is the first GPU with a fast 512-bit memory interface but what does this mean for performance? ... After taking a look at the GPU and the card from PowerColor as well as some new Ruby DX10 screenshots, we will move onto the benchmarks and compare the red hot flaming Radeon monster against Nvidia's GeForce 8800 GTX along with the former ATI GPU king, the Radeon X1950 XTX."

9 of 157 comments (clear)

  1. Watt by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting

    Performance per watt is a much more interesting & important figure to release.
    I didn't see that in the article, did I miss it?

    I don't understand how CPUs get faster and lower power, yet GFX cards get faster and require new power stations :-)

    1. Re:Watt by jacksonj04 · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Because the only people who use performance GPUs are those who want to simply get as much kick as possible, be it graphics designers, gamers or medical imaging. In these situations the machines won't be sat in a rack, and power is irrelevant as long as the PSU can supply it. The heat can quite easily be dissipated from high performance desktop towers either via liquid cooling or just enormous heat sinks and fans.

      CPUs, on the other hand, are driven a large part by servers, which do sit in racks and need to run on as low power as possible, because power = heat = bad.

      One important thing to recognise is that power requirements per unit speed are actually dropping, it's just that speed increases faster than this increase in efficiency. CPUs have a slower rate of speed increase in terms of what is required of them, so power efficiency (Which is also a higher priority) has a chance to catch up.

      --
      How many people can read hex if only you and dead people can read hex?
  2. Re:Insta-Slashdotted by ruiner13 · · Score: 1, Interesting

    But yet they have no problem leaving all the ads on the page that says they pulled the article, so they can make money off the people expecting the article to be there, thus getting paid for hosting nothing. What a crock of shit.

    --

    today is spelling optional day.

  3. Re:Lets see, another graphics card? is it needed? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting

    Fuck you. These new high end cards are SSE on crack (128 parallel FPUs for the GTX), and they speed up my data analysis code enormously. I don't play games with them, so I don't know how much better they are in that domain. Don't presume that your needs are everyone's needs. No one is buying these with a gun to their head.

  4. What I'm looking for in a graphics cards... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting

    I'm not a gamer, so I'm just looking for something that can handle aero/compiz/beryl and do accelerated HD video decoding (H.264/XviD/Divx) while using the least amount of power, and with just passive cooling. Having not followed graphics cards for a while, I'm sort of out of the loop. What cards out there fit my needs?

  5. Re:Thanks, but... by Quantam · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Can anybody verify that this guy knows the difference between Celsius and Fahrenheit? As far as I know CPUs don't usually live past 90 C or so, let alone 127 C.

    --
    You have tried to support your argument with faulty reasoning! Go directly to jail; do not pass Go, do not collect $200!
  6. Re:Thanks, but... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting

    My "core slowdown threshold" on a 6800gt is 120*c. It is currently running at 58c. Cpu get damaged about like 85 or 86*c but video cards seem to handle much more. I thought the max temp was determined by the heat required to crack silicon, but I guess I dont know what im talking about either.

  7. Re:Insta-Slashdotted by heinousjay · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Exactly how does it hurt you? Or are you just the kind of person who likes to whine whenever someone else makes money?

    --
    Slashdot - where whining about luck is the new way to make the world you want.
  8. Re:Sounds like a fine product ... for a BOYCOTT! by Hemogoblin · · Score: 2, Interesting

    And ATI have broken their word on their plan to 'support' open-source drivers, refusing to give any hardware specifications to developers, leaving them to reverse-engineer everything. Let me refer you to the Slashdot story posted two hours before this one: AMD Promises Open Source Graphics Drivers

    I won't comment on the rest of your rant.