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AMD's Radeon HD 2900 XT Reviewed

Posted by kdawson on

J. Dzhugashvili writes "The folks at The Tech Report have whipped up a detailed expose of the new AMD Radeon HD 2900 XT graphics card's architecture and features, with plenty of benchmarks. While the card dazzles with 320 stream processors, a 512-bit memory bus, and oodles of memory bandwidth, its performance and power consumption seem disappointing in the face of Nvidia's six-month-old GeForce 8800 graphics cards."

4 of 126 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Bah by maxwell+demon · · Score: 5, Funny

    You don't even need a processor to draw pictures on the screen. A simple permanent marker suffices.

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    The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
  2. This is why we need open source 3D drivers... by kcbrown · · Score: 5, Interesting

    While the card dazzles with 320 stream processors, a 512-bit memory bus, and oodles of memory bandwidth, its performance and power consumption seem disappointing in the face of Nvidia's six-month-old GeForce 8800 graphics cards.

    The hardware probably screams. But ATI has a reputation for really shitty drivers. Without solid, fast, high-quality drivers, fast hardware doesn't matter as much.

    NVidia has typically produced fast drivers. They're not open-source, but they're at least good.

    If ATI can't get its shit together and write some decent drivers, the only reasonable option for them would be to open-source their 3D drivers so that the community can fix them properly. And I expect the community would do just that, because a lot of developers are also avid PC gamers, so they have a personal stake in it.

    It'll be interesting to see where this heads, given the statements made by ATI about open-sourcing their drivers, but I'm not going to hold my breath over it. For now, it's NVidia for my gaming rigs. That'll change as soon as ATI actually open-sources their full 3D drivers.

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  3. A number more reviews by bad_fx · · Score: 5, Informative

    As usual Anandtech is extremely thorough: http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=2988 &p=26

    [H]ardocp's take: http://enthusiast.hardocp.com/article.html?art=MTM 0MSwxLCxoZW50aHVzaWFzdA==

    techPowerUp (Warning, streaming video at the start >.>): http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/ATI/HD_2900_XT/

    The Inquirers expected vapid coverage: http://www.theinquirer.net/default.aspx?article=39 580

    I think I'll wait for more ATI drivers and some DX10 games before calling this one... Looks a little underwhelming at the moment though. I'm not regreting my 8800GTX purchase yet. ;)

  4. idle & load power ratings are scary by Adult+film+producer · · Score: 5, Informative

    Idle
    ----
    Radeon 2900XT - 183
    GeForce 8800 Ultra - 192
    GeForce 8800 GTX SLI - 296
    Radeon 2900XT Crossfire - 317


    Full Load
    ---------
    Radeon 2900XT - 312
    GeForce 8800 Ultra - 315
    GeForce 8800 GTX SLI - 443
    Radeon 2900XT Crossfire - 490


    This could get very expensive for people that leave their computers running 24/7.