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AMD-ATI Ships Radeon 2900 XT With 1GB Memory
MojoKid writes "Prior to AMD-ATI's Radeon HD 2000 series introduction, rumors circulated regarding an ultra-high clocked ATI R600-based card, that featured a large 1GB frame buffer. Some even went so far as to say the GPU would be clocked near 1GHz. When the R600 arrived in the form of the Radeon HD 2900 XT, it was outfitted with 'only' 512MB of frame buffer memory and its GPU and memory clock speeds didn't come close to the numbers in those early rumors. Some of AMD's partners, however, have since decided to introduce R600-based products that do feature 1GB frame buffers, like the Diamond Viper HD 2900 XT 1GB in both single-card and CrossFire configurations. At 2GHz DDR, the memory on the card is also clocked higher than AMD's reference designs but the GPU remains clocked at 742MHz"
Sounds useful for 3D animation work, where you need all that memory for textures. Remember, by the time players see a game, the textures have been "optimized"; stored at the minimum resolution that will do the job, and possibly with level of detail processing in the game engine. Developers and artists need to work with that data in its original, high-resolution form.
I take it you've never gamed at very high resolutions with ALL the eyecandy turned on.
Viral software licensing is not freedom, it is in fact GNU/Socialism.
My 8800 GTS with 320 MB runs all games fine at 1680x1050 with max settings. That's pretty much one third of one gigabyte. I seriously doubt you need one, let alone two, gigabytes of video RAM.
622677120
It's not just for frame buffering. That memory is also used to store texture maps, Z-buffers, stencil buffers, etc. Basically, Almost all of it is used for 3D games/applications. If all you needed was a 2D card, you could get away with just 64MB of on-board RAM.
Life is not for the lazy.
Umm, not to sound like a tech jargon-nazi, but "frame buffer" to me has always meant just the part of video ram that "mirrors" what you see on screen. A 1GB frame buffer would give you 16384x16384x32bit color, so unless you're doing some kind of huge multi-screen setup, 1GB of frame buffer is a bit overkill. ;)
-chris
You do realize that texture size is completely independent of screen resolution right? And that you possibly have hundreds of textures loaded at once? And they can't be stored compressed because decompression would take too long?
Basically, other than the framebuffer for what's actually displayed on screen none of the graphics card memory is depended on screen resolution.
Anyway, this card isn't useful *now*. That's because video game producers target the cards that are widely available. 2 years from now you're going to need *at least* 1GB to run games at their max settings.
Hopefully, it will run well under Linux in the near future given AMD's recent actions. As was covered previously on here, AMD has already release quite a bit of detail to improve Linux support. http://hardware.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/09/24/053252
Do the math. You don't need anywhere near 1Gb for that.
...and medical people who like to look at 3D textures from MRI scans - they can never get enough video memory. 1Gb is only enough for a single 512x512x512 texture.
What you *do* need it for is texture and vertex data, but even then games aren't really going to use it - they're designed for current hardware.
Nope, the only people who'll buy this are ignorants with too much money*.
- Not that there's any shortage of those.
[*]
No sig today...
I have such a 1GB model from PowerColor for 2 months now and since the last linux driver release, it runs flawlessly there too. Slashdot, late as always :/
Its a Starcraft reference
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/StarCraft#Gameplay
I know you're kidding, but as a matter of fact, it is supported under Linux by a couple different drivers.
A good review of the 2900 XT under LinuxIn fact, you have options.
Using the proprietary driver
Using the open source driver
I second that. I run an 8800GTS/320 on a triple 17'' 1280x1024 setup (using a matrox triplehead2go digital to split the DVI signal in 3). The card pushes out 3840x1024, which amounts to about 4MP, and it's been happy so far in Gothic, Oblivion, S.T.A.L.K.E.R and a bunch of other titles, giving very reasonable frame rates with either all or practically all the graphics bells and whistles turned on.
Memory doesn't make a card faster, except on REALLY insane resolutions (way higher than 4MP I suspect) when you really need all those textures close at hand, and what with PCIe bus being nowhere near saturated, putting said textures closer, latency-wise, to the plate is really more than its made out to be. Ton-of-memory-cards are just a tax on people who don't understand what the fuck really matters in their system. Sorta like uber-expensive-RAM which gives an entire 2% improvement over what el-cheapo brandless stuff does.
What *does* a fast card make, at least as of 8th generation GF's which have many parallel stream processors, is a LOT of processors. The jump from 32 in the mid-range cards, to 96 or 128 in the high-end ones, is what makes these cards kick royal ass.
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Exactly how is this trolling? I got a new video card yesterday and it boosted my UEI from 1 to 2. Imagine my disappointment. I learned my lesson: say something remotely negative about Vista on /. and get down modded.
The game.
A 32bit OS can only address 4GB of RAM. If you have 1GB of video memory, that eats up 1GB of the 4GB limit, so yes, 2 1GB cards would halve the total amount of ram available to the system. That is with any cards, weather it's one card or 2 in Crossfire or SLI.
A good article on it is here: http://www.dansdata.com/askdan00015.htm