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"

Comments

Considering 32-bit OSes are still mainstream..

[Chas]

These cards are ridiculous. ESPECIALLY in Crossfire installs.

Wow! Now that 4GB of main system memory I installed has been pared back down to a more manageable 2GB!

WHEE!

Until 64-bit becomes more mainstream, cards like this will only become more and more detrimental to the systems they're installed in.

Re:Considering 32-bit OSes are still mainstream..

[Colin Smith]

Right because Linux hasn't been 64bit and running on SMP systems for years...

Oh wait. You meant Windows. Sorry, I do apologize ... Well, you'll have to wait the traditional 3 year Microsoft lag behind the state of the art.

Re:Considering 32-bit OSes are still mainstream..

[id]

Sweet, then he can play all both of the Linux games that need that performance.

Re:Considering 32-bit OSes are still mainstream..

[jlarocco]

This is where open source trumps closed source, hands down.

In the majority of cases, having an open source 32-bit driver, almost automatically implies having a 64-bit driver. It's just a recompile. Yes, a lot of the time there will be bugs, but since developers are usually on "higher end" 64-bit systems, those bugs are usually fixed quickly.

I'm running 64-bit Debian, and have never had a problem with drivers. My video card, sound card, firewire card, USB devices, network cards and printer all work perfectly. Much better than they would under 64-bit Windows. Same thing with software: if it's available for 32-bit Debian, it's most likely available for 64-bit Debian.

Hardware manufacturers have no motivation at all to release 64-bit drivers for anything but the newest hardware. If you want 64-bit drivers, you pay for a new piece of hardware, or you're screwed.

By all means, use whatever OS you like. But don't try telling people there's a 64-bit driver problem on Linux. The 64-bit Linux world is in *much* better shape than Windows in that respect.

Useless!

[ynososiduts]

Unless you are running quad 32" screens at some insane resolution, there is no need for 1 GB of frame buffer RAM. I think this is more for the "OMG MI VIF CARD HAZ 1 GIGGBYTES OF MEMORYIES!11!" type.

Re:Useless!

[mikkelm]

You're going to have to spill the beans on how you manage to run S.T.A.L.K.E.R. in a resolution like that, and how you manage to do it on that kind of hardware.

With an 8800GTS/320, myself, and most all review sites, struggle to stay above 60FPS in 1024x768 at times with all the eyecandy on.

Re:Useless!

[Craig Davison]

Mod parent up. 'Framebuffer'? The article submitter's brain is stuck in about 1995.

This is probably redundant but..

[Chas]

The memory on a video card is used for more than just simple frame buffering.

Notice how some of the newer games see less performance degradation on some of the 640MB nVidia cards than equivallently clocked 320MB versions of the same card.

Possible to be used as system RAM?

[i.of.the.storm]

I was just wondering, since before games often used system RAM when the graphics RAM was full, do any of you think it would be possible to go the opposite way, i.e. use gfx ram as system ram? It's a lot faster, and when you're just sitting there outside of a game it's not doing anything. Ultra-fast system cache ftw? Or am I just crazy? Is PCI-e too slow for that kind of stuff? Maybe with Vista's new driver model that allows GPU virtualization something like this could become true, but I really have no idea of the technical details involved in doing something of this nature,

Re:I'm not feeding the trolls...

[afroborg]

Does it matter? As far as I can see it is irrelevant why the system is slow, whether it's slow harware or slow drivers, it's still slow. If nVidia produce better drivers to squeeze more performance out of their hardware then you still get more fps in the end. Does it matter where it comes from? It's not like (at the moment) anyone else is writing better drivers than the manufacturers...

And AFAICS, the statement that "ATI's hardware is better it's just the drivers that let them down" sounds pretty unsubstantiated and unprovable, and more than just a little bit fanboyish...

But is it?

[Anonymous Coward]

They themselves have recommended "NVIDIA" for some time, but since it's never been an acronym, "Nvidia" makes most sense. Let's not succumb to their corporate perversions of age-old spelling conventions... Otherwise it gets like the way ATI has SMARTSHADER technology enabled by their CATALYST drivers ;-P

Re:But...

[CastrTroy]

I bought a vista laptop with only 512 MB of ram. It booted, quite slowly, but it worked. Anyway, I promptly installed Mandriva and it runs very smoothly. Vista is still installed though. It runs like a pig towing a tractor.