ATI Radeon HD 2900 XT Review

[Hardware Secrets Team]

There has been a new article posted.

Title: ATI Radeon HD 2900 XT Review
URL: http://www.hardwaresecrets.com/article/449

Here is a snippet:
"Today AMD finally released a competitor to nVidia’s GeForce 8800 family, ATI Radeon HD 2900 XT (formerly known by its codename, R600). We will take a look on the performance of this new release by AM..."

Comments on this article are welcome.

Best regards,
Hardware Secrets Team
http://www.hardwaresecrets.com

[Skye]

Crazy. Thanks for the review.

[socrfan]

Sure nvidia has come out with the Ultra but who in their right mind is going to pay that much for a card?? You'd either have to have more money than you know what to do with or be just plain stupid. With a average life of 6 months the price of video cards is getting out of reach and will only get back to something that makes sense when we stop going out and buying each new one as soon as it hits the shelves. At least the 2900 is a step in the right direction.

[reidy-]

the average life of a card, is far more than 6months, I know people with radeon 8500's still going strong and they are like 3+ years old, and the 8800GTX's they will be going for year's as well

[Gabriel Torres]

I couldn't agree more with this statement. I am not a heavy gamer myself, so I still have a Radeon X800 GTO on my desktop that I use to work. I don't need anything more than that to ocasionally play Battlefield 2. But, of course, there are a lot of crazy people out there that want to buy the latest and greatest stuff and don't mind replacing their VGA every 6-9 months.

Cheers,
Gabriel.

[billy_bob]

Well I can already tell you that I'm a huge ATI fan, no matter what. But don't get me wrong, Nvidia impressed me alot here, especially the 7950 GX2. But there's a few things that bothers me with these benchmarks. I'm not going to name all of them now. But the Geforce 7-series beats the 8-series. And the Radeon X1950 Pro beats the HD2900 XT one or two times. Mind boggling... If someone could please explain that to me, I will be greatful.


And PLEASE next time benchmark any graphics with AMD!!!!! Both Nvidia AND ATI will perform better on it (INTEL SUCKS!!!!!). And please maybe try to use Nforce chipset with a Nvidia card, and an AMD/ATI chipset with an ATI card.

But the benchmarks is excelent. Thanks

[Gabriel Torres]

But the Geforce 7-series beats the 8-series. And the Radeon X1950 Pro beats the HD2900 XT one or two times. Mind boggling... If someone could please explain that to me, I will be greatful.

This can happen on lower resolutions. These new very high-end cards like Radeon HD 2900 XT and GeForce 8800 GTX are made for being used at very high resolutions like 2048x1536. Also keep in mind that we use a 3% error margin, so anything inside this difference needs to be considered as having the same performance level.

And PLEASE next time benchmark any graphics with AMD!!!!! Both Nvidia AND ATI will perform better on it (INTEL SUCKS!!!!!). And please maybe try to use Nforce chipset with a Nvidia card, and an AMD/ATI chipset with an ATI card.

First, this "INTEL SUCKS" is a completely unnecessary remark. If you have something to add please do so presenting a background. We won't tolerate remarks like "because I think so" in our forums. This is the second time I am warning you about this.

Regarding our test bed, our primary goal isn't to see how much points each card scores on 3DMark or whatever like this. It is to compare the performance difference between them. Also, we used a Core 2 Extreme X6800 CPU, which is the fastest dual-core CPU available to date.

What you suggest doesn't make any sense. We are comparing video cards, not systems. If you compare VGA "A" with one motherboard and VGA "B" with anotherboard motherboard you will be comparing apples to bananas.

By the way, when we go to high-end performance, the CPU doesn't play any important role on the results; the results are practically driven only by the VGA. Take a look here to see what I am talking about:
http://www.hardwaresecrets.com/article/463/9

Best regards,
Gabriel.

[billy_bob]

Thanks for explaining to me how the graphics cards works. I sort of understand now.

And for the Intel remark I opologize for. As a guy who works with pc's everyday, I personally had bad experience with Intel, not just once. Benchmarking AMD or Intel CPU's will explain most of it. And if you know the history between the two processor company's, you'll also understand why I hate Intel. For the Core 2 Extreme X6800 CPU, i didn't know. So that's my bad. And like I said, I'm more an ATI and AMD fan.

But isn't the benchmarks for letting you decide what the best option is to buy? If an ATI chipset motherboard has beter and faster performance with an ATI graphics card than an Intel or Nforce chipset motheboard, or a Nforce chipset motherboard with a Nvidia card rather than a Intel or AMD chipset motherboard, why not let the consumer know?