Radeon HD 2900XT reviews

8T8

First reviews are out

Anandtech
The Tech Report
Firingsquad
Presence PC (French includes some DX10 tests)
Clucbic (French)
ExtremeTech
Guru3D
[H]ardOCP
Hexus
VR-Zone
Beyond3D (architecture article)

Will add more during the day.

In summary first the bad;
* Performs close to a 8800GTS 640 and sometimes worse than an X1950XT, fails to defeat the 8800 GTX/Ultra though with certain games it comes close to the GTX.
* Drivers are extremely rough around the edges.
* Annoying fan speed, louder than all other cards.
* Has failed to de-thrown NVIDIA from image quality throne with GeForce 8.
* High power consumption under load & idle.
* UVD is broken in drivers at the moment so no HD movie assisted decoding, though some reviews have update drivers with it fixed.

Now the good;
* ATI weren't stupid they priced it at a reasonable price going for €390.
* New AA filter modes may not appeal to everyone as some have a blurring effect but they are nice to have as an option some games will work well with them.
* Direct-X 10 performance looks to be good better than the GTS but fails to beat the GTX still given the price gap it comes close.
* Some extra hardware in their could turn things in it's favour for the 2900 but developers would have to make games with that in mind so that is a difficult task.
* Looking over the benchmarks it looks like OpenGL runs a lot better and is comparable to NVIDIA now.
* Built in audio controller outputs audio over special DVI-HDMI adapter that comes with that card, it supports 16-bit PCM Stereo, AC3 5.1, Dolby Digital and DTS.
* The 2900 does have potential through driver updates ATI might be able to smooth out the rough spots.

Why the 2900 fails to soundly beat the 8800 given it's supposedly superior specs on paper, well from what I can make out ATI have again failed to get it through their skull and beef up the texture processing power of their cards. The GeForce 8 has a much higher fill rate and can process more textures more efficiently than the 2900 can coupled with the impressive shader processing power of the 8 series means it stomps all over the 2900.

It seems ATI built an architecture that is somewhat looking forward for processing different workloads in that the benchmarks for Call of Juarez in Direct-X 10 reflect this you can see the 2900 out paces the GTS but still fails to match the GTX.

Overall in summary the 2900 looks like something with potential but also not yet ready for market if they can sort out the performance problems and get the 2900 to pull its socks up so it at least consistently matches or beats the 8800GTS 640 in most games it would be good recommendation but the 8800GTX is still there sitting on top as well.

TerrorFirmer

Actually not terrible news. For some of us, still using fairly old parts now, it's actually more or less excellent. I was going to get an 8800GTS in a few weeks but this looks like it's the far better option. Not so good news though, for those that were holding off on the GTX hoping that Ati would come up trumps across the board.

Although not too keen on the consistant comments on the fan...my machine isn't exactly silent but I could do without a 'hair-dryer' noise whenever I'm playing...

8T8

Yeah the fan thing bothers me as well I was secretly hoping for more as a long standing NVIDIA user back from the Riva 128 days I thought it was time for a change but ATI go and disappoint me

The price is very tempting and in some benchmarks it comes close to the 8800GTX that might hint at some potential but how many months/driver updates will it be before we know the final verdict, NVIDIA aren't sitting still either rumours abound that G90 is on schedule which means god's known what is coming later this year, G90 being an evolved G80 like NV40{GF6}/G70{GF7} plus driver updates to the 8 series could further improve it's standing.

superfly

they are saying that the power up noise is due to 2d/3d modeller and will be sorted with future drivers

8T8

Yeah I saw that hopefully they can get the fan under control as it's somewhat erratic though their driver teams have their work cut out with the memory controller and AA algorithms to tweak on top of that.

German site PCGH has published benchmarks from the Lost Planer demo coming out tomorrow or very soon I believe anyway this is all done in Direct-X10 & it does not look good for ATI.

http://www.pcgameshardware.de/?article_id=601352

It should be noted that Lost Planet is being ported with assistance by NVIDIA from the Xbox 360 but still the Xbox 360 GPU shares architecture traits with HD2900 and should be doing a lot better but it's not I hope it's just drivers.

christophicus

Lol guys are saying the 2900xt is the better option over the GTS? I have only read one review (hardocp) but going by the frame rates/power draw the 2900xt is soundly beaten. And you are also saying the fan is loud , lol, they ( hardocp) said the fan was actually quite quiet.

Funny how info can be so contradictory.

8T8

The summary opinion of most of the reviews state the fan is quite load in operation not every review is the same like for instance with benchmarks you can paint a different picture but I would go with the general consensus over just one site like [H]ardOCP who did pan it at the end of their review and call it ATI's NV30 (which I think it quite unfair to ATI/AMD BTW).

Not saying the 2900XT is better than the 8800GTS 640 at this time it isnt but it would be if
* ATI get the fan under control
* ATI sort out the drivers & stabilize the performance so it's at minimum on par with the GTS.

If and that's a big if then it would be a good competitor to the 8800GTS 640 but as it stands now it's not.

On a side note one thing ATI might also have improved though I did not see it explicitly mentioned is Crossfire seems to be working very effectively on these cards as the benchmarks in Firingsquad show.

Anti

I have a feeling ATI's drivers will turn the tables. ATI have always been known for the last few years to have a much better driver dev team.

papu

for the price that it is 399 thats only 30-50 euros more expensive than the gts i think it has promising and that its Fully Dx10 supported and ati are vistas new bed buddy;) ,Hopefully there will much better drivers to come and it'l show its true potential

As for crossfire
http://techreport.com/reviews/2007q2/radeon-hd-2900xt/index.x?pg=14

how does a single card which gets beaten by the gts somtimes manage to trump 2X gtx's??!?

does anybody know of any resonable psus that have a 8pin PCIe rail? something from 500w-700?

papu

http://it-review.net/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1314&Itemid=1

if this is to be believed, it looks like it'l turn out to be a pretty good card XD

8T8

The card can use two 6 pin connectors so an SLI PSU should do the job as they often come with dual 6 pin connections like this Tagan 600W or Seasonic 700W.

The crossfire performance does look good it is unusual to get almost double the frame rate as usually you only get 2/3 thirds of an improvements or less.

Still I would be wary of the card this early as drivers may or may not fix it's problems and the rumour is this will be like the X1800XT/X1900XT fiasco so you may be better of waiting for R650.

TerrorFirmer

What was the X1800XT/X1900XT fiasco?? I'm assuming you mean in a poor marketing sense or release date or in relation to rival cards (7900gt or whatever) - not as actual performers in their own right?

I skipped that series and went straight to the X1950pro, but I did just buy an x1800xt on adverts there for 80 euro...:eek:

BadCharlie

I find my x1950xt card very good. I know his on about the x1900xt card but there is not much dif between the two.

I have done some reading mostly on the overclockers forms. And the new ATI card does not appear to be all that good. High power needs and not good enough proformance. Maybe drivers can help ATI but from what i have read it does not look like that will help all that much.

Which is a shame as id like to have seen ATI take the crown " Yes i am a ATI fanboy " Just have had to many problems with Nvidia cards and never any with ATI.

8T8

The X1900/50XT was what the X1800XT should have been in the first place, now the X1800XT isn't quite the lemon the 2900XT is at the moment but I imagine ATI are working on getting the R650 {2950XT} ready as quickly as possible.

Oh yeah Papu if you are really going to go through with it and getting a 2900XT those PSU suggestions where for a single card not Crossfire I would suggest getting a 800W or higher PSU for that.

Guru3D did a Crossfire review and gives a more balanced view, Crossfire does indeed work well in some instances and not so well in others but they did give a link to a Euro shop where they are selling the X2900XT for just €360 I wonder if the deliver to IE.

conzy

Found a 2900xt for 356 euros , hardwareversand do deliver to ireland,and are a reputable company

http://www2.hardwareversand.de/7VX4iCiUM9BIhQ/3/articledetail.jsp?aid=10061&agid=717

8T8

conzymaher what are hardwareversand.de like to order from have you used them before ?

papu

hardwareversand from what iver heard are a good company , khannie got some stuff from them , which included a scythe ninja for conzy , they only take bank transfers , shipping is near the 20 euro mark.

Il be ordering my new rig from them they have incredible prices

tedstokes168

Is it possible to make this card run directly from a wall plug power socket
and not have to go through the PSU in the PC?

papu

found this over at xtremesystems



apparently its the single card 05 world record , can someone with a gts or gtx run 05 to make comparisons?

8T8

Those 3D Mark scores have been flying around the place although a nice achievement they don't mean much as although the 2900XT performs extremely well in the synthetic benchmarks those results don't translate into real world games where it gets creamed in certain situations.

The highest score on 3DMarks 05 Orb is an 8800 Ultra coming in at 30020.

The highest score for a 2900XT is 31153 on the Orb but doesn't say if it's Crossfire or not probably isn't.

papu

Bloody 800 euro cards!! :mad:

maybe if i dont buy a pc , just an 8800 and a monitor :rolleyes:

Timans

That 2900XT 3dMark05 score is running at 1024x768 res. That's pretty damn low and will surely bring a better score, no?

I may be wrong so, don't hurt me please.

papu

thats the default setting for 05 and its what all the benchies are run at ,

btw 2900 world record

seems legit 2900 is king at 05 hurray!

hope it can do the same for games

christophicus

That probably uses very few shaders and aa, which are wa reall cripple te 2900. Also apprently in general as the res goes up e gts start betingte 2900