Hardware R600: ATI Radeon HD 2900 XT

http://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/2007/05/16/r600_ati_radeon_hd_2900_xt/1



please email/PM me if you spot any errors - thanks!

 

Good read.

The alignment of the text labels on many of the graphs are slightly off though, which can make reading them a little challenging. :/

Keep the good stuff commin.

Aggies

 

Pheww! Finally the wait's over! So when was the R650 due again?

 

going to read this when i get back from work, cant wait!

 

Interesting. I was holding off on the 8800GTS 320 until this review and I'm still not really swayed from the 320. The 2900 XT is definitely a nice unit but I don't really think the performance gains justify the extra $100 or so price tag. I'm only going to be playing at 1680x1050.

Awesome review though. Kept me busy for about an hour (I had to read that wiki article, too).

 

The best hardware review I have read for quite some time on the internet, great job Tim.

8800GTS it is then

 

Wow, finally finished eh? You must be relieved to finally finish this review. Nicely done.

 

Very very informative a quick query though (tech one)

With the Ultra Thread Despatcher, you say that it will move a process back if it waits on data. IIRC this is kind of like CPU waiting for instructions or DATA that isn't on RAM, then it has to wait for it to be fetched from swap and/or long term storage first.

In Linux it is possible to get the hit/miss ratio for these latency inducing errors, is this possible with a current (or future) R600 driver?

Also, is the 55W power difference between 975/680i the same with G80 hardware installed?

 

Interesting read. Performance-wise it's not what I hoped for. Not that I was planning to upgrade to R600 but I think I'll have to wait for Radeon HD 2900 XTX to finally make my decisions whether 6 months of waiting would have made sense or (fortunately) not.

 

Are you using IE6?

 

overclock it. Push th memory to spec and lets see what she can do. Drivers obviously need to mature and going against the 8800 GTS was a smart move. I hate the power consumption. Hmmm. I wonder how ATI will do. Seems like they've been struggling for far to long.

 

CTRL+F5 - slight CSS change

 

Nice to know my GTX is still a good buy, even though I know it is not in direct competition with it. Great review there Tim

 

wow another great article,
looks like the r600 has flopped a bit compared to the specualtion, and it was late! sounds like amd is in a bit of trouble!

 

I still think its a nice card. I mean cumon! It has go-faster flames!

That does have to be one of the best reviews I've EVER read.

mucho congrats Tim and the Team.

 

Hopefully this will drive 8800 prices down. Now I can see why you were up for days writing this Tim, that's one hell of an article though I will admit I skipped the tech bits at the beginning as I'm far too tired right now.

 

I wouldn't expect it to drive the prices down, nVidia's are about the same if not a bit cheaper and they perform better than the ATi counterpart.

IF ATi lower their prices to compete on bang for buck THEN nVidia will drop their prices, but I wouldn't expect that for at least 6 weeks (due to ATi supply issues)

 

Nice review, when this card drops to under £250, and the Danger Den block is out, im getting 1

 

Sorry, speaking of water-cooling, I'm guessing that a MAZE 4/5 would fit, but wouldn't work properly because of the GPU Shim..??

 

Excellent review.

After you said that supply issues had driven prices up, I went to have a look. If I'd ordered one on Monday, I could have had it for more than £45 less than I will have to pay if I order one today! Cheeky buggers!