ATI's Radeon HD 2900 XT benchmarked, trumps NVIDIA's GeForce 8800 GTS

Although preliminary testing proved that ATI's R600 architecture wasn't messing around, DailyTech added another layer of proof to the pudding as it benchmarked a bonafide Radeon HD 2900 XT against NVIDIA's 640MB GeForce 8800 GTS. The DirectX 10-capable card is a notch above the HD 2600 XT that was snapped in the wild, and the tested unit featured 320 stream processors, 512MB of GDDR3 RAM, a dual-slot "blower-type heat sink," dual dual-link DVI ports, and a serious desire to crank out impressive FPS numbers. While the marks weren't the end-all answer to the ATI vs. NVIDIA question, the Radeon managed to best its opponent in every single trial, including Call of Duty 2, Company of Heroes, F.E.A.R., Oblivion, 3DMark06, Maya 02, Cadalyst C2006, and a few more for good measure. Of course, we're sure NVIDIA will be hitting back with something of its own, but feel free to hit the read link if you take pleasure in graphical beat downs with ATI escaping victorious.

[Thanks, Mathieu]

[TheGuy @ Apr 24th 2007 11:46AM]

Yes, but can it play Doom?

(sorry if this joke is getting old, but someone had to say it)

[Darren Wilson @ Apr 24th 2007 11:46AM]

And ATI have working drivers for Vista. Oh dear nVidia, looks like you are playing massive catch up again both on performance and actually making your products work under Vista.

[apeguero @ Apr 24th 2007 11:50AM]

Will it work on a MacPro?

[strider_mt2k @ Apr 24th 2007 12:09PM]

Will it blend?

[sartinsauce @ Apr 24th 2007 1:19PM]

Yes, thank you for asking! That is the ultimate question: Will it Blend!

[Hex @ Apr 24th 2007 12:26PM]

Man, I was going to buy a new 8800GTS in June when I rebuild, but if these are coming out it will have to be one of them instead.

[Karl @ Apr 24th 2007 12:29PM]

The best thing NVidia could do to combat this is to drop their prices.

I do generally prefer ATI cards though. No particular reason, I've just always had solid experiences with them.

[Chrisboff @ Apr 24th 2007 12:30PM]

They should have tested it with the nVidia 8800 GTX xXx. Wonder how it holds up against that card.

[Vasilis @ Apr 24th 2007 1:05PM]

They should have very true, however maybe they thought the XT will be followed by an XTX so that would be the answer to the GTX while the XT is going head to head with the GTS. Of course everything will depend on the price of all those cards when the R600 show up in the stores.

Having said that I am much more interested to see how the HD2600XT performs against the 8600GTS. The X1600 was never quite as good as the 7600 but this time around the 8600 seems a bit weak even compared to 7600 cards.

[Arthur @ Apr 25th 2007 12:06AM]

The GTX would have beaten the ATI card, it did not "trounce" anything.

[Momir @ May 3rd 2007 6:31AM]

Many of youask the same question - what about faster 8800GTX, and no one sees that this is slower against slower - there will also be ATI 2900XTX card (with 1GB DDR4) against 8800GTX or more preferably against some future 8800GTX ultra, and this 2900XT with 512MB DDR4 is measurable with GTS 640MB. And (most probably) better.
Bye.

[ogi @ Apr 24th 2007 12:59PM]

It beat 8800 GTS, what about the faster 8800 GTX?

Or actually that doesn't matter, as long as ATI doesn't have any good linux drivers I'm going to buy Nvidia cards only.

[Revrant2394 @ Jun 28th 2007 9:38PM]

You wait for the XTX version, 1GB will make it comparable, and Gosh, no Linux drivers, suuuuch a pity.

Hear that everyone? Go home, it's over.

[Maestro @ Apr 24th 2007 1:36PM]

Look, this might beat the 8800 gts in the lab, but is really something the human eye can detect? Can I tell the difference between 125fps and 150fps? That's probably not discernable by the human eye.

I have had both ATI and NVIDIA cards. I currently have an 8800 in a Vista rig and am generally happy with it. I know there are some driver issues, but real world gaming seems to be working just fine with everything pegged to max.

[Jason @ Jun 2nd 2007 4:34PM]

With the resolutions and settings I use, neither of those cards would be doing 150fps or 125fps. 1920x1200 all the way.

[ZacMatic @ Apr 24th 2007 2:12PM]

What's retarded is they're comparing these cards at 1280x1024! If I'm going to shell out $400 for a video card, I'm going to hook it up to a 1920x1200 display. We'll have to wait for AnandTech to do some proper benchmarking.

[butler @ Apr 24th 2007 2:18PM]

ATI may have drivers that work in Vista, but nvidia drivers have always been way better in XP and linux than ATI in my opinion.

[Neebs @ Apr 24th 2007 2:28PM]

And my 8600GT arrives right when I pull up Google Reader to see this. Whoopee.

[Max @ Apr 24th 2007 3:14PM]

Hell, I just got my 8600GTS, but that's cool, I got it for my HTPC, so I can watch those HD DVD movies.

[Paris K @ Apr 24th 2007 2:58PM]

That card is on fire!

[gabriel.feron @ Apr 24th 2007 3:23PM]

Yes I think it will blend!

[J. Kovach @ Apr 24th 2007 4:39PM]

Yeah it performs well against Nvidia's 3rd or 4rth best product...but how does it benchmark against the 768MB GTX? I bet it cant even touch it or come close.

[J. Kovach @ Apr 24th 2007 4:42PM]

Right on man I totally agree with you. Lets compare apples to apples and put the manufactures 2 best products in a comparison...not a #1 ranked product against a #4 ranked product.

[J. Kovach @ Apr 24th 2007 5:31PM]

1 other thing too... Nvidia was first to the market with the 8000 series product with directX10. Of course ATI is going to have to come up with a product all late in the ball game and then pay Engadet to say its the end-all best card out there.

[Aaron @ Apr 26th 2007 10:36PM]

How is it late to the ball game if DX10 games haven't even been released? And the 2900XT is meant to be a competitor to the 8800GTS. The 2900XTX is the competitor to the 8800GTX.

[Chuckles McGee @ Apr 24th 2007 5:54PM]

Oh wow, I bet AMD's newest chip will be faster than a year old chip budget chip from Intel! That's newsworthy!

[waffles @ Apr 24th 2007 7:43PM]

Hmm...but what about price?
Click for an 8800gts w/ 320mb ram for $260

I doubt these new ati cards will cost any less than $450. =(

[waffles @ Apr 24th 2007 7:43PM]

hmm, link tag didn't show up..
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814130082

[Purveyor of justice @ Apr 24th 2007 8:46PM]

Read, the link fools. This is comparing apples with apples; this is not ATi's flagship card.
It will be debuting along side the 2900 XTX which will be more powerful; they are comparing it to the 640mb 8800 not the 320.

[idfk @ Apr 24th 2007 9:34PM]

There will be an HD 2900XTX which hasn't been benched yet. the XT versions have always been up against the GTS's and GT's. As we've seen, the 2900XTX will be an 11" card, this one is 9".

What's 125fps to 150? Crysis isn't out yet, wait.. then you'll see!

[o_O @ Apr 24th 2007 10:03PM]

Yes, yes. But 6 months too late.

[Sup123101 @ Apr 25th 2007 12:26AM]

hold ur horses everyone, for most of u uninformed folks this is the XT not the XTX, and for those talking about Intel vs AMD CPU's. it took 3 years for Intel to take AMD, and only 1 year for AMD?...not very fair now are you, ATI will have their flagship soon, while Nvidia releases their new ones after and then vice versa, just buy the better one at the time, don't complain, If u wanna complain go make your own video card lol

[Keaton @ Apr 25th 2007 5:03AM]

Nice to see AMD winning back in one of the market segments...

[Dan @ Apr 25th 2007 8:14AM]

Does anyone know any truth to the rumours that the R600 will include Physx style API's/architecture onboard. I've seen the videos for Cellfactor, and physx excites me greatly

[plinsker @ Apr 25th 2007 10:01AM]

I wish engadget would stop referencing the level505 benchmarks everytime they do an article on the R600... They were faked...it was horribly obvious 4 months ago it's just plain fact now

not that the cards going to be bad but quit linking that article it's very annoying :)

[Anonymous @ Apr 25th 2007 2:41PM]

Others have already said it, and I'll reiterate, that ATI had months of extra time to continually tweak their new card until it could beat Nvidia's 8800GTS.

I find it a little redundant that people are benchmarking cards made for DirectX 10, with DirectX 9 games and benchmarking applications. I realize that no DirectX 10 games are on the market, but why do I want to know how well it performs with DirectX 9? What does that tell me?

[Christopher Hevey @ May 13th 2007 5:23PM]

Well at least we seem to have a very competitive card.
My question though is if I hook this up as my primary will it play nice with the very expensive 1950xtx I bought last year

[rocket859 @ May 17th 2007 11:35AM]

Il just take a guess and say noone actually reads the articles or the benchmarks. But if you didnt, ATI basically made the Edsel of videocards. It consumes more power than an 8800 GTS (320MB)and consumes more Resources than an 8800 GTS (320 MB) and barely outpreforms the normal 320 MB version of the 8800 GTS. While it cant even compare to the KO, XXX and GTX XXX versions of the 8800.

I was an ATI Supporter for a Long While, but i recently built a system that uses 2 8800 GTS KOs from EVGA and il never look back. It gets a score of 15046 on 3dMark06 in SLi and 10807 on 3dMark06 with a single 8800 GTS KO. Compared to when i benchmarked the Sapphire HD 2900 XT on the same system and ran a 9547 on 3DMark06. Sorry, but ATI has really let us down on this one.

[plumber @ May 22nd 2007 12:17PM]

NVIDIA play this trick:
update the driver to cut down some bits of filter/mapping or whatever to get better score. If you do compare the capture screen by screen you will find the trick of NVIDIA. I know it's hard to find out the difference when you are busy on gaming. However, it's what you pay for. It's compare only on the fps but the quility. I hate the trick.

[Joshua @ May 20th 2007 9:11AM]

The ATI HD 2900XT does not come close to the 8800GTX. Not even remotely. I saw 2 reviews that proves this. There is a good review at AnandTech.

[LiquidFusion @ May 21st 2007 3:07PM]

First off the facts are not right, It would be dumb to get the 2900 XT over the 8800 GTS (640mb). There is a good review posted http://enthusiast.hardocp.com/article.html?art=MTM0MSwxLCxoZW50aHVzaWFzdA== that I suggest you read before making your purchase, read it well... Plenty of benches showing that nVidia is still superior. Ontop of that with the price range dropping 2 GTS's on SLI would destroy the 1900 xt. Do research before making a costly decision.

[LiquidFusion @ May 21st 2007 3:23PM]

I mean 2900 XT ***

[eric @ May 22nd 2007 12:01PM]

The Bottom Line


“A day late and a dollar short.” Cliché but accurate. The Radeon HD 2900 XT is late to the party and unfortunately is bringing with it performance that cannot compete. The GeForce 8800 GTS 640 MB is $50 cheaper, performs better, and draws a lot less power than the 2900 XT.


This is as good as it is going to get for a while from ATI. The GeForce 8800 GTX will still dominate at the high end of the video card market. Of course we do not know about DX10 games yet, and there is no way to make any predictions how that comparison will turn out. As it stands right now the Radeon HD 2900 XT, in our opinion, is a flop. ATI needs to get its act together quickly. It needs to push out the mainstream cards soon and it needs to deliver a high end card that can actually compete at the high end of the market.

[eric @ May 22nd 2007 12:07PM]

Grass in Oblivion has always been a weakness with video cards. The previous generation Radeon X1K and GeForce 7 series could not enable grass at resolutions like 1600x1200 at all. The GeForce 8 series changed that, when it was introduced for the first time we were able to run with full grass enabled in Oblivion at high resolutions with AA to boot.


With the ATI Radeon HD 2900 XT we found that full grass is unplayable in this game even with AA disabled. With the grass notch off performance is very high, but if you bump the slider up one notch performance takes a tremendous hit. This doesn't happen everywhere there is grass in the game, but in several places throughout the game outdoors which have a lot grass that is seen far into the distance this does occur. It seems the GeForce 8800 GTS 640MB handles grass better in Oblivion.






Here are a few screenshots that were originally taken at 1600x1200; we resized them for easy viewing. With no grass the framerate is a very high 49 FPS. Once we enable medium grass it plummets down to 18 FPS. Full grass further declines down to 15 FPS. It could be a performance issue that is fixable through driver updates, but as it stands right now grass is a problem for the Radeon HD 2900 XT in Oblivion.


Besides grass, we found that we could enable every in-game setting in Oblivion with the Radeon HD 2900 XT. This includes full fade distances, full shadow filtering settings and HDR. We had to scale the grass back to 25% of its full view distance to achieve playable performance. We were even able to turn on 2X AA at 1600x1200 for a very enjoyable experience. This is much faster than the previous ATI champ the Radeon X1950 XTX could achieve in Oblivion.


The BFGTech GeForce 8800 GTS 640MB competes very well and is able to achieve 2X AA at 1600x1200 as well. We also found the same in-game quality settings playable with the addition of being able to raise the grass setting up to 50% of maximum. Notice that even with the grass at a higher setting the GeForce 8800 GTS is still pulling faster minimum, maximum and average framerates.


The GeForce 8800 GTX just simply is not even in the same class as the Radeon HD 2900 XT here. We are able to run at 8X AA with maximum grass and in-game settings with framerates that annihilate the Radeon HD 2900 XT in this game.

[eric @ May 22nd 2007 12:10PM]

We have discovered something very interesting about this video card. Despite what may be commonly perceived we do actually use 3DMark internally for specific testing purposes. There are a few things we use this program to check for; first of all we make sure the video card is stable before we begin gaming, kind of like a "burn in" test. Then we check the fillrate numbers to make sure the core GPU frequency is set where it should be. Finally we use the program as part of our overclock stability testing. As such, we ran 3DMark06 on the ATI Radeon HD 2900 XT and looked at the score in surprise.






In the above screenshot you will see the 3DMark06 score of 10723 on the ATI Radeon HD 2900 XT, 9105 on the GeForce 8800 GTS 640 MB and 11191 on the GeForce 8800 GTX. Yes, the 3DMark06 score and “game tests” are a good deal higher with the ATI Radeon HD 2900 XT compared to the GeForce 8800 GTS and is just shy of the GeForce 8800 GTX. If you were a benchmark enthusiast you might think wow, the ATI Radeon HD 2900 XT has to be faster in games because it is faster in 3DMark! By looking at 3DMark alone you would think it is almost as fast as a GeForce 8800 GTX. Well, you would be wrong.


Despite what the numbers in 3DMark are showing our evaluation has proven that the ATI Radeon HD 2900 XT is slower than a GeForce 8800 GTS when it comes to actually gaming. Even our apples-to-apples real gaming tests confirmed that the 8800 GTS is faster than the HD 2900 XT and nowhere close to the GeForce 8800 GTX, yet here sits 3DMark showing us the opposite!


This goes out to anyone who puts any faith into 3DMark, or any other synthetic benchmark or scripted timedemo, those number simply mean nothing in relation to real gaming performance. If you care about knowing how these video cards compare in actual games there is no other way to get that information than playing the games themselves just as you would do as a gamer

[Jackalope @ May 23rd 2007 11:36PM]

J. Kovach asked the right question. According to "CPU" mag Jan Vol 7, Issue 01, pg 21; the ASUS 8800GTX posted the following scores:
FEAR—122 FPS ; & Oblivion—65.5 FPS(HDR enabled; Outdoor) @ 1,280x 1,024.

Cost= 8800GTX $549.99 or HIS 2900XT $459.99

I'll spring for 2 8800's over 2 2900's any day. P.S. DX10 or Vista shouldn't even come into play for 2 years. If your smart you'll stick w/ XP until the kinks are out of Vista.

peace

[supreme @ Jun 6th 2007 12:26AM]

Ps3 uses Nvidia card , Xbox 360 uses Ati card, period. Im planning to buy a graphic card, and Im a noobie that know nothing about gpu.

I went to nvidia.com and ati.com to compare spec. and dont know why nvidia is cost more when the 8800 ultra version only has
128 stream processor but ati 2900xt has 320
384-bit for 8800 ultra while ati 2900xt has 512-bit

So is the 2900xt has better graphic? can someone help me why nvidia is lower in numbers as above but cost so much more like $800 when ati only 400 something. Thank guys

[Leo @ Jun 26th 2007 4:36PM]

Here is another review http://enthusiast.hardocp.com/article.html?art=MTM1MSw2LCxoZW50aHVzaWFzdA==
The ati 2900 is impressive but uses to much power and power supplies over 600w arnt cheap.

[alphaod @ Jun 28th 2007 11:27PM]

What I want to know is will it fit into a SilverStone SFF chassis. Even my X1900 XT is a tight fit and I know the 8800 GTS doesn't fit.

[spud @ Jul 19th 2007 7:08PM]

all I want to know is how well these two cards will perform at Crysis and there the 8800 might do better because the newer the game the more memory you are going to need (overclocked 8800 gts 320 mb versions can beat an ordinary 640 mb until it gets into memory intensive stuff)