ATI Radeon HD 2900 XT review roundup

We've already seen it benchmarked, but those of you considering ATI's new top-end Radeon HD 2900 XT graphics card now have a number of full-on reviews to sink your teeth into, all of which seem to be roughly in line with each other. On the all important point of performance, ExtremeTech, HotHardware, and [H] Enthusiast each found that the card held its own against NVIDIA's GeForce 8800 GTS in the usual array of tests, although it fell well short of NVIDIA's pricier GeForce 8800 GTX, which ATI still has no answer to. All three also found many of the same things to complain about, most notably the card's noise and excessive power consumption, although ATI is promising a driver update to cut down on some of the racket. HotHardware also points out that the ATI card likely has more room to grow through driver updates than the NVIDIA, and speculates that a 65nm version of the card could arrive "sooner rather than later." Until then, however, all three look to be sticking with NVIDIA hardware, with the 8800 GTS offering a better value for the money, and the 8800GTX providing the necessary all-out performance to those who demand such things.

Read - Extreme Tech ([8/10)
Read - HotHardware
Read - [H] Enthusiast

[Thanks, Mathieu]

[SumYungGai @ May 14th 2007 12:57PM]

ZZZzz... Poor ATI - All R600 parts were pWNED by 8800GTX right out of the gate... Oh well there's always the drawing board.

[rock99rock @ May 14th 2007 12:59PM]

links arent active guys

[Andrew H. @ May 14th 2007 1:27PM]

needs more flames!!!!!!
inside joke for those who remember the comments on this article =p
( http://www.engadget.com/2007/04/22/ati-radeon-hd-2600-xt-snapped-in-the-wild/ )

[steve @ May 14th 2007 1:52PM]

I belive these flames in question actually represent a warning label, as in "if you touch this damn thing when it's running, it's gonna burn!". Read the reviews, this card sucks up the juce and throws off the heat. Now, I'm not saying the 8800's don't do the same, but at least Nvidia didn't put fricken flames on the thing to advertise the heat!

[Christian Martin @ May 14th 2007 1:37PM]

I just bought a 8800GTS for $150 less than this thing costs. I regret nothing.

Thanks for reaffirming my apathy toward this card, ATI.

Development cycle:

"It's coming!"
"It's really in development and it's AWESOME!"
"No, really; it has FLAMEZ! It's gonna be GREAT!"
"We changed it's name! You KNOW it's good now!"
"Eh, here you go. It's kinda okay. Have some free games, or something."

[Dustin Frazier @ May 14th 2007 2:00PM]

I'm glad I bought the best of the best months ago so I don't have to worry about all this gts vs xt crap. I must admit though that it will be fun going in to work tomorrow and poking fun at the ATI fanboys.

[JD @ May 14th 2007 3:12PM]

Um, did you guys actually READ the [H] review? The GTS consistently, and I mean, very consistently, out-performed the R600. Across the board, if I'm not mistaken, and I really like their hardware test formats. Benchmarks don't really impress me any more. Quote: "The GeForce 8800 GTS 640 MB is $50 cheaper, performs better, and draws a lot less power than the 2900 XT."

Doesn't sound like it held it's own to me against the GTS. Well, Nvid has my money this time round. Thanks for the huge buildup to this fizzle, ATI. Perhaps if they hadn't tried to hype it up so much, like saying it has 320 stream procs vs. 8800's 128..... oh well. Maybe next generation, right? Hope AMD procs are not this lame.

[James @ May 14th 2007 3:24PM]

So, call me a total newb, but is there any point to having ANY video card made after 2006 at this point?

If you have a 30" LCD and *must* run at 4096x2160 or whatever and need two dual-link DVIs and a gig of video RAM, OK, buy the hottest thing out there, but if the only improvement is getting 120 FPS (instead of only 95) in Battlefield (or being able to run a tech demos of Crysis), why waste all that cash? The same cards are going to be 100-300 dollars cheaper this time next year, so as far as I can see, the only people who are going to bother have more money than sense.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but a modern rig with 2GB of fast RAM, a medium- or high-end Core 2 Duo, and last year's Hot Shit video card should be able to smoke anything you throw at it (well, maybe not SupCom, but that's a processor issue)... right? I mean, future proofing is worth *something*, but wouldn't you be better off spending $200-$250 on something near the top of the pile (Radeon x1900?) now, then another $300 on the almost-but-not-quite top-of-the-line card two or three years down the line, instead of spending $550-$600 on a very-slightly-better top-of-the-line card all at once? I don't think I've ever spent much more than $200 on a video card, and I don't think we (the "hobby" gamers) will ever have a very compelling reason to do so.

[Dustin Frazier @ May 14th 2007 3:37PM]

You answered your own question James. The high end video cards are meant for those running resolutions at 1900x1200 and above. Your idea also only works if you plan on never buying a new game for a year or more. There are games coming out now that definitely make the 8800gtx work to sustain acceptable frame rates at high resolutions. Heck many 2006 games only get 40-50 fps at high settings. So don't put your world on everyone else. $500-600 every few years is pretty cheap when it comes to hobbies.

[eh @ May 14th 2007 4:32PM]

It took ATI 6 months to come up with a card thats worse than the 8800? I was convinced it was going to be a lot better, especially with Nvidia releasing the 8800 Ultra. Its the x800 all over again, that thing was a massive failure compared to the 6800 with dx9.0c.

[Davo @ May 14th 2007 5:13PM]

Interesting here with the S.T.A.L.K.E.R. nubmers.
http://www.hothardware.com/articles/ATI_Radeon_HD_2900_XT__R600_Has_Arrived/?page=18


The HD 2900 gets murdered in single card mode but blows out the GTS in CrossFire versus SLI. Heads-up NV, driver glitch?

[James @ May 14th 2007 6:03PM]

Dustin: true, but for that same $600 I can buy an entire PS3 (or perhaps better yet a 360 and a handful of games) and be all but guaranteed to get full framerates at every resolution supported by the system. I guess the real issue I have is that I can't understand why anybody feels the need to run at 1900x1200 (or whatever)... I mean, at some point I suspect you stop being able to discern a significant difference. I guess if you have a wall-sized display (one of those setups with 4 projectors that use a camera to align themselves with each other, maybe), you might "need" 4+ megapixels, but for a desktop or even mid-sized TV setup, I don't think you get much out of the jump from 1280x1024 (1.2 MP) up to 3 or 4 or more.

Then again, the first new-gen console I bought was the Wii, so I guess I'm not the guy to ask about "tweaker" graphics...

[Dustin Frazier @ May 14th 2007 6:31PM]

Sit three feet away from a 30" screen with a resolution of 1280x1024. You will soon realize why higher res is absolutely necessary for close up big screen computing. Imagine 480i on a 60" big screen.

[SumYungGai @ May 14th 2007 8:22PM]

@James

my friend, people NEED to run at 1920x1200 if they have a 24" LCD display and that's the screen's native resolution. Everyone knows that monitors look best at their native res.

I had a 7900GTX that I bought a year ago, didn't use it much, and then Company of Heroes came around and the card stuttered at 1920x1200 resolution. That game was so great it made me go out and want to buy something that showed the game off in all its beauty. I bought the 8800GTX and it was worth every penny - TO ME (granted all the readers here that still get a weekly allowance from mom as their means to buying PC upgrades will ofcourse disagree).

Also, the argument that you could get a PS3 or XBOX360 is apples vs. oranges - there is simply no match on the console for games like Company of Heroes, or more significantly CRYSIS (the game that will rule them all). When Crysis comes out, have yourself a look at it running on a high-end rig and then tell me if anything else in existence comes anywhere close. Another reason I got the 8800GTX was for Crysis, though i'll probably have to SLI a couple of them and pair them up with a Quadcore CPU to get max eyecandy, but so be it - you only live once.

[Fruition @ Jun 11th 2007 6:35PM]

I quite agree with you, native res is the only way to play on an LCD monitor...

But the way I deal with this is by buying a low-res monitor... Much easier on my wallet :D

[samuel @ Feb 19th 2008 8:40PM]

ok i see your point. but ps3 can actually handle open gl 2.1
while xbox 360 need to be rebuilt from scratch. since it can not support dx10.
take a ps3 play full auto 2:battlelines. this game is rendered in opengl 2.0 or dx 9.0 at extreme high levels of graphic. notice that the machine is having some difficulty at some places. well when you make absoulutly everything destructible. even building walls. then your just giving hard time to your graphic engine. the cell can more then handle it. cod4 seems to be the smoothest hd games out in the ps3. shows very well what the machine can do if the game is well coded. so about dx10 and open gl 2.1. they wont rebuild new machines. and thinking about it. i don't think they will make another xbox. cause it is far more profitable to microsoft if ppl keep getting new comps.

[wy45v3y3 @ May 14th 2007 9:38PM]

The point that went unnoticed with Dustin Frazier's post is this, you don't need the newest card to improve your game. People with good cards are generally nub.

[LT73 @ May 14th 2007 10:58PM]

These things are completely environmentally irresponsible. Every time you turn your PC on, remember that somewhere in the world, someone will suffer because of it.

Ridiculous.

[Neil @ May 15th 2007 12:15PM]

Yeah, It is usually me owning someone in CSS.

[shimman @ May 14th 2007 11:15PM]

great performance & all, but too expensive & uses too much power...probably better wait for 2950 version

[tau zero @ May 15th 2007 4:02AM]

Pfft, I knew it wasnt going to be very good... they took 2 X's out of the name, Radeon HX 2900XT (as opposed to Radeon X2900XTX)

[David @ May 16th 2007 12:46AM]

Well I have a 30" Dell 3007WFP with a native resolution of 2560x1600, and any lower, non-native resolutions look blurry on this thing. So if my graphics are going to be crisp I need to run at the native resolution. I also have an old 24" Sony GDM-FW900 widescreen CRT which handles non-native resolutions beautifully, and does a wonderful 2304x1440 widescreen, as well as 1920x1200 and 2048x1536. Text is not very crisp on the Sony running in high resolutions though, so I generally prefer my Dell, but I would love it if they could shrink the pixel pitch from its .25mm and do the same 2560x1600 in a smaller diagonal so that the individual pixels would be less noticeable. We may see monitors like that in another year or so once they start releasing hardware that supports the new DisplayPort interface.

At any rate, I think the new Radeon HD 2900 XT looks like a great value in terms of the performance you get for the price, but I'd much rather spend my money on a pair of GeForce 8800 GTX or 8800 Ultra so that I can get some decent framerates at my Dell's native resolution. Otherwise I know I'll regret not spending that extra cash when I sit down to a session of Oblivion, S.T.A.L.K.E.R., Crysis or Hellgate: London.

[Will @ Nov 24th 2007 2:08AM]

david Dell monitors suck.. Crappy monitors will display blurry pictures out side the native res. I own a Sony and a Samsung 22inch and both look very crisp outside their native Resolutions.. Hell I still play games at 1024x768 on my Sony.. I don't really give a crap about the little difference I can see between 1024x768 or the max resolution I could use.. People worry more about graphics than the quality of the game..Probably why games are horse shit compared to games made in the 80's and early 90's.. Games today have the worst scripting and endings in the history of gaming.. I can't even give a game a AAA title for the last 8 years.. That is how bad games are today. But hey make a crap mass market game with pretty graphics and the kids these days will eat it up.. In the End a sharper image is great but not needed to really enjoy a game because if you need that to do so the game probably sucks..

Cheers

[mobius1283 @ May 1st 2008 4:38PM]

ok, goes to show how much people know about computers here. Let me explain..... the reason ati runs hot is because it has a higher core clock than the nvidia.... but because of nvidia cring to microsoft saying " we can't do ram vertualization ( direct gpu access ) on vista" microsoft removed it totaly screwing up ati's drivers, therefor u recive glitches and poor performance from the ati card. That explains y u recieve poor frame rates in direct x 10 mode, all thanx to nvidia.

[Nick @ Aug 5th 2008 9:37AM]

I have to say that I purchased this card and have absolutely no problems with it other than a little heat every now-and-then. However, what video card doesn't throw off a shit-load of heat?

nVidia and ATI both make mean products. But, when it comes to universal usage, ATI, with no contest, outdoes nVidia. I use my video card to do everything from gaming, 3D animation, video editing, etc. and it slides through all of them. Yes, nvidia is capable (more than capable) of handling such things, but at what cost? I started buying nvidia in the beginning just to find out that some games worked great while other ones of lesser quality couldn't hardly run at all. I made my switch to ATI to find out that it could run everything equally well.

There will always be those that back one or the other. I tend to back ATI because of its versatility...a versatility nvidia lacks to this day.