R600: ATI Radeon HD 2900 XT

what would you guys recommend (classes, books) that would help a noob like myself better understand all the architecture stuff?

anyway, amazing how different this review is compared to others. just goes to show i made the right choice in making this site my "home". excellent review. not trying to be a brown nose here at all, but damn tim, this was worth the wait. other than 2 games, the 640 mb gts won or held on, and the 320 mb card held its own. im dumbfounded. even more confusing is that someone would post this...

Originally Posted by teamtd11
Nice review, when this card drops to under £250, and the Danger Den block is out, im getting 1 :D

what in that review made you decide this was the card to go with? is there something i am totally missing in the architecture stuff? or are you assuming that this card will drop in price and the nvidea cards will hold steady, thereby making this a better buy? and you don't pay your electricity bill? from what ive seen, the gts is definitely the way to go, and unless you play Prey or Quake ONLY, you might save money and grab the 320...

Originally Posted by Mankz.
Tim, when are the XTX's coming round for a little B-T review?

when AMD releases one (hint: maybe never)

Still waiting to c how R600 mid range does...after being less than impressed with 8600 cards....looks like a 320mb 8800GTS is still the best bang for buck way to go for now.

Wow. Tim, so does that mean that the XT is AMD's only anwser until R650?

Originally Posted by Mankz.
Wow. Tim, so does that mean that the XT is AMD's only anwser until R650?

If that was true Tim then wait a minute... Won't nVidia release the successor to G80 (read: G90) around the same time AMD will release R650 (if rumours are to be believed)? And will R650 be a complete new architecture or 'just' a re-design? (same question goes for G90)

Originally Posted by steveo_mcg
In that case, time to re-read the PSU round up. 700w ought to give plenty of over head for SLI and other bits and pieces. Cheers for both articles just what the doctor (bank man) ordered.

I wouldn't count on that... the guys at hardocp.com said they were able to burn out a 750watt PSU running two of these things in CF

Originally Posted by pendragon
I wouldn't count on that... the guys at hardocp.com said they were able to burn out a 750watt PSU running two of these things in CF

2x R600, X6800, 2 GB RAM, HDD ~ 500+ W right?
What did they use? I can see 2 possibilities here

• more/different hardware
• bad PSU

Surely its more than 500W. Must be close to the 850W of the GTX/Ultra in SLi.

Take a look here:

http://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/2007/05/16/r600_ati_radeon_hd_2900_xt/21

Or for the lazy ones:

http://img502.imageshack.us/my.php?image=snap1lt7.jpg

Yea, too lazy to photoshop/paint it. :)

It's pretty disappointing to me too because I really did want to go back to the red side, but...I just can't justify spending $430 when I can get a GTS 320 for $299 and not really see any difference in performance at my resolution.

essentially, if you have a psu rated at 620 watts and 85% eff (corsair hx620 maybe?)...it would failt to power that crossfire rig under load...wow...

Originally Posted by Neogumbercules
It's pretty disappointing to me too because I really did want to go back to the red side, but...I just can't justify spending $430 when I can get a GTS 320 for $299 and not really see any difference in performance at my resolution.

why spend $299 on a 320 mb when a 640 only costs $30 more? :D

That test set up is great compared to the High Speed Tech Station or whatever it was, almost makes me want to go and make one for the p3 rig that's begging me for a home.

thanks for that Tim S. excellent BT review. !!

shame its no GTS beater. and that its soo power hungry !! I am very glad they ditched the crossfire dongle. the gold fingers are much better.

i shall be holding on to my x1950xtx for as long as possible untill it "cant" physically play my games with good settings

Originally Posted by Pie_uk
i shall be holding on to my x1950xtx for as long as possible untill it "cant" physically play my games with good settings

yeah, and that should be awhile right? a shame for sure though. was hopin it would smoke the gts, so they'd drop the price further for my birthday (may 28th)...o well...

Originally Posted by trig
essentially, if you have a psu rated at 620 watts and 85% eff (corsair hx620 maybe?)...it would failt to power that crossfire rig under load...wow...



why spend $299 on a 320 mb when a 640 only costs $30 more? :D

You're right. I was just checking the prices at newegg and the 640 I was looking at was $60 more and had a $30 rebate. ;)

Originally Posted by Tim S
What games?

Company of Heroes/Supreme Commander and Oblivion please :)

Originally Posted by pendragon
I wouldn't count on that... the guys at hardocp.com said they were able to burn out a 750watt PSU running two of these things in CF

That's a **** PSU then. :P

**cough.....Thermaltake.....cough**

This do the job? Tagan Dual-Engine 650W PSU

I wouldn't recommend anything less than a good 750W unit in CrossFire.

Even for the 8800? bugger, thats about all i was wanting to pay.

single card will be fine on a 650W unit.

but not sli? ahh nuts i can just see this upgrade going up.

Just out of interest how much overhead should you allow on a PSU, for example your test rig was drawing 522w at load with the cf 2900xt would a 200w over head be enough so a good 750 or would you go higher? Excuse the questions i've not actually bout a PSU in several years.

These power requirements are getting out of hand, CPU wattage plummets, whilst GPU has skyrocketed. My credit card would weep at the very sight of a pair of these.

I can just see it now "1kW PSU Required" = there goes the mortgage payment. That's it, I've decided, back to wiki.. *cough* I mean a real, book form encyclopedia, typewriter and candlelight...

Tim do you think driver maturity will show a significant increase in performance to raise it above GTS levels?