R600: ATI Radeon HD 2900 XT

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

Anti-aliasing performance may increase when ATI starts to tweak the ring bus a bit, but I believe what you see in these games is what you're going to get (with AA disabled). Therefore, I think the massive performance improvements are going to come if games are developed to make the best use of ATI's architecture. If they're not, then you'll see the GTS outperform it (take Supreme Commander as a good example of this).

Since it's also a lot more flexible then previous iterations performance should increase as they improve the hit/miss ratio with memory management updates.

Originally Posted by Tim S
single card will be fine on a 650W unit.

Ehrm...my system is happily running with 500W... Seasonic f t w. :)
Or did you mean a R600 single card?

Originally Posted by DougEdey
Since it's also a lot more flexible then previous iterations performance should increase as they improve the hit/miss ratio with memory management updates.

Of course, but it's not going to improve performance in games that aren't written to take advantage of all five stream processors in each shader unit.

Originally Posted by Tim S
Of course, but it's not going to improve performance in games that aren't written to take advantage of all five stream processors in each shader unit.

I thought DX10 handled that side of things?

Originally Posted by aon`aTv.gsus666
Ehrm...my system is happily running with 500W... Seasonic f t w. :)
Or did you mean a R600 single card?

a single R600 will be okay on a 600-650W unit. At a push, you could get away with 550W, but that depends on the rest of your system.

Originally Posted by steveo_mcg
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.

I'd leave yourself 150-200W overhead on the numbers we've published in this review, also bear in mind that our test bench is a little cooler than your average case too. And finally, don't forget to take into account the number of hard drives, add-in cards and what not you have too -- we're running a fairly bare system here. ;)

The people at my uni are pure evil:

Originally Posted by My Uni Intarnet

We are fortunate to have with us Prof. Olivier Nocent from the IUT of Reims-Chalons-Charleville, France. Prof. Nocent is the Deputy director of the Computing Department and a leading figure in the field of computer graphics / image processing. He specialises in GPU programming techniques.

Prof. Nocent has agreed to give a day long intensive 'master class' in GPU programming to our staff and students tomorrow (Friday 18th May). He will be giving a 2 hour lecture followed by a whole afternoon of practical work in the Games Programming labs ....

I WANT TO GO! Why couldn't they have given more notice. :'(

Great review Tim!! With all that info I now know enough to go in to my basement and build two of these :D I will leave off the shim though so that I can water cool it easier (this will be just after I have built my self a nuclear power plant from 3 pieces of balsa wood and two rolls of duct tape)

Seriously though, fantastic review! I think we all had wished that it would perform better, if for no other reason than the great fan-boy discussions that would arise ;) (oh and competition is a good thing)

But then I have no plans of upgrading anytime soon (dictated by my bank, not me:'( )

Originally Posted by steveo_mcg
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.

i could be off here, but it depends on your psu's efficiency right? i mean, future proof yourself, if you know your gonna go sli, or add 3 more harddrives...or go quad core...but if you know you are never going to be doing anymore than about a 400 watt load draw, then figure out your efficiency rating and go from there...at 85% efficiency you would need at least about a 480 watt psu. give yourself some headroom of say...10-15% on top of that. i would think you would be good to go.

When it comes to power consumption under load, the Radeon HD 2900 XT can only be described as a hungry Star Jones looking for more food/talk shows

Away from that sad joke....

Why are we basing the R600's performance on DX9 games? I thought the whole reason for buying the card was to play games in DX10.....am I the only one who isn't understanding this? Also, the price may be high right now, but give a week or two for the supply to gain its ground and it'll go back down to what it was originally or maybe even lower. I'm waiting for the R650 personally and I can only imagine the OCing on that piece of sweet sweet kit. To me you have no reason to switch yet until DX10 games are out, so I wouldn't declare a winner yet.
Also, I like the kind of future-proofing that the R600 offers to the consumer in terms of the fully compatible HDMI 1.2 and PCI-E 2.0. Also for the price (or once it drops) you are getting a pretty good amount of features for a very reasonable price. The GTX/Ultra are still the uber cards and DAAMIT! they really do need to try and regain that performance crown (another sad joke), but man will those uber cards eat your wallet. I mean you might as well just get a 360 or a PS3 for that price......anyways my 2 cents...

Originally Posted by devdevil85
Why are we basing the R600's performance on DX9 games? I thought the whole reason for buying the card was to play games in DX10.....am I the only one who isn't understanding this?

huh? so you are saying that...since there are no dx10 games out...that we should go ahead and consider the 2900 xt a good buy because it doesnt matter that it is getting smoked on dx9? ur logic doesnt make any sense. if you want to upgrade, and you want a card over $200, it makes almost no sense to buy anything but dx10 capable hardware...and if you are going to do that, why would you buy the piece that a:sucks way too much power, b:gets beat on most games out right now, and c:when dx10 games come out, you have no idea if this card is going to perform better. so, why are we "bashing" the r600?? because it doesn't measure up at this point...i think the more accurate statement from you would be..

Originally Posted by devdevil85
I am the only one who isn't understanding this!

*this comment was removed by trig*

Take it easy, tigers ;)

yeah, sorry bindi...been on edge lately...shouldn't take it out on bit-techers..i love you all...except the devil...but im sure he's just misunderstood... :D

DirectX 10 performance will follow, but as it stands in current games, the Radeon HD 2900 XT isn't as fast as the GeForce 8800 GTS 640MB, costs more and will cost you more in terms of electricity too.

Originally Posted by trig
yeah, sorry bindi...been on edge lately...shouldn't take it out on bit-techers..i love you all...except the devil...but im sure he's just misunderstood... :D

WTF why do you hate me? you are freaking crazy man....

All I was saying was 'why are we already declaring a winner when DX10 games aren't even out yet? Let's declare a winner once more games come out and we see what the cards can do.' It's the only non-impulsive method to buying a video card: to see what its full potential is on games that you will be playing later. Secondly the R600 beat out the competition many a time in CF mode so I'm again not understanding why you guys are trashing it especially if the price was to take a drop soon. I didn't say you guys were "bashing" the card... I don't know why you quoted it as if I said that... you do need to cool down. I'm just trying to look at this from a logical perspective: It's a DX10 card, so why are we basing it's full potential on DX9 games... that's all I'm saying....

Originally Posted by Tim S
DirectX 10 performance will follow, but as it stands in current games, the Radeon HD 2900 XT isn't as fast as the GeForce 8800 GTS 640MB, costs more and will cost you more in terms of electricity too.

DX9 performance doesn't matter to me and shouldn't matter for people wanting to buy this card for later in the future because they should already have a DX9 card in their current rigs, but if they are purchasing it now before DX10 games are out then it's worth caring about, but again...Why buy now and be so impulsive?

The electricity problem shouldn't be THAT big of a deal. I mean yes it will cost you more in electricity, but that's while you are gaming which makes the most sense because you need the most power you can get to bring those fancy pixels to the screen. On the desktop, the power consumption is less than the competition so, in my opinion, it outweighs the cost during gaming because most people don't game as much as they are on the desktop.

I do hope the cost comes down to what it should be once supply outweighs the demand, so once that happens then I can see the price being worth it.

Well, of course most people have a DirectX 9 card already, but what if they want something that's going to improve things right now and also allow them to play DX10 games too? That's the point you're missing...

Originally Posted by Tim S
Well, of course most people have a DirectX 9 card already, but what if they want something that's going to improve things right now and also allow them to play DX10 games too? That's the point you're missing...

Tim....that's called 'being impulsive'. Most 'normal', 'money-smart' people are going to wait this "drought" out and see what the R600 (or even the the R650) can do with retail DX10 games before making the plunge.....personally if performance on my DX9 card was an issue I would just buy a good cooler and OC it which would help buy me some time.

Being smart with your money and not acting on impulse: that is the point you and many others are missing......

Originally Posted by devdevil85
Tim....that's called 'being impulsive'. Most 'normal', 'money-smart' people are going to wait this "drought" out and see what the R600 (or even the the R650) can do with retail DX10 games before making the plunge.....personally if performance on my DX9 card was an issue I would just buy a good cooler and OC it which would help buy me some time.

Being smart with your money and not acting on impulse: that is the point you and many others are missing......

No, I'm afraid it's not. I remember buying a GeForce 3 back in the day because it was the first DX8 card out there. There was no DX8 content, but I still went and bought it because it was the best card in DX7 games by a long shot. I didn't buy it as an impulse, I bought it because I wasn't getting enough frames to satisfy my gaming needs...

DX8, like DX10, was a big step forwards in many ways because it was the first time programmable units were incorporated into the GPU. All GPUs previous to it were fixed function. The same can be said for the current DX10 hardware out there. Obviously, not everyone wants better DX9 performance, but for those with high-resolution displays that DO want more performance, why not buy one of these cards? Look at the numbers for the X1950 XTX and 7900 GTX (the latter in particular) at 1600x1200 and 1920x1200 with anti-aliasing enabled and you will see my point.

What's the point in buying something with poor DX9 performance when the vast majority of games are still being released without support for DX10? There's no impulse buy with GeForce 8800-series - it's been out for over seven months and delivers fantastic frame rates in DX9 content and appears to run DX10 content reasonably well based on what we've seen so far.

If you're waiting for decent frame rates in DX10 content on high-resolution displays, you may as well sit around and wait for the next-generation hardware - that'd be the smart thing to do if you're looking for something to last a bit longer. It'll run it much faster and at high resolutions for longer, along with the fact that drivers will also be more mature too.

Well put Tim. :p

I've seen it mentioned on Bjorn3D that although all the 2000 cards support avivo HD only the 2400 and 2600 actually have the UVD. Is it true that the 2900 doesn't have the UVD?

Also can you confirm that all 2000 series cards will be HDCP compliant and that board manufacturers won't have the option to not support it like they did previously?

It's a shame that all current PC HDMI implementations only support bog standard S/PDIF audio output (2 channel PCM and DD/DTS 5.1). It would be nice to see an hdmi implementation that supported 8 channel high res pcm from decoded trueHD/DTS-HD and/or passed through the bitstream of those next gen formats. Guess we'll have to wait a bit longer for "proper" HDMI audio support.

Originally Posted by Tim S
If you're waiting for decent frame rates in DX10 content on high-resolution displays, you may as well sit around and wait for the next-generation hardware - that'd be the smart thing to do if you're looking for something to last a bit longer. It'll run it much faster and at high resolutions for longer, along with the fact that drivers will also be more mature too.

Yea, and in the end you'll end up just like me jumping from a Voodoo 1 > Riva TNT (as my Voodoo died :'( sometimes OC can be your enemy ;)) > GeForce FX 5600 (worst GPU I ever owned) > GeForce 6600 GT > GeForce 8800 GTS. That's some serious jumps there but I kept waiting for the prices to lower and before I even realised I just missed another generation. :)

Tim, you have a good point and it's not worth arguing over because everyone's situation is different and I do see where you are coming from so I acknowledge your statements. For my situation, I am only wanting to play DX10 games so I may have to take your advice and wait even past R650 (depending on how much the driver support has matured) and get something that will really last me longer than a couple good 6-8 months. So thanks for the reply.

Originally Posted by aon`aTv.gsus666
Yea, and in the end you'll end up just like me jumping from a Voodoo 1 > Riva TNT (as my Voodoo died :'( sometimes OC can be your enemy ;)) > GeForce FX 5600 (worst GPU I ever owned) > GeForce 6600 GT > GeForce 8800 GTS. That's some serious jumps there but I kept waiting for the prices to lower and before I even realised I just missed another generation. :)

OMG that's crazy.... I would NEVER have the kind of money to keep making those jumps. I made my 9600Pro last as long as I could through OCing and then I made the jump to a X1600Pro which was completely worth it after I started OCing it (though I do need to buy an aftermarket cooler). Right now I'm still in the AGP world and I only want to make the jump to PCI-E when DX10 games are fully available, and worthy cards are too. There's just too much going on right now......