kinda off topic but when can we expect HD 2600 reviews?
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kinda off topic but when can we expect HD 2600 reviews?
just finished reading the downloaded preview and I must say, for the most part I am impressed with the performance over an X1950XTX. I was worried it wouldn't be much faster than the X1950XTX by some earlier results that were leaked. This doesn't seem to be the case so performance wise it should definitely be better than my current card.
What I am disappointed in slightly is how the GTS beats this card even in situations where I think it shouldn't. The 320mb GTS wsa beating the card however this could just be due to driver issues so I won't hold it against the card in that respect.
What really disappoints me is how the AF hasn't been improved at all since the X1900 series. Yes the AF was already extremely good, however, the 8800 bested even that and I was hoping the X2900 would at least match, if not beat the 8800 in terms of AF quality. It seems ATI felt the AF quality was 'good enough' considering the X1900 was the best card for IQ comparisons. Now that the 8800 shows better the ATI card feels 'lacking' in this department. Surely they could have done better seeing as though Nvidia did, and they were always far INFERIOR IQ wise than ATI was. This is something I can't see changing with drivers either as it seems to be how the hardware itself applies the filtering. I am glad AA is slightly better however.
I really hope they come out with the 65nm x2900XL/XT soon. I really dislike the power consumption alot. Else overall a good candidate for a card instead of a 8800GTS.
Maybe we can get rid of nVidias crappy new super price on their Ultra too.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Eastcoasthandle
Well yeah,because they use Best AA and for 8800GTS would be 16X CSAA if I am not mistaken anyway I look forward to another review with a better driver...
it seems all reviews are with 8.36 or 8.37 , i think we have to wait few more days to see a review with 8.38
regards
mascaras....relax...we can read the reviews. You almost sound like AMDs Richard...
Just because one driver made a big difference BEFORE the card was released doesnt mean the next driver will bring miracles.
You even post the same thing several times...
Quote:
Originally Posted by Shintai
im not talking of next drivers , 8.38 it was released few days ago , my friend have it for 4 days now
i dont want miracles , the actual driver its very good in 3dmarks , now i want a good driver for games , i understand its dificult and takes time ( nvidia takes 6 months to get a good performece driver (158.19/19) i just want a good game driver fast :D
Looks like tweaktown used 8.36 ;). I am not expecting much from this review site:Quote:
Originally Posted by bingo13
-no gts
-no max fps, just min and average
-no updated drivers
I am sure that the Power Supply Unit: Seventeam 500-watt is good enough PSU. :confused:
If it was so important, then im sure AMD would have given the review sites it and made an effort to tell them to use it. Or get your friend to make a full review. No NDA to worry about...Quote:
Originally Posted by mascaras
Ocworkbench got something to with 8.37 driver...
http://www.ocworkbench.com/2007/asus/EAH2900XT/g1.htm
When comparing Nvidia 's 16 x QAA mode vs Ati 's 8 x it's quite on par with GTX:p:
Even though the TweakTown test showed that Nvidia owns the top end, it would've been nice to see the 8800 GTS in there.Quote:
We tested with the latest available testing driver from AMD which is 8.361 – and this is the shipping driver for Radeon HD 2900 XT. There is a new driver floating around but that is not entirely stable yet. We would not be surprised if AMD releases its Catalyst 7.5 monthly driver soon and that should probably see some performance improvements and fixes of known bugs. The driver that we are using now is not perfect and AMD has noted some known issues. For example, in some of our tests, the older Radeon X1950 XTX is actually faster than the HD 2900 XT – this is a driver issue and we hope AMD fixes the problems very soon.
Quote:
Originally Posted by red
drivers Avaible in ATi FTP :
Cat 8.361
CaT 8.374
Car 8.38 >>http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/...&postcount=869
Quote:
Originally Posted by red
i have a BFG 8800GTS 320mb and i will receive a X2900 nxt week then i post some results to compare .
Quote:
Originally Posted by koosjebram
nice scores in OC review
http://aycu34.webshots.com/image/167...0827099_rs.jpg
Quote:
Originally Posted by mascaras
The 8.38 drivers are an early beta 2 release, they were leaked. Those drivers have more issues with them than the 8.37.4 in several cases. CrossFire and OpenGL in Vista are messed up, IQ has been reduced in several cases also until they tune it. ATI does not want the review sites using those drivers until the final release on 5/23.
Can the red vreg (or mosfet I forget) HS from the x1900xt/xtx fit on the HD2900 XT. Because the HD 2900XT have that HS built right into the GPU HS. So if you take the GPU HS off you also take off the other HS. No Water cooling until a HS can be put on it IMO.
From looking at VR-Zone's review he was able to get 1 push down bolt on one side but had to use a blue plastic clip for the other side. That means 1 of 2 things:
-he broke the other push down bolt
-the other push down bolt doesn't fit the hole on the HD 2900XT
Ok thnks for advise :toast:Quote:
Originally Posted by bingo13
So the "good offical" drivers will be released about 10 days after launch?
http://www.ocworkbench.com/2007/asus/EAH2900XT/g7.htmQuote:
Current DVi-HDMI adapters do not carry audio. This Active DVI to HDMI adaptor does. It allows full video and audio support via standard DVI output from Radeon HD 2000 series graphics cards
:)
Oh really??Quote:
Originally Posted by Shintai
This: http://www.vr-zone.com/?i=4946&s=9 shows it consumes a "whooping" 17W than 8800GTX (not ultra!!! ).I guess it's gonna burn a hole in your wallet for a power bill if you go for a Radeon instead of a 8800GTX.
Why would you compare the power consumption of a slower part to that of a faster part? VR-Zone does have 8800 GTS numbers to compare to.
They bencht the Nvidia Cards with very old drivers.Quote:
Originally Posted by koosjebram
Lol..guess they needed 5 months old drivers and 16 vs 8 X AA too make the HD2900XT look good.Quote:
Originally Posted by Gorgul
I'm beginning to think we'll have to wait a month or so more to see what's the real deal with this card and mature drivers:(
Not for another 3 months or so I fear. I am worried about the amount of Processing Units (PU) they have put on it tough....Quote:
Originally Posted by insurgent
For easy calculations sake.....
PU SPEED - ATI
320 PU's * 742 MHz/PU => 475 GigaFlops (derived from VR-zone review)
120 PU's * 800 MHz/PU => 192 GigaFlops (calculated & matches VR-zone)
PU SPEED - NVIDIA
96 PU's * 1200 MHz/PU => 345.60 GigaFlops (derived from WikiPedia)
32 PU's * 1450 MHz/PU => 139.2 GigaFlops (calculated & matches WikiPedia)
If you compare the 2900XT to 2600XT calculation power, you see it matches nVidia's 8800GTS to 8600GTS almost spot on.
MEMORY SPEED - NVIDIA
8800 GTS - 320-bit & 1600 MHz -> 64 GB/sec
8600 GTS - 128-bit & 2000 MHz -> 32 GB/sec (again by calculation this is correct)
We see a 2.0x decrease in mem-power with a 2 1/2x decrease in shader power for the 8600 GTS over the 8800 GTS
Now image what ATi can do. They can put a 512-bit ring-bus on the 2600 XT, which is costly. Instead it is more likely they will put a 256-bit ring-bus on it. This decreases the mem-power by 1/2. If they slap faster memory on the 2600 XT, similar to what nVidia did with the 8600 GT we get the following....
We will see a 1.6x decrease in mem-power with a 2 1/2x decrease in shader power for the x2600XT.
The real question is then, how much difference faster mem will make. Luckily nVidia also spawned the 8600 GT. We again turn to maths:
139.20 / 113.28 => the 8600 GTS has ~1.25x as much shading power
32.00 / 22.40 => the 8600 GTS has ~1.43x as much memory power
675 / 540 => the 8600 GTS has 1.25x as much core power
Thus the 8600 GTS has more of a mem-increase then increase in other parts.
We turn to a review on http://www.guru3d.com/article/Videocards/426/16/ after which we run some number-crunching and we find out that : in the review the 8600 GTS is 1.1x faster than the 8600 GT. Why? Slack most likely. So we reach a dead end.
On Guru3D we find a comprehensive 8600GT/GTS roundup and we turn to a quote:
8600 GTS Galaxy 700/1000/1620/6029 (core/mem/shader/3D_2006)Quote:
Yeah, you guessed it already. BTW make note of the performance from the Galaxy GTS card. Core and memory clocks are the lowest among all the GTS cards yet the score is really good (throughout most benchamarks actually). This is because Galaxy overclocks the Shader unitdomain really high. We'll get back on that later.
8600 GTS BFG OC 710/1008/1512/5883
So an increase in 1.07 for the shader, results in 1.025 performance increase, this is not really linear.
We for now turn our attention to the GPU & Core OC test:
8600 GT Galaxy @ 600/800 - 58 FPS
8600 GT Galaxy @ 730/900 - 61 FPS
FPS increase : 1.05
mem increase : 1.125
core increase : 1.21
A mem & core increase does not scale so well either.
In short: the balance the videocard makers have made between mem, core and shader is so well thought out, that an increase in either shader, core or mem does not have a significant contribution to the end-performance.
Thus I conclude that with the ATI 2600 XT it is unlikely that ATI will use faster memory or core, but rather will keep the price low.
The question than becomes: how low will it be? With the 8600 GTS we have already seen that it sucks, cos the 8800 GTS 320 MB is far better value for money (less than 1.5x the price, but roughly 1.8x the performance). With the 8600 GT it is a little better.
How low can the price of the x2600 be? ATi will not get it low enough I fear because of the fixed costs with card manufacturing. The 65nm could help a lot tough.
Even worse the 8800 GTS has ~2.5x the shader power, whilst only having 2x the memory power of the 8600 GTS. The performance gap between 8800 GTS and 8600 GTS will improve further in future shader-intensive games. And with the 2900XT and 2600XT it is the same.
So why do the crappy cards sell? 260 euro for a 8800 GTS 320 MB (price here) is a lot of money, the 8800 is a power-hog and it is hot. Moreover the money you save from not buying a 8800 GTS 320 MB, can be put into use in your next videocard. It's a matter of whether your going to do a lot longer with the 8800 GTS 320 MB than with a 8600 GT/GTS.
ATI at least has the advantage of their x2600 being a 65 nm process. But they have hinted at a 65 nm x2800 XL which I guess is going to be a 256-bit bus with 160-240 PU's, and might be better value for money.
.....I wanted to get a x2600 XT, but now I write this it looks crap.....
Note of self-reflection: it is amazing to see the core-speed of the 8800 GTS vs the 8600 GTS. 500 vs 675, a factor 1.35. I didn't even use it in my calculations. I think the 8800 GTS has a much better core value than the 8600 GTS, which is simply needlessly fast seeing as how the heavy core OC of the 8600 GT didn't do much good.
Uhm...burn a hole? yes! Would I buy the 8800GTX or Ultra? No.Quote:
Originally Posted by informal
I dont want a card that cost more on the powerbill for a year or 2 than the card itself cost.
So relax mr. Defender. I wouldn´t buy a 2 slot cooling GFX card.
And last time I checked, the x2900XT didnt beat the GTX but is on pair with the GTS. And the GTS is 65W lower in that review.
Side note: Those power consumption numbers are useless to Vista Aero users. The 8800 can turn parts off, to save power. On one online test it was shown that in Aero the 8800 used less power than a videocard X, whilst vid-card X used less power in idle and less in full-load.Quote:
Originally Posted by red
Then again I think Aero should be removed from Vista.
Noobie...the 2600 series is 128bit...and you cant calc the flops scaling like that.