Official HD 2900 Discussion Thread

[Soulburner]

This is amazingly similar to the R480 fiasco. I waited and waited and waited for that pile and this is exactly what happened. They released a card that was only as good as the 7800GTX (some may argue that), and they were about 6-7 months behind as well. Glad I bought a 7800GTX then, and glad I bought a 8800GTX now.

The whole time we were strung along with PR and hype to be let down. It sure does make me realize why I always have Nvidia cards, they are simply always a step ahead. I would be soo pissed if I had waited twice to be shafted.

Too bad the games I play with my 8800 don't play well at all

Sure, the specs and the benchmarks are always great for Nvidia cards. But all of my ATI's have always gamed better...which is why I was waiting for R600. I have gone from the MX400 > Ti4200 > FX5950 > 9800P > 6800 > X800XL > 8800GTS and in every case so far I preferred how the ATI's performed. The 8800 is a serious piece of hardware though so I'm hoping drivers improve things. I also might use the step-up and go for the GTX, depending if I can get myself to spend that much.

[cantankerous]

I read somewhere a while ago that the G80 was desinged to maximize DX9 performance and R600 for DX10 performance, so I see this as no big surprise. I'm looking forward to seeing how each card does on some DX10 games like Crysis, the COH port, Shadowrun, Alan Wake, Unreal Tournament 3, MS Flight Simulator X, Hellgate London, and of cource 3dmark 07.

I also remember ATI stating that the R600 would be the fastest DX9 card to date when released... they were aiming for performance on both platforms I believe. I just think Nvidia did them one better that they weren't expecting. I am sure ATI could have done better than this from the get go but they wanted to play cash grab. Release a slightly faster card to get more money out of buyers then release something better than that to get even more money (ala R650-700). I just think Nvidia went all out and gave their 100% from the start and ended up trumping ATI's half assed offerings not giving them a chance at all.

Even if the XT is on par or even slightly faster than a GTS, the fact that the GTS has more ram onboard still makes it seem a little more attractive. When loading lots of textures with high levels of AA/AF I would rather have 640mb of ram than 512mb of ram.

ATI is stating up to 24x AA. That is going to be hopelessly impossible to achieve considering how slow the cards are appearing to be running when compared to Nvidia's offerings even though they are offering 'only' 16x AA.

[gdogg]

I also remember ATI stating that the R600 would be the fastest DX9 card to date when released... they were aiming for performance on both platforms I believe. I just think Nvidia did them one better that they weren't expecting. I am sure ATI could have done better than this from the get go but they wanted to pay cash grab. Release a slightly faster card to get more money out of buyers then release something better than that to get even more money (ala R650-700). I just think Nvidia went all out and gave their 100% from the start and ended up trumping ATI's half assed offerings not giving them a chance at all.

Even if the XT is on par or even slightly faster than a GTS, the fact that the GTS has more ram onboard still makes it seem a little more attractive. When loading lots of textures with high levels of AA/AF I would rather have 640mb of ram than 512mb of ram.

ATI is stating up to 24x AA. That is going to be hopelessly impossible to achieve considering how slow the cards are appearing to be running when compared to Nvidia's offerings even though they are offering 'only' 16x AA.

The hit from 24X AA hasn't been tested for 1, and has nothing to do with these tests.

Also, I clearly remember ati stating fastest dx10 card!

[BenchZowner]

I'll just quote myself from another thread

1) These benchies from DailyTech are quite off the reality, that's all I can say.
2) The 2900XTX & the 8800GTX are performing on par in Crysis at the moment ( direct info from a developer of the game )

regards,
BZ

[xlink]

iF R600 gets 100FPS in game A @ 1280*1024 and the 8800GTX gets 200 at the same settings.

it doesn't matter should r600 scale to 1600*1200 16xAA and get 90FPS while G80 can only do 40FPS

all that matters in a video card is it's performance at the resolution and settings you will be playing at.

I'm still praying R600 is better than what it appears to be in those benchmarks. Will ti be, I have no f'ing idea.

[voltaire2030]

I don't see any direct sources from ATI-AMD ?

Anyhow, I really could care less for flaming wars between ATI or Nvidia fanboy ! We are ALL loosing (price wise) if AMD-ATI goes belly up or 1 cie reign supreme in terms of raw performance ... I'm still old enough to remember Intel supremacy and the price tag that came with that supremacy...

[MsB]

I think its just more F U D from the zilla. but even if it were true who knows how it oc's, How it scales in crossfire compared to 8800, How it runs stream processing in AMD chipsets, etc still soon to know the truth and could be just misinfo from AMD. They are way out there on their PR these days.

[migunani]

lets face it fanboys. this card is buggy and crappy. ati needs to resolve this before release. thats why this card s delayed. till when? i hope not till next years. or ati will eat more s**t.

*I love technology, I hate fanboysm.

[FghtinIrshNvrDi]

time's up, migunani. It releases May 2.

Ryan

[m0da]

XTX won't be released may 2nd. Try q3, if even that.

[neaky6]

well i recently ordered new comp and was told to wait for r600 to come insteads of getting 8800gtx and just use my 7800gtx till then after seeing these scores even though they are early benchmarks r600 not looking good so i was wondering when does 8800 ultra come out ?

[migunani]

time's up, migunani. It releases May 2.

Ryan

sorry. did not read the news before posting.
may 2 well be soft launch. possibly the XTX will be delayed till Q3 or somewhere in 2008 (with die shrink, R650?) . i don't believe ati will have bug-free XTX before Q3.

[Cybercat]

The latencies on GDDR4 is what likely made the XTX so small difference wise to the XT.

More than likely the core clock being nearly identical is the culprit. There's probably no memory bandwidth bottleneck whatsoever, meaning a difference in latency or clockspeed wouldn't make a difference (assuming they're both 512-bit).

Sad, very sad. Well I would just like to say " I TOLD YOU SO". The AMD acquisistion of ATI was going to be the anchor to sink both ships for awhile and they may not even recover. They will not go under but there business make up may well go towards a model that does not encompass the high end video card business at all.

I would like to see IBM or Intel take on the reins at this point.

Poor ATI

I've felt the same way since the beginning, but I wasn't expecting it to take effect this early, since AMD had little or no time to influence the R600's development.

AMD, a single company bleeding money, can't afford to fund millions for R&D of both CPUs and GPUs, when both are cutting edge areas of computing.

Also these benches are more than suspicious. The 8800GTX loses only 10 FPS when the resolution increases in a couple games, when on other sites it's much more than that.

[pumbertot]

thing is it doesnt matter if its immature drivers, or bad review etc the R600 card should be blowing G80 away not just competing with it and maybe in reality it will slightly surpass it. but thats not good enough as its meant to be the next gen not same gen card after all this time.
G90 or G89 will for sure blow R600 away by a good margin even if R600 is a little better than G80.

a sad day for those of us who want the best high-end card, a sad sad day.

[metro.cl]

[flopper]

I'll just quote myself from another thread



regards,
BZ

The cards I imagine was run as stock I guess.
If so, how well does the cards do when clocked?

I watch the fps in games on my machine or others.
If my machine works well and has good performance the addition of a new card are then matched to that.
Benchmarks I do but those does not count for my buying decisions.
If I did I had to get hardware that cost me like tripple the amount I have today and I only get what a few fps extra for that much more cash?

What does the cards do in fps in games I play and how well do they run overclocked?
That is my criteria at least for getting a new card.
Besides, no official reviews yet, no official word, the few who got cards are saying they are pleased with the performance.
Kind of hard to make up ppl´s minds about the launch.
go figure

[Caparroz]

Well, metro has some R600 cards with right now for sure. His reponse indicates that maybe there's 8 pages of comments based on a fud article.

The last time DT released some early benchs, their numbers said that the 1950pro was 3-5% slower then a 1900xt. A few days later when the NDA liftted, everyone saw that the 1950pro was A LOT slower than a 1900xt. What's is the most disturbing is that they had the cards, as they have a couple of R600 for testing now.

Considering Metro's response and past DT fud articles, I'll wait a few more days to call the R600 a joke or a beast.

[onethreehill]

Please speak english

[eXceeded]

translates to "haha stupid noobs, this is really only the benchmark of the HD 2600!"
:Prays:

[ColdWinter]

Yeah, now that would be cool since HD 2600 seems to be the card that I can probably afford

[pumbertot]

Even if R600 turns out to be faster than G80, I really wonder how nVIDIA are supposed to make a GPU thats a lot faster than R600

Even if they make it it will require external power supply, at least water cooling, why not launch an external GFX card? You people simply cant realize that GPUs are on their peak right now. Their design isn't efficient, maybe with great effort nvidia and amd will be able to squeeze one more generation and then whats next?

CPU makers manage to increase performance while staying it reasonable power envelopes, but GPUs are going out of control. If this goes on I foresee future PCs to use the video card as a MOBO and stick all hardware in it, cause it will soon become the biggest part of the PC. It is already N1 when it comes to power consumption and heat displacement.

We need something new...

I wouldnt say they are at their peak. yes a new design is needed and im sure nvidia and ati have new architecture ideas on paper.the way you say it sounds like it will be the end of new GPUs in one more generation. I dont think so, or you need to reword your statement.

[XeRo]

Spill the beans!!!!

[deathman20]

a 12 inch card ??? And i thought my 6800GT and 8800gts were long... They are like what 8 inchs or so, but 12 inchs ??? I have a huge open case that fits my 8800GTS just fine but with another 4 inchs how is anyone soppose to fit the damn thing in the system ? Seems soon mobo makers will have to redo there designs and put the PCI-E slots Verticly

Its not 12.4" its 9.5" its smaller than the 8800GTX.

The 12.4" monster is OEM.
The 9.5" is retail.

Man pain to keep on saying this ATI/AMD should of never mentioned the OEM card to public its really confusing people.

[onethreehill]

The Quote above is not good at all to ATI

Something looks seriously wrong here

How can the XTX card be slower than the XT version

Just look at the difference. The Xtx should show some improvements over the Xt one. Yet their barely any difference.

Specs from Dailytech

# AMD ATI Radeon HD 2900 XT (745 MHz core, 800 MHz GDDR3)
# AMD ATI Radeon HD 2900 XTX (750 MHz core, 1010 MHz GDDR4)

The numbers on the 2900 XT & 8800 GTX on the 1600x1200 Oblivion benchmarks are incorrect. It has been corrected @DailyTech.

[jas420221]

The numbers on the 2900 XT & 8800 GTX on the 1600x1200 Oblivion benchmarks are incorrect. It has been corrected @DailyTech.

ok, i'll bite, what are the corrections? Link?