Official HD 2900 Discussion Thread

[mascaras]

Owners of Listan/Be Quiet! power supplies to get free upgrade to 8-pin PCI Express connectors

If you bought a Listan/Be Quiet! power supply that was made in December 2006 or later, you are supposedly eligible for a free upgrade to PCI Express 2. This means that before the ATI Radeon HD 2900 series is released, you can get the proper power connector. The new connectors will be compatible with the older 6-pin PCI Express power interface, thanks to a simple mechanism to remove the extra pins.

In short, look at the pretty picture, and expect a form to get one of these if you own a Listan/Be Quiet! power supply made on or after December 2006.



Source: The Inquirer

8-pin PCIe Adapter Cables from Corsair

As the high-end R600 cards require an 8-pin PCI-Express power cable to be plugged into the corresponding connector (look at the pictures of the HD 2900XT and OEM XTX) especially if you intend to overclock these, power supply manufacturers started to design adapter cables for their current iteration of PSUs that don't come with 8-pin PCIe cables natively. The guys from BeQuiet!/Listan were then the first in providing such adapter cables for free, see the details here.
Now Corsair stepped into the line as well and if you live in the U.S. you can contact Corsair's Customer Service and will be charged for the shipping only an Official Corsair Representative over at the [H]ard|Forum mentioned.
But remember, this will only apply if you purchased the power supply during the last weeks.



Source: [H]ard|Forum


http://forums.techpowerup.com/showthread.php?t=30861

2900XT review

http://it-review.net/index.php?optio...=1314&Itemid=1


might be fake as well

23 FPS in STALKER ??? maybe its FAKE !!!



regards

[malik22]

2900XT review

http://it-review.net/index.php?optio...=1314&Itemid=1


might be fake as well

Lets hope its fake those scores dont look to good.

[perkam]

Stalker is a tad low...but one should be ready for the possibility that the rest are about right on pre-release drivers.

Remember that many more driver releases will increase the XT's performance, and ATI cannot put out drivers that give 100% of the possible performance in one release.

Secondly, headroom on the XT (on all types of cooling) will exceed that of headroom on the GTS 640, so really it'll be an overclocker's card.

On a brighter note: http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/...&postcount=137

NO COLDBUG ON R600 CONFIRMED !!!!!

Perkam

[cantankerous]

I am liking the idea of partners released highly overclocked models from the get go. The higher clocks themselves are nothing really as we can always flash new bioses or overclock ourselves but the idea of some cooling better than the stock is leaving a nice thought in my head. If these things really are limited in their overclock due to heat than the better cooling we have the higher we should be able to go, especially with the hot summer months now upon us. I just hope some of these better cooling options exhaust heat out of the back of the case because no longer will have I have all this hot air raising my case temps like my X1900XTX with Accelero X2 does.

[deathman20]

Secondly, headroom on the XT (on all types of cooling) will exceed that of headroom on the GTS 640, so really it'll be an overclocker's card.

Indeed if someone can get a 200Mhz OC on the core on stock cooler volt modded (wonder what exactly is ment by that) surely its an OCers dream card.

[cantankerous]

2900XT review

http://it-review.net/index.php?optio...=1314&Itemid=1


might be fake as well

These results are not looking good at all, in fact I would say they are pathetic to say the least. I hope these are wrong and the 2900XT isn't just going to be a glorified 3DMark tool as it seems those are the only programs that are showing some good results with this card.

[perkam]

These results are not looking good at all, in fact I would say they are pathetic to say the least. I hope these are wrong and the 2900XT isn't just going to be a glorified 3DMark tool as it seems those are the only programs that are showing some good results with this card.

Only some parts are lower than expected...in just as many if not more games, the XT is as fast as the GTX.

Perkam

[cantankerous]

Some parts? To me that entire review showed them lower and by a fair margin as well except for the Company of Heroes which said was probably flawed and shouldn't be taken seriously. Monday is coming I know. We will all find out then from the many more reviews that will be popping up.

[Periander6]

Only some parts are lower than expected...in just as many if not more games, the XT is as fast as the GTX.

Perkam

Huh?? You're nuts. That review (if true) shows the XT losing 30 out of 48 benchmarks to the GTS, nevermind the GTX. Losing more often than winning against the GTS?!? If real, that's unbelievably bad, far worse than even I was fearing.

[Xion X2]

Only some parts are lower than expected...in just as many if not more games, the XT is as fast as the GTX.

Perkam

Where are you getting this? The only game I've seen benchmarked out of about 15 so far where this was the case is Company of Heroes. In everything else, it gets killed by the GTX.

Got a link?

This comes from a sincere interest, btw. I've been really unhappy with Nvidia's buggy drivers / hardware and am looking at going another route. But I haven't been impressed at all by what I've seen from the R600 so far.

[bloodbanger]

i think i'll crawl back under my rock,to get back from it on the 14th may...I'm getting nervous from all those Frutzilla BS,and all those "fake" reviews,only for the sake of getting more hits on a site...

[bloodbanger]

And WHY the hell evrybody still thinks the XT competes with a GTX?ATI stated themselves it's on par with a GTS?

[eXceeded]

why does the ati card take such a hit at higher resolution? Thought this 512 bit interface was supposed to allow "free" 4xAA which should mean that the card would perform very well at high res, with or without AA....

[biohead]

Sapphire Radeon HD2900XT 512MB € 339,45
http://www.azerty.nl/producten/produ...-hd2900xt.html

[XeRo]

ATI stated themselves it's on par with a GTS?

I thought that was a statement made by FUD.

[biohead]

why does the ati card take such a hit at higher resolution? Thought this 512 bit interface was supposed to allow "free" 4xAA which should mean that the card would perform very well at high res, with or without AA....

I guess it's because of the 512MB. Higher resolution textures take up more space.

[DilTech]

why does the ati card take such a hit at higher resolution? Thought this 512 bit interface was supposed to allow "free" 4xAA which should mean that the card would perform very well at high res, with or without AA....

There's two things that may hurt it at high resolutions...lack of rops, or lack of v-ram.

[DilTech]

Where are you getting this? The only game I've seen benchmarked out of about 15 so far where this was the case is Company of Heroes. In everything else, it gets killed by the GTX.

Got a link?

This comes from a sincere interest, btw. I've been really unhappy with Nvidia's buggy drivers / hardware and am looking at going another route. But I haven't been impressed at all by what I've seen from the R600 so far.

CoH doesn't count...

There are two things we can conclude from our first round of testing on this pretty obsolete, but still the highest-end chipset on the market for Socket AM2. First thing, there are some very strange "happenings" with Company of Heroes that forced us to suspect some driver problems. It seems possible that AA/AF settings have some problems with CoH and Radeon HD2900XT, so take these results with a tiny bit of salt. We'll add sugar to "neutralize" a bit later. We noticed similar problems (a bit worse, though) with Radeon HD 2600/2400 when we played around with them last week, but they have entirely different set of drivers that aren't ready right now. Video - very soon.

Sounds like AA/AF isn't working properly with CoH on the HD 2900XT.

[Nicksterr]

Can't wait to test this baby out on EQ2.

[madcho]

Day - 5 ...

[jagt]

AA isn't properly enabled in COH on my X1950XTX either unless I rename the .exe to "Oblivion.exe". I believe this game uses HDR, and thus somehow you have to make the drivers think it's Oblivion (chuck patch, anyone?) to make it work. It's been like this since Cat 7.1 or so.

[DilTech]

AA isn't properly enabled in COH on my X1950XTX either unless I rename the .exe to "Oblivion.exe". I believe this game uses HDR, and thus somehow you have to make the drivers think it's Oblivion (chuck patch, anyone?) to make it work. It's been like this since Cat 7.1 or so.

That explains why the 2900 slaughters the the 8800gtx in CoH and only in CoH.

[naokaji]

Can't wait to test this baby out on EQ2.

what? i'm not the only one playing eq2?

[deathman20]

Sapphire Radeon HD2900XT 512MB € 339,45
http://www.azerty.nl/producten/produ...-hd2900xt.html

Damn thats cheap.

[NightCrawler™]

It's going to get cheaper for sure....