Official HD 2900 Discussion Thread

[DilTech]

Damned guys,i need your wisdom to help me shift through these reviews..i'm planning a new rig around august,and i need a new card.So what's the best choice:A 2900XT or a 8800GTS 640mb?I'm playing at 1680x1050 res,and the games i play the most are oblivion,NeverwinterNights 2 and i'm planning on starting with Stalker too.I'm more biased towards RPG's then towards shooters,my girlfriend plays Half-life 1&2 and Team Fortress...Looking at the pic Mascaras posted here i must admit that it looks a gazillion times better then on my 9800pro.So what's the best?2900XT for being a bit more future-proof,or a 8800GTS 640mb for a bit more power?

8800GTS, no questions asked. It leads in pretty much everything once you enable AA. Check out just about any review and they'll tell you the same. Also, the HD 2900XT is not "more future proof", just to letcha know. It's not really 320 shaders, and due to how AA works, it won't be able to use it's extra bandwidth thanks to how it handles MSAA resolves, because it's using the shader hardware to handle it, which means it's using shader clock cycles for AA and taking a performance hit even with it's massive bandwidth.

The HD2900XT is currently better than the 8800GTS and will be even better once new drivers are out. It is also more future proof than the GTS, and a better bang for the buck in my honest oppinion.
However, if you are willing to wait till August, i guess you should wait one more month after that, September. AMD plans to launch the R650 (said to be HD2950 series) around that time, so it wouldnt hurt waiting one more month for better performance and less heat.

WTF are you talking about? The HD 2900XT gets smoked with AA.
http://www.vr-zone.com/?i=4946
http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=2988
http://enthusiast.hardocp.com/articl...50aHVzaWFzdA==

In the above screenshot you will see the 3DMark06 score of 10723 on the ATI Radeon HD 2900 XT, 9105 on the GeForce 8800 GTS 640 MB and 11191 on the GeForce 8800 GTX. Yes, the 3DMark06 score and “game tests” are a good deal higher with the ATI Radeon HD 2900 XT compared to the GeForce 8800 GTS and is just shy of the GeForce 8800 GTX. If you were a benchmark enthusiast you might think wow, the ATI Radeon HD 2900 XT has to be faster in games because it is faster in 3DMark! By looking at 3DMark alone you would think it is almost as fast as a GeForce 8800 GTX. Well, you would be wrong.

Despite what the numbers in 3DMark are showing our evaluation has proven that the ATI Radeon HD 2900 XT is slower than a GeForce 8800 GTS when it comes to actually gaming. Even our apples-to-apples real gaming tests confirmed that the 8800 GTS is faster than the HD 2900 XT and nowhere close to the GeForce 8800 GTX, yet here sits 3DMark showing us the opposite!

DriverHeaven, which is known to be "very ati friendly" even stated that they cannot recommend the card to anyone.

You may want to read up on what you preach on.