Official HD 2900 Discussion Thread

[Caparroz]

hmmm so all that bandwidth is wasted since the card is poor at doing AA anyway?! No way...

The 2900xt has a massive BW. It's not like it's allwasted doing AA, but it definitively hurts. But that applies for all GPU designs. The real problem for R600 lacking a dedicated part for AA in the render back units is that it will use shader processing power for it, as pointed by the more in-depth reviews and DilTech.

[DilTech]

The 2900xt has a massive BW. It's not like it's allwasted doing AA, but it definitively hurts. But that applies for all GPU designs. The real problem for R600 lacking a dedicated part for AA in the render back units is that it will use shader processing power for it, as pointed by the more in-depth reviews and DilTech.

Yep, so essentially, it's hurting in bandwidth(which, the HD 2900XT has more than enough) AND shader power.

Essentially, it takes two hits for turning on AA instead of one. Definitely not a good thing, and it's not something drivers can technically fix either. It's a hardware problem.

[mascaras]

another call of juarez DX10 bench:


http://www.chip.de/bildergalerie/c1_...23.html?show=4





btw:

ATI Drivers for Radeon HD 2900 Series


The following driver version 8.37.4.3 is provided as an update to the driver software that currently ships with the Radeon HD 2900 series products. The download file contains the display drivers and Catalyst Control Center. This driver applies to the following operating systems: Windows XP Home/Professional/Media Center Edition/Professional x64 Edition and Windows Vista 32/64-bit. For more information please refer to the release notes.

Source: AMD/ATI



http://forums.techpowerup.com/showthread.php?t=31181

regards

[BlaqMale]

I thought delay was so they could launch the entire family at once. BTW, what happen to we'll launch 10 DX10 GPUs?

isn't it 5 for desktop and 5 for mobile sector?

[Sumanji]

btw:

So is someone gonna bench these for us or what?!

[cantankerous]

This is all very disheartening. I can't believe anyone who bought an 8800 6 months ago is still not going to go through any buyers remorse anytime soon. I honestly didn't see this happening. The clarification that the 8800 performs MUCH better and has better IQ to boot is a hard thing to read as I have always been very pro ATI. I waited a long time for this day when both cards would compete head to head. All this talk about R600 having inherent hardware flaws such as lack of ROPS, a shoddy implementation of how AA is done etc is really making me feel quite disappointed in this card as a whole. I know it is my own fault but I wasted a ton of precious time in my life scouring all the message boards I could to gain every last bit of info on this card that I thought would be the end all, be all. I regret wasting all that time now. What makes it worse is the 8800GTX continually coming to my mind over this card is something I thought would never happen. Much better performance and technically better AF are winning me over, higher price or not. It seems people are just happy with the low(er) price of the 2900XT instead of what it can actually offer. The BFG 8800GTX OC2 is fairly cheap and less than a vanilla EVGA 8800GTX which sweetens the deal.

One other thing that is really bothering me that perhaps someone could answer. Why did ATI get rid of the 6xAA option? It has always looked VERY good on past cards however was kind of unusable due to the high performance hit. I was looking forward to using 6xAA on this card yet getting the same performance as 4xAA on my current X1900XTX essentially and technically bumping up IQ with no real loss in performance to what I am getting now with my current card. Getting rid of the 6xAA option and jumping straight from 4xAA to 8xAA means there is no longer a middle ground for IQ vs. performance. Jumping from 4xAA to 8xAA yields a high performance hit and is now going to be just like running 6xAA over 4xAA due to the drop the current cards having from doing this. Is there any technical reason they removed 6xAA being the only card to offer this or was just simply a choice they made that we have to live with?

[Noobie]

Yep, so essentially, it's hurting in bandwidth(which, the HD 2900XT has more than enough) AND shader power.

Essentially, it takes two hits for turning on AA instead of one. Definitely not a good thing, and it's not something drivers can technically fix either. It's a hardware problem.

What about the latency of the ring-bus design with 4 bus-stops?

This is all very disheartening. I can't believe anyone who bought an 8800 6 months ago is still not going to go through any buyers remorse anytime soon. I honestly didn't see this happening. The clarification that the 8800 performs MUCH better and has better IQ to boot is a hard thing to read as I have always been very pro ATI. I waited a long time for this day when both cards would compete head to head. All this talk about R600 having inherent hardware flaws such as lack of ROPS, a shoddy implementation of how AA is done etc is really making me feel quite disappointed in this card as a whole. I know it is my own fault but I wasted a ton of precious time in my life scouring all the message boards I could to gain every last bit of info on this card that I thought would be the end all, be all. I regret wasting all that time now. What makes it worse is the 8800GTX continually coming to my mind over this card is something I thought would never happen. Much better performance and technically better AF are winning me over, higher price or not. It seems people are just happy with the low(er) price of the 2900XT instead of what it can actually offer. The BFG 8800GTX OC2 is fairly cheap and less than a vanilla EVGA 8800GTX which sweetens the deal.

One other thing that is really bothering me that perhaps someone could answer. Why did ATI get rid of the 6xAA option? It has always looked VERY good on past cards however was kind of unusable due to the high performance hit. I was looking forward to using 6xAA on this card yet getting the same performance as 4xAA on my current X1900XTX essentially and technically bumping up IQ with no real loss in performance to what I am getting now with my current card. Getting rid of the 6xAA option and jumping straight from 4xAA to 8xAA means there is no longer a middle ground for IQ vs. performance. Jumping from 4xAA to 8xAA yields a high performance hit and is now going to be just like running 6xAA over 4xAA due to the drop the current cards having from doing this. Is there any technical reason they removed 6xAA being the only card to offer this or was just simply a choice they made that we have to live with?

It has 6xAA? http://www.beyond3d.com/content/reviews/16/10

[mascaras]

So is someone gonna bench these for us or what?!

tomorow :thumbsup:



btw:


ARmed Assault benchmark:

[madcho]

Noobie>6x AA is not available on HD 2900XT.

cantankerous> Don't cry, this is x1800 like. R650 is gonna fix this.

Keep in mind a x1900 is always very good in games

[Noobie]

tomorow :thumbsup:



btw:


ARmed Assault benchmark:

I like the image quality test of that review : http://3d-center.de/artikel/radeon_h..._xt/index6.php

Noobie>6x AA is not available on HD 2900XT.

cantankerous> Don't cry, this is x1800 like. R650 is gonna fix this.

Keep in mind a x1900 is always very good in games

Depends on your definition of AA. I say AA is measured by the total number of samples taken for the filter to work with, which means 6xAA = 2x + Wide Tent or 4x + Narrow Tent.

[XeRo]

Noobie>6x AA is not available on HD 2900XT.

cantankerous> Don't cry, this is x1800 like. R650 is gonna fix this.

Keep in mind a x1900 is always very good in games

man I hope not. A couple people I know already bought the card and said refresh won't come for a long time.

[cantankerous]

Noobie>6x AA is not available on HD 2900XT.

cantankerous> Don't cry, this is x1800 like. R650 is gonna fix this.

Keep in mind a x1900 is always very good in games

Maybe it is just my cpu that is beginning to suck but I still find FEAR doesn't play as well as I would like. To top this off Oblivion etc may run on a X1900 but you surely see what a difference a faster card can make on a game like this.

EDIT... wow, the prices are already dropping. Directcanada had a retail box HIS for $479 yesterday, it is now $456. $23 drop in 24 hours. The Diamond and Powercolor variants have also dropped in price.

[Think]

Maybe it is just my cpu that is beginning to suck but I still find FEAR doesn't play as well as I would like. To top this off Oblivion etc may run on a X1900 but you surely see what a difference a faster card can make on a game like this.

EDIT... wow, the prices are already dropping. Directcanada had a retail box HIS for $479 yesterday, it is now $456. $23 drop in 24 hours. The Diamond and Powercolor variants have also dropped in price.

Expect more drops...local distributor is going to shoot down the prices to $399 in a week if demand doesn't increase.

[mascaras]

Maybe it is just my cpu that is beginning to suck but I still find FEAR doesn't play as well as I would like. To top this off Oblivion etc may run on a X1900 but you surely see what a difference a faster card can make on a game like this.

EDIT... wow, the prices are already dropping. Directcanada had a retail box HIS for $479 yesterday, it is now $456. $23 drop in 24 hours. The Diamond and Powercolor variants have also dropped in price.

of course a Intel C2D make huge diference


regards

[Noobie]

of course a Intel C2D make huge diference


regards

Actually I haven't seen any "C2D vs AMD x2 scaling on the HD2900" reviews. Anybody got one?

[Shintai]

man I hope not. A couple people I know already bought the card and said refresh won't come for a long time.

Even AMD hinted at an interview that R650 would be 2-3 months after R600.

I also bet any GT/XL/Pro/XTX version waits for that.

[Metroid]

2950XTX will come no later than September

[XS Janus]

2950XTX will come no later than September

Will it be bundeled with an aditional power supply unit?

[Periander6]

2950XTX will come no later than September

Is there anything you can point to that indicates that? Please don't say the Inq or Fuad, they are worthless.

[biohead]

Will it be bundeled with an aditional power supply unit?

if anything, the 65nm version should consume less power than the current 80nm R600.

(still got the joke though)

[cantankerous]

Expect more drops...local distributor is going to shoot down the prices to $399 in a week if demand doesn't increase.

I was talking Canadian prices which means in translation it is already at or below $399USD.

[Caparroz]

2950XTX will come no later than September

Given the "recent" events concerning AMD/ATI release dates, I'd rather wait till it hit the shelves. That could be Sep 07, Sep 08, Sep 09...

[gOJDO]

G80 brutally wipes the floor with R600 in DX10 Lost planet - Extreme condition:
http://www.legitreviews.com/article/505/1/

[Noobie]

G80 brutally wipes the floor with R600 in DX10 Lost planet - Extreme condition:
http://www.legitreviews.com/article/505/1/

The game is just plain bad. No AA, Medium HDR, 4x AF, Medium shadow quality (dunno about other settings, screenshot doesn't show) and an 8800 GTX still doesn't do 60 FPS in the cave at a res of 1280x720. The only reason this could be happening is because soft shadows are on (which cuts FPS in half).

Also note how the 1600x1200 res doesn't drop the FPS on legit.

Checkout http://www.pcgameshardware.de/?article_id=601352 as well.
A 8800 GTS performing only 4% slower than a 8800 Ultra. CPU bound? They appear to be testing with a AMD x2 4200+. And with that system the game drops under 5 FPS in the DX10 codepath with a 8800 GTS (average is 26 fps at that point).

PCGH SNOW:
2900 - 19
GTS - 39
GTX - 54
Ultra - 61

PCGH CAVE:
2900 - 26
GTS - 47
GTX - 47
Ultra - 49

LEGIT SNOW:
2900 - 30
GTX - 91

LEGIT CAVE:
2900 - 21
GTX - 44

DX9 codepath (E6700 @ 3,4 GHz, 2 GB RAM, 1280x960, 4xFSAA, 8xHQ-AF):
x1950 pro - 15
x1950 XTX - 23
7900 GTX - 25
8800 GTS - 36 / 31 (DX-10)
8000 Ultra - 56 / 62 (DX-10)

Funny to see a 8800 GTS actually do worse in DX-10, whilst the ultra does better.

BTW - Lost Planet originally appeared on X-BOX 360. The X-BOX 360 uses an ATI Xenos chipset. Specs of that chip are 500 MHz parent GPU & 48-way parallel floating-point dynamically-scheduled shader pipelines. More specs can be found @ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xenos

PS - 2 more hours for the demo arrives

[evolution21]

G80 brutally wipes the floor with R600 in DX10 Lost planet - Extreme condition:
http://www.legitreviews.com/article/505/1/

According to AMD, the drivers are not yet optimized for this game, and remember drivers are still Alpha. The results are quite weird and must be driver issues.