ATI HD2900XT a flop?

[CMH]

Just read the HardOCP review on the HD2900XT.

Its incredible how much of a flop the HD2900XT is, especially after all those months of waiting.... Good news for those owning an 8800gtx at the moment.

I'm now waiting for reviews on the mid-end versions of the series, hopefully they'll do better, I'd hate to see anyone holding a monopoly.... a duopoly's bad enough.

 

[LinkedKube]

Well I'm a nvidea fanboy myself, so...Wasnt lookin forward to that power hungry card anyway, was lookin said it needs like 400 watts, wtf?

 

[CMH]

I suppose you're a fanboi, but then again, saying a card claims to require 400W is not excuseable.

Go think about it.

 

[peterdiva]

The 400W figure is for the whole system with the card under full load. You can find the HardOCP review HERE.

 

[CMH]

whole system sounds more like it, but recommended is 550W I believe, not 400. And 400 for a whole system is actually quite modest, so I'm sure supersmashbrada really means 400W for the card alone, which is total crap.

 

[LinkedKube]

yup. I meant 400 watts for the card, thought that's what I read. Either way it wouldnt matter too much to me.

 

[wolfram]

Maybe a newer driver will fix and improve its performance. But they can't do anything right now about the power consumption and excessive heat.

Looks like a new FX5800 to me

 

[Grafficks]

The ridiculous power requirements are completely absurd!

Given the fact that it has a super-high core clockspeed (750MHz standard), and also that it's the first graphics card using a 512-bit memory interface, it still has performance that doesn't differ much from the GeForce 8800GTX...

 

[wolfram]

Even with their 320 stream processors (which are different from 8000 series), and a monstrous 512bit bus, they can't compete yet with the GTX. It rivals the 640 GTS, but NOT the GTX it was supposed to pwn.

That's very disappointing. At least its price is somewhat low, but even if I had the cash, I wouldn't buy it.

 

[CMH]

Hmm... I don't get why they built the HD2900XT on the 80nm, while the mid-end versions are on the 65nm....

I got a feeling that the HD2900XT is just a step towards something else ATI has in mind.... Lets hope that this is the 8500, which led to the awesome 9700....

 

[Rage_3K_Moiz]

The 2900XT wasn't made to beat the 8800GTX. That responsibility falls to the 2900XTX, which is releasing in Q3 of this year. There's gonna be a 65nm version of it, which will most likely reduce power consumption & heat output as well. The 2900XTX reviewed by DailyTech was an old model that was "released in April to board partners", plus it was pitted against an OC'd 8800GTX, which makes the results unconvincing. At least for me it does.

 

[CMH]

Well, I didn't read the Dailytech... But yeah, I get the point.

But I think they delayed the release because they knew nVidia had whooped their ***.

 

[beef_jerky4104]

The 2900XT wasn't a flop. Don't get me wrong I prefer nVIDIA and eVGA more than ATi, but ATi makes perfectley fine graphics cards. In fact the performance is very similar to the 8800 GTS, so it is a sucess since that was that cards purpose. Still ATi failed to release the card early enough.

 

[CMH]

Well, it didn't release it early enough, and although performance is very similar to the 8800GTS, it is still considerably more expensive and sucks up alot more power.

Performance unfortunately is not the only criteria...


However, there might be some overclocking potential.... we'd have to look out for reviews.

 

[Rage_3K_Moiz]

Reviews still aren't very reflective of the general trend. Some show it beating the 8800GTS and equally powerful as the 8800GTX in some games. Others show it lagging far behind. I don't know what to believe. The bundle AMD is offering along with the cards is fantastic though. 4 new games free! W00t! Plus it has HDMI compatibility right out of the box and better drivers for Vista, which is more than can be said for NVIDIA. Maybe the mid-end series will help turn it around for AMD. Only time will tell...

 

[unx]

[advice]

I just bought a new computer, but was waiting for the 2900XT to come out before buying the video card. After seeing the results, and keeping in mind DX 10.1 capabilities, what's the right thing to do at this point? Buy a 8800 GTX and forget about it? Or maybe the 8800GTS 640MB now, and buy a more powerful video card in a year? And where does the 2900XT stand in this mess?

 

[Rage_3K_Moiz]

If you have the cash, get an 8800GTX. It's the most powerful video card out there today and it's future-proof too. Simple.

 

[MetalX]

Just wanted to ask... I see you mentioned DX10.1... is that going to be a whole new standard that will require new videocards that support 10.1? Or will cards that support DX10.0 support 10.1 too?

Oh, and just wanted to tell you guys... in the aforementioned link to HardOCP, I found the following statement about power consumption of the Radeon HD 2900XT:

"OK, it isn't that bad, but the quoted power draw is 215W at full load which is the highest power draw from any consumer 3D graphics card."

 

[JimShady23]

Well

The 2900XT wasn't made to beat the 8800GTX. That responsibility falls to the 2900XTX, which is releasing in Q3 of this year. There's gonna be a 65nm version of it, which will most likely reduce power consumption & heat output as well. The 2900XTX reviewed by DailyTech was an old model that was "released in April to board partners", plus it was pitted against an OC'd 8800GTX, which makes the results unconvincing. At least for me it does.

Not trying to start a fight or a debate but that OC'ed GTX was a factory overclocked card by XFX that anyone can buy so in actuallity is was a stock card and they are only maybe 2-5% faster at best than a regular version of the card. Anything that comes from the factory is considered stock. Its like buying a car, you may have the same kind, but didnt pay the extra $50 for the factory installed air intake option that allows my SAME CAR to go 0-60 .2 seconds faster than yours. But it is still the same car, just with a better option that I payed for...and you could have bought it to

Anyways....

Keep in mind that these benchmarks are only showing the HD2900XT performing in DX9 games. Maybe they will perform better than in DX9 apps. After all thats what these cards where designed to do, play DX10 games.

In all we have no idea what either offerings for both ATI and Nvidia actually do in DX10 game play......

But from my stand point, I own a 8800GTX and if it goes a year (or evey 9 months) as the king of GPU's thats a pretty good investment as its hard to even go a month as king of the hill in the computer world now a days....

Edit: I guess I have a second rate card now heh, when the hell did they release these ?
http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.aspx?Submit=ENE&DEPA=0&Description=8800Ultra
I take a brake from the computer and go fishing for a week and a half and they go and sneak this out on me

 

[wolfram]

Hey don't worry, those are just overclocked GTX's. You should be able to overclock yours to those levels or even better

 

[Rage_3K_Moiz]

Not trying to start a fight or a debate but that OC'ed GTX was a factory overclocked card by XFX that anyone can buy so in actuallity is was a stock card and they are only maybe 2-5% faster at best than a regular version of the card. Anything that comes from the factory is considered stock. Its like buying a car, you may have the same kind, but didnt pay the extra $50 for the factory installed air intake option that allows my SAME CAR to go 0-60 .2 seconds faster than yours. But it is still the same car, just with a better option that I payed for...and you could have bought it to

That OC'd GTX had a 650MHz core clock and a 1GHz memory clock, as opposed to the stock GTX's 575MHz core clock and 900MHz memory clock. That makes a lot of difference IMO. Also, if they wanted to test a card that everyone out there could\would buy (i.e. a cheaper third-party manufactured card rather than from the parent company), they should've clocked the XFX card down to stock speeds to make it a fair test. Even with that, I think there are still some driver issues remaining to be fixed. But to add to that, I expected AMD's new card to at least be on a competitive edge with even an OC'd 8800GTX, not play catch up or anything. Let's see what the mid-range brings with it now...

 

[Mirob]

I can't believe anyone could form an opinion from a HardOCP review. That site is biases and inept. The x2900xt is okay in price to performance, and you would probably buy the same PSU for a 8800gts/gtx system. I agree AMD sould have done a little better and have a XTX along with the low end cards (like Henri Richard said they would.)