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AMD equips the ATI Radeon HD 2900 XT with 320 stream processors to take on NVIDIA’s GeForce 8800 GTS, which features 96 stream processors. However, AMD and NVIDIA have taken different approaches towards their unified shader designs. AMD pairs the R600 GPU with 512MB of GDDR3 memory clocked at 1.65 GHz across an eight-channel, 512-bit memory interface. In comparison, the NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GTS features 640MB of 1.6 GHz GDDR3 memory on a 320-bit memory interface.
AMD equips the ATI Radeon HD 2900 XT with a dual-slot, blower-type heat sink. Unlike the OEM Radeon HD 2900-series previously pictured, which is an 11.5” long card, the ATI Radeon HD 2900 XT makes use of a smaller cooler so everything fits within the 9.5” PCB. Although the R600 GPU supports HDMI audio and video output, the reference design only features dual dual-link DVI.
Review By Reviews.cnet
From a bullet-point perspective, the Radeon HD 2900 XT offers core features similar to those of the GeForce 8800 GTS. Both cards feature support for the next-generation DirectX 10 gaming graphics exclusive to Windows Vista. Like Nvidia’s dual graphics-card mode, called SLI, the Radeon also offers its own Crossfire mode, which in this release no longer requires a more expensive “Master” card to double up cards. You can simply pair any two of the same Radeon 2000-series cards now. Like Nvidia’s SLI, this new generation of ATI cards also relies on a pair of internal connectors, eliminating the cumbersome “Y” cable required by the Radeon 1000-series.
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Review By Tweaktown
The new R600 range of graphics processing units was set to see a release on March 30 (R600 XTX) but due to production issues and lack of decisiveness to make any firm decisions, it got delayed and delayed. It was beginning to look like AMD would let down its loyal fan base; some even began suggesting the R600 was vaporware. That would have shaken up the industry immensely and thankfully for all, that did not happen. AMD is finally able to introduce some competition to Nvidia’s GeForce lineup of cards with its new series of DX10 and Windows Vista ready products.
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Review By Computershopper
At 9.5 inches in length, the HD 2900 XT is a tight fit in some smaller cases (though we had no trouble fitting it in a somewhat cramped Antec Sonata 2). You can install a pair of HD 2900 XT cards in CrossFire mode for an extra speed boost in most games. Gone is the need for a clumsy external cable and a special master card—CrossFire now works just like nVidia’s Scalable Link Interface (SLI) technology, allowing you to connect two standard HD 2900 XT cards using an included ribbon cable between the cards.
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Review By Extremetech
All this power consumption seems to have affected the card’s ability to quietly deal with cooling itself off. We were happy to see that the new cooling design on the Radeon X1950 XTX managed to reduce the shrill whine of some of their earlier high-end GPUs, and though this card uses a very similar cooler, we can’t give it passing marks on noise. It’s difficult to reliably measure noise in a realistic situation, because coolers for high-end CPUs and power supplies kick out too much competing sound. In use, we noticed that the card operated at perfectly reasonable volumes for a high-end card much of the time, but the fan would often kick into its highest gear for a good 20 or 30 seconds, and then settle down again. This isn’t the result of a bum card or hot case: We observed this behavior with two separate HD 2900 XT cards, both in a closed case and in an open-air case in a well air-conditioned office. At this “cool off the card at any costs” speed, it’s simply too loud for our tastes. This bothers some users more than others, but we feel the card frequently enters a mode where it’s clearly beyond our tolerable threshold for high-end GPU noise.
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Review By Anandtech
Despite all of this, there’s a great deal of cool technology in the R600, and as ATI is now a part of a CPU company, we received more detail on the GPU than we’ve gotten during any other GPU launch. AMD takes graphics very seriously, and it recently reaffirmed its commitment to continue to deliver high end discrete graphics cards, so amidst countless delays and rumors of strange problems, the R600 architecture is quite possibly more important to AMD than the graphics cards themselves. An eventual derivative of this architecture will be used in AMD’s Fusion processors, eventually making their way into a heterogeneous multi-core AMD microprocessor.
With AMD’s disappointing Q1, it can’t rest too much on the hope of Fusion changing the market, so we’ll have to start by looking at where R600 is today and how it stacks up to NVIDIA’s latest and almost greatest.
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Suggested retailer price of $449.
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