HD 2900XT is fast in Xbit labs review!

M

MrWizard6600

Supreme [H]ardness
Joined
Jan 15, 2006
Messages
5,791
See for yourself! Give the GTS a real run for its money and starts lookin at the GTX!

http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/video/display/radeon-hd-2900-games.html
(posted on the 24th may, 07)

I called it too! Take a look at some of the benchmarks for the HD 2900XT. I said it would be drivers, and it looks like I might be right. Oblivion, and Company of Heros are the two that jump out at me.

x3_4x.gif

research_4x.gif

pier_4x.gif

scell_hdr.gif

coh_af.gif

tesout_hdr.gif

tesin_hdr.gif


If this card can hold this lead in oblivion I can see recomending this thing to a couple of people. That is pretty well the single biggest thing this thing can do right now. Of course, how it performs in the new Unreal engine and the new Crytek engines will have far more sway over which I put in my comps. If amd releases a new chipset that can contend with 680i (or rather 680a) they might full well be in Bizznezz!

Because some (if not all) of the below posters have turned my thread into a gong show, I thought I might address their issues: of course you'll want to take into consideration how the game performs under your personal favorite game, infact that might be all you want to consider (I wish they did a test to see how many smokes in CS 1.6 each card could handle lol). The images posted above are the best this card can do. I am simply telling you guys this card does have some balls and, if your a player of oblivion or COH, you might take a look into this card. If your play Stalker or Neverwinter Nights, you're going to want to look elsewhere.

Its amazing to me how much irrational support for Nvidia there is in this forum. If I had simply renamed this thread and written it in a different tone to something along the lines of "Nvidias 8800 shitkicks the HD 2900XT almost all the way across the board" I would have all of you guys posting "Damn straight".

anyways, @ [H]ard|OCP, citizens demand a revist to your artical!
 
you dont think thats even modestly impressive? Especially considering the attitude toward this card up to this point?

This card squarly lands itself at its price tag IMHO, and from this point forward, if the budget cant afford a GTX but can afford the HD 2900XT, I will be using one of these.
 
No I don't considering all the wasted time that was put into this card. It was hyped and speculated over for how freakin long and it comes out to barely show anything for itself. The article doesn't state the mem size of the GTS used but assuming it would be the 640mb card, then for $90+ less than the current price of the HD2900XT I would rather buy the 8800GTS 640mb since it can damn near keep up to the HD2900XT. The GTS is closer to the XT than the XT is to the GTX.

MrWizard6600 said:
This card squarly lands itself at its price tag IMHO, and from this point forward, if the budget cant afford a GTX but can afford the HD 2900XT, I will be using one of these.
Click to expand...

True to a point. Yes the card has a nice price point considering the GTX is ~$100 more and the GTS ~$100 less and this card falls in the "lower-middle" in the performance category. The way I see it.... if your going to spend $400-$450 on a vid card already why not chip in the extra $100 and get the clear cut winner?
 
i don't get it, how could 2900XT be this good while [H] review show it very lacking even compared to 8800GTS?
if the number is OK, what about IQ? i'd like to see more detail on setting they used for these number.
 
Pathy said:
Looks good - Now just apply AA and give us the results then.
Click to expand...

good point, for a second i thought all the game tested with 4AA and 16AF, but clearly now, other than older title such X3 and Farcry, they don't have AA ON.
 
Do the drivers fix the noise and power consumption and price issue too? Those numbers are not impressive at all considering it consumes about 160w under load compared to 100-110 for gts and 130 for gtx. Also it is SO much noisier than nvidias cards so that is hardly impressive either. Besides that article has a few more benchmarks too. I assume you just forgot to post these ones aswell:

stalker_hdr.gif

hbm_4x.gif

gothic_af.gif

nwn_4x.gif

sc_4x.gif

hl2eo_4x.gif

ryder_total.gif

ryder_fps.gif

spc_3ds.gif

spc_catia.gif

spc_maya.gif

spc_proe.gif

spc_ugnx.gif


Doesn't look that impressive in those imo.
 
MrWizard6600 said:
you dont think thats even modestly impressive?
Click to expand...

Based on its specs? No. Based on its price? No. It is priced based on its disappointing performance which is great for the consumer if performance is brought up to par but I'm not sure why that's a good thing from an analytical standpoint.
 
SuperKeijo said:
Do the drivers fix the noise and power consumption and price issue too? Those numbers are not impressive at all considering it consumes about 160w under load compared to 100-110 for gts and 130 for gtx. Also it is SO much noisier than nvidias cards so that is hardly impressive either. Besides that article has a few more benchmarks too. I assume you just forgot to post these ones aswell:


Doesn't look that impressive in those imo.
Click to expand...

Exactly. I'm getting very sick of these R600 'spin doctors'. Nice job posting the rest of the benchmarks.
 
LMAO Very nice.. I was wondering where the other benckmark's where.. damn ATI fanboy's... I think the 2900's will get better I hope they do.. after all I was waiting for them and when I found them to suck I went for the 8800 GTS 640 and I am very happy I did..
 
SuperKeijo said:
Do the drivers fix the noise and power consumption and price issue too? Those numbers are not impressive at all considering it consumes about 160w under load compared to 100-110 for gts and 130 for gtx. Also it is SO much noisier than nvidias cards so that is hardly impressive either. Besides that article has a few more benchmarks too. I assume you just forgot to post these ones aswell:

Doesn't look that impressive in those imo.
Click to expand...

agreed. same thing i said when the early and disspointing reviews came out and people said to wait for drivers.

also, if you wait for newer drivers for this card, ATi will have the next itineraton at .65 and that card will use less power and produce less heat/noise! and if we're speculating...by the time ATi comes out with .65 ----- the 8900 may be close to release already. :) so its catch-up all over again.

there are simply too many 'ifs' for ATi at this point in time with regards to the 2900.

**for, the GTS 640mb at $300 AR still cannot be touched pricewise by the 2900.
 
MrWizard6600 said:
anyways, @ [H]ard|OCP, citizens demand a revist to your artical!
Click to expand...

There is no need to revisit this - due to the large number of images you didn't link because of how bad they were for the 2900, I'm gonna go out on a limb here and say you're just a useless fanboy.
 
Yes, and one thing I must say about the "wait for drivers - they are just not mature yet" argument used by fanATIcs. When you're late, you're late. If the drivers arent up to task, they aren't up to task, and that is just something you'll have to deal with when there's competition around. I don't remember the drivers being a problem for 8800 series back in the day (atleast not performance wise) so why are they now for R600?. If the card really was good, it shouldn't need shitloads of time to be optimised for every single game seperately, it would kick ass in all games, not just the heavily optimized ones. And if the drivers arent mature at this point, there is no reason to wait for them to get better, they might improve performance a few percent, but that is hardly enough to overtake nvidia at this time. Waiting for better drivers is hopeless and a gamble anyway. Nvidia has good drivers and performance NOW, Ati doen't. And who honestly cares about the state of 2900xt drivers in ~3-4 months anyway? Refreshes have propably been released by then and if not, they'll be pretty much right around the corner.
 
Here is a quote from the same review, which confirms what I have been posting in other threads. Note that I actually own this card:

The new graphics card has, for the first time in history, 512-bit memory bus. Unfortunately for AMD/ATI, either poor drivers or limited amount of rater operation units do not allow the Radeon HD 2900 XT to demonstrate really high results in Half-Life 2: Episode One game with FSAA enabled.
ATI Radeon HD 2900 XT demonstrated nice performance in mathematically-intensive cases, but due to limitations caused by its current implementation (lack of enough texture units, render back ends, etc.), as well as current state of drivers, it did not demonstrate any breakthroughs with current-generation DirectX 9-compatible applications.
Click to expand...

In short, the lack of ROPs makes this card lag behind Nvidia's cards when AA is applied-- a feature that most gamers expect to apply liberally to older games when they buy a next gen card. Some sites emphasize this shortfall and others downplay it, but I can tell you from experience that it is a major flaw and if most gamers understood the implications of it they wouldn't even consider this card.
 
Blackstone said:
Here is a quote from the same review, which confirms what I have been posting in other threads. Note that I actually own this card:



In short, the lack of ROPs makes this card lag behind Nvidia's cards when AA is applied-- a feature that most gamers expect to apply liberally to older games when they buy a next gen card. Some sites emphasize this shortfall and others downplay it, but I can tell you from experience that it is a major flaw and if most gamers understood the implications of it they wouldn't even consider this card.
Click to expand...

This is just Xbit-labs guessing. The culprit is much more likely the fact that the dedicated AA hardware on R600 is broken and it's being done by the shader processors instead.
 
^eMpTy^ said:
This is just Xbit-labs guessing. The culprit is much more likely the fact that the dedicated AA hardware on R600 is broken and it's being done by the shader processors instead.
Click to expand...

Who knows, but the fact remains that R600 peak multi-texture fillrate is almost half of the one of G80.
 
^eMpTy^ said:
This is just Xbit-labs guessing. The culprit is much more likely the fact that the dedicated AA hardware on R600 is broken and it's being done by the shader processors instead.
Click to expand...

Yep, Xbit is the last site to go to for technical insights into hardware. They just look at graphs and say "it's probably this or probably that" simply based on where performance ends up. They don't seem to know their asses from their elbows when it comes to interpreting benchmark data IMO.

But they do have one of the most extensive benchmark suites out there so I like their reviews nonetheless.
 
Yawn

I've been saying the same thing as BlackStone. If you're spending this much money on a video card, you would assume AA! But unfortunately not the case. Oh well, I like ATI, just not this card.

Hell, my 320mb GTS has the capability usually to do 2x or 4x AA at 1280x1024. So I can say that I'm happy :p
 
wow I've never met such anti me-ism in a thread I've posted before

@Why didnt you post the rest of the benchmarks?
Because all of us have already seen em.
"hey guys check out this thread I created where I'm telling you stuff you already know!!"

It took me a good solid five minutes to upload those pictures to photobucket (which is something you need to do, stealing bandwidth isn't cool). I wasn't going to waste time uploading the rest of the images. What I did instead was give you the actual link to the artical.

@Dark prodigy
It's widely known your a fan of Nvidia, why are you in the ati boards?

Dont fuckin call me names and if you do, use something less retarded than "spin doctor".

I am not an ATI fanboy, never have been, and never will be. I am simply saying that some of these benchmarks are impressive for the price point the HD2900XT hits.

@8800 Drivers were never a problem (peformance wise).

For several months me and thousands of other 8800 owners were BSODing twenty times a day because Nvidia was too lazy to release a driver for Vista. I'm still having trouble (using 158.18 and the new beta driver) with a couple of games.

@^empty^

I heard these rumors too, that the R600's architecture was one of the more difficult ones to develop by ati (hence all the delays), but I thought that they had them sorted out. If its true the AA engine is not doing its job, and that its being done by the shaders, perhalps we will see an R610 with these issues sorted out and largly improved benchmarks?
 
It's is the best card for 399 dlls, no doubt.

Too bad the 8800GTS is faster and cheaper. :D :D
 
^eMpTy^ said:
This is just Xbit-labs guessing. The culprit is much more likely the fact that the dedicated AA hardware on R600 is broken and it's being done by the shader processors instead.
Click to expand...

It is up in the air right now. Some people think it is just borked and other people think it was a deliberate forward looking design choice. I think it sort of sucks either way.
 
haah. That was about the most disappointing display of benchmarks ever. Atleast for me.

I wanted the HD 2900XT to become, good.
Magically fix all the heat, power consumption, noise, and price issues.
And then have good performance.

All mainly because of Intel not going to offer SLi, and just CrossFire, and I don't like the nForce chipset. Or, I like what the Intel chipsets offer, more.

Well, I guess this is another reason to switch to console gaming. :p
 
SuperKeijo said:
Yes, and one thing I must say about the "wait for drivers - they are just not mature yet" argument used by fanATIcs. When you're late, you're late. If the drivers arent up to task, they aren't up to task, and that is just something you'll have to deal with when there's competition around. I don't remember the drivers being a problem for 8800 series back in the day (atleast not performance wise) so why are they now for R600?. If the card really was good, it shouldn't need shitloads of time to be optimised for every single game seperately, it would kick ass in all games, not just the heavily optimized ones. And if the drivers arent mature at this point, there is no reason to wait for them to get better, they might improve performance a few percent, but that is hardly enough to overtake nvidia at this time. Waiting for better drivers is hopeless and a gamble anyway. Nvidia has good drivers and performance NOW, Ati doen't. And who honestly cares about the state of 2900xt drivers in ~3-4 months anyway? Refreshes have propably been released by then and if not, they'll be pretty much right around the corner.
Click to expand...
Who is "we"? If the X2900XT delivers more performance for the money, from the consumer's of view it's a better buy. We're not investing here, we buying a single card.


As for the drivers, you are in denial if you think that drivers for a brand new card couldn't be really bad across the board. It just came out. There have been many instances were cards have gotten double digit percent performance boosts from drivers a month after release. This is especially expected for this card, because exhibited evidence the the drivers were generally poor, given the AA issues and things.

You can't optimize that much for single games anyway. Performance increases that big across so many games would be much lower level.
 
MrWizard6600 said:
Dont fuckin call me names and if you do, use something less retarded than "spin doctor".
Click to expand...
How about dingleberry? Or asstard?

I kid. Those are pretty retarded also.

MrWizard6600 said:
I heard these rumors too, that the R600's architecture was one of the more difficult ones to develop by ati (hence all the delays), but I thought that they had them sorted out. If its true the AA engine is not doing its job, and that its being done by the shaders, perhalps we will see an R610 with these issues sorted out and largly improved benchmarks?
Click to expand...

But if they release an R610, what about all the poor owners of the R600 who are stuck with an overpriced card that can't do any AA?
 
Citizen86 said:
How about dingleberry? Or asstard?

I kid. Those are pretty retarded also.



But if they release an R610, what about all the poor owners of the R600 who are stuck with an overpriced card that can't do any AA?
Click to expand...

Citizen86, have you ever heard of GzP? I knew a guy named Citizen from there. You him?

If they release an R610, I guess the people who saw the benchmarks of the R600, know how hot it gets, and know how much noise it makes, will be getting a new card if they want?

If they release a R610, I will honestly PRAY it is better then the 8800GTX by a good, 10 FPS, in everything.
[/dream]
 
ShiningHolden said:
Citizen86, have you ever heard of GzP? I knew a guy named Citizen from there. You him?

If they release an R610, I guess the people who saw the benchmarks of the R600, know how hot it gets, and know how much noise it makes, will be getting a new card if they want?

If they release a R610, I will honestly PRAY it is better then the 8800GTX by a good, 10 FPS, in everything.
[/dream]
Click to expand...

I don't think I know what GzP is... Should I? Did he have the same stunning or otherwise ignorant and offensive sense of humor?
 
At this point, the 2900 is just not a good choice IMHO, simply because there are clearly some major problems with setup. I'm sure that drivers can fix some of the issues like the ones in the XBitLabs review, but not all, at least not before its time for another generation of hardware. Then there's the power and noice issues beyond that.

That's not to say that its bad in all cases. Clearly in certain situations like BF 2142 its the equal of the 8800 GTX. In others like STALKER, its totally horrific. That should not be happening with this part. Drivers are no excuse, espcially with the short lifespan of GPU's. Waiting months for drivers to get fixed means you might have very well been better off waiting for next gen hardware.
 
Citizen86 said:
I don't think I know what GzP is... Should I? Did he have the same stunning or otherwise ignorant and offensive sense of humor?
Click to expand...

haha.
GamerzPlanet forums. http://gamerzplanet.net/
He knew alot about uncapping modems.

At heatlesssun:
Your correct. Drivers can only fix so much, and waiting for those drivers still leaves you with the current performance that isn't pleasing in the first place.
 
i knew these were the same benchmark graphs i had already seen, yet i got excited at the prospect of this lump of crap 'haulin ass' and had to have a look.

however, i'd put the hd2900xt in my system asap if i happened upon a deal.
 
MrWizard6600 said:
@8800 Drivers were never a problem (peformance wise).

For several months me and thousands of other 8800 owners were BSODing twenty times a day because Nvidia was too lazy to release a driver for Vista. I'm still having trouble (using 158.18 and the new beta driver) with a couple of games.
Click to expand...

BSOD's are not indicative of a cards "performance". Performance is the type of framerates you see when the card IS working correctly (sans bsod). It is possible to have a totally awesomely performing card with totally shitty unstable drivers. Do not confuse stability with performance.
 
snaggletooth said:
i knew these were the same benchmark graphs i had already seen, yet i got excited at the prospect of this lump of crap 'haulin ass' and had to have a look.

however, i'd put the hd2900xt in my system asap if i happened upon a deal.
Click to expand...

I'd be willing to put a better card in than a 7600GT as well! :p

ShiningHolden said:
haha.
GamerzPlanet forums. http://gamerzplanet.net/
He knew alot about uncapping modems.
Click to expand...

I tried uncapping my Cable Modem before, dont think it worked great, maybe a bit.... to answer your question... not me.

illgiveumorality said:
Wow, if I'm not mistaken, for the most part the 2900 was getting its ass kicked by the 1950.
Click to expand...

Looks that way.... those benchmarks are very interesting... kind of makes you wonder....
 
its all relatively linear buy the card with the best bang for buck the chip in the extra 100$ for the better one doesnt apply to video cards considering how fast they churn out new ones maybe apply that when u buy a new monitor but not to a video card i speculate the 2900xtx will stomp the 8800gtx by a reasonable margin but cost 100$ more buy whatever appeals to you the most people forget that the fps doesnt matter much after 35 and doesnt matter at all after 50 so if you think a card is faster at this point your mentality will make more of a difference then actual performance and with any of these high end cards at least for me even if it does drop pretty low in frames i would be to distracted by the eye candy to notice at all so if you like the look name or overall feel of the card and its in your price range get it
 
when you spend that much money on a video card and can still load up a game and get FPS in the single digits....then you know you really screwed yourself/wasted your money. :(
 
xc_runner713 said:
its all relatively linear buy the card with the best bang for buck the chip in the extra 100$ for the better one doesnt apply to video cards considering how fast they churn out new ones maybe apply that when u buy a new monitor but not to a video card i speculate the 2900xtx will stomp the 8800gtx by a reasonable margin but cost 100$ more buy whatever appeals to you the most people forget that the fps doesnt matter much after 35 and doesnt matter at all after 50 so if you think a card is faster at this point your mentality will make more of a difference then actual performance and with any of these high end cards at least for me even if it does drop pretty low in frames i would be to distracted by the eye candy to notice at all so if you like the look name or overall feel of the card and its in your price range get it
Click to expand...

That's the longest freaking sentence I've ever read.... and I've read Hemingway.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top