Radeon HD 2900 Series Launch On May 2nd

[BFG10K]

Some good news according to this:

AMD has decided to push forward the launch of the Radeon HD 2900 series to May 2nd instead of the original date on May 14th. Products demonstrations and reviews are allowed to appear on that date so it is considered a soft launch. However, AMD is still keeping Radeon HD 2600 and 2400 under wraps until the big day on May 14th. Radeon HD 2900 XT cards will be available from that day onwards for the price of US$399 to be positioned against the GeForce 8800 GTS. The final clocks for Radeon HD 2900 XT stood at 740MHz core and 825MHz for memories.

With the 8800 Ultra coming out on the 1st of May things should be quite interesting next week. :thumbsup:

 

[trOver]

yes it should!

 

[imported_Amuro]

No any place you can preorder the 8800 Ultra?

 

[Bateluer]

Isn't the 8800 Ultra carry an MSRP of 999? If so, its entirely irrelevant. Thats way too pricey.

 

[LittleNemoNES]

awesome! I look forward to the HD 2xxx series image quality. Especially the 24xAA setting.

ATI really had no choice but to do this since the benches are out of the bag.

 

[Genx87]

About damn time. I look forward to seeing what it can do, hopefully better than DTs benches.

 

[chizow]

So Tuesday.

Really interested in seeing some thorough benches, along with an in-depth analysis of the core architecture by AT.

 

[n7]

I'll believe the date when i see the reviews

I just hope we can actually buy the hardware soon, since it seems that's the only hope we have of the 8800 GTX getting a more reasonable price.

 

[CP5670]

So is this only the XT or are they also unveiling the XTX's final specs at the same time?

 

[conlan]

For $399, with a street price no doubt lower than that, this could be very interesting indeed.

Theres going to be a lot of reading to do in the coming weeks. Hope my old eyes can handle it.

 

[Lord Banshee]

If the HD 2900 XT is truly better than the 8800GTS 640MB (as shown form the first set of DT benches) and is truly a workstation beast ( also shown from the first DT benches) then i will be jumping all over this card.

Even if the card is $400 and the 8800GTS is $350 if those workstation benches are correct i would still get it if the 640MB went down to $300...

 

[MrWizzard]

Originally posted by: Lord Banshee
If the HD 2900 XT is truly better than the 8800GTS 640MB (as shown form the first set of DT benches) and is truly a workstation beast ( also shown from the first DT benches) then i will be jumping all over this card.

Even if the card is $400 and the 8800GTS is $350 if those workstation benches are correct i would still get it if the 640MB went down to $300...

But for most users the 8800GTS will truly still be a better card. And this doesn't change the fact that the HD 2900 XT truly is late.

Sorry couldn't resist.

But truly, I mean, If the workstation benches are correct it's impressive. We will have to see.

 

[Keysplayr]

Originally posted by: Lord Banshee
If the HD 2900 XT is truly better than the 8800GTS 640MB (as shown form the first set of DT benches) and is truly a workstation beast ( also shown from the first DT benches) then i will be jumping all over this card.

Even if the card is $400 and the 8800GTS is $350 if those workstation benches are correct i would still get it if the 640MB went down to $300...

Sounds good, but you do realize that those workstation benches depicted an X2900XT against a G71 based (Quadro5500) Quadro card, don't you? If not, I thought you should know before basing any purchasing decisions on those workstation graphs. Wait for appropriate WS benchies with R600 vs G80 based cards. Just FYI.

 

[Lord Banshee]

MrWizzard,

How can you say the 8800GTS is a better card if those benchmarks are correct? Other than price and how late it is to the market speed ups alone make the HD 2900XT a great card. No one knows what features or IQ this card will exhibit but we can only hope to match or excel the 8800 series. So i do not see you logic Sir.

keysplayr2003,

Yes i know this, but the thing is because the way ATI and NVIDIA does the workstation speedup (driver features being disabled) even a FX series Quadro say a FX 3000( based on a FX5900) would kill a 8800GTX in any workstation benchmark unless it is purely written in DirectX (3dsmax 8 and greater has great DirectX support) as there have been little to no DirectX feature disabled in gamer cards.

For example if you look at this page: http://features.cgsociety.org/story_custom.php?story_id=3321&page=3
the 7800GTX can not beat even a 6600 based quadro (FX540), some application the fx540 even doubles the 7800GTX score.

For relevant example of 8800 series quadro, if you look at this page:
http://features.cgsociety.org/story_custom.php?story_id=3994&page=3

the QuadroFX 4600 (based on the 8800GTS) scores pretty much exactly the same as the QuadroFX 5500. So if i can get a gamer card that is 400 dollars killing a 2000 dollar quadro 4600 then GO AMD/ATI


I hope this explains why i am so excited about these early benchmarks

 

[MrWizzard]

Originally posted by: Lord Banshee
MrWizzard,

How can you say the 8800GTS is a better card if those benchmarks are correct? Other than price and how late it is to the market speed ups alone make the HD 2900XT a great card. No one knows what features or IQ this card will exhibit but we can only hope to match or excel the 8800 series. So i do not see you logic Sir.

Well?. When I said most users I mean the general public, most users are not interested in all the bells and whistles that video cards come with. Most will just be gaming. How many people use the built in Geforces encoding feature? Not many. So if I can get a 8800GTS 640 for $320 currently or a 2900XT for $400, I think most would choose the 8800 because of the price difference, and those benches show the 2900XT is only a couple frames faster, some game are like 20 FPS faster but most it is only a few. So if we are to assume they are accurate benches I see the 8800GTS as being the more attractive card. MOST of the general public is going to see the price and the few frame difference and default to the Nvidia card.

Doesn?t mean the 2900XT isn?t all around the better card it just means it?s not the most desirable card to the general public. Make sense?

 

[Lord Banshee]

Yep on price/performance for general gaming the 8800GTS 640MB might just be a better buy. But only time will tell when real benchmarks start to appear and real prices at real stores show up.

 

[AnotherGuy]

Finally smthn nice from AMD
Now i need speculations on when will this card go down in price say at 350$... or maybe we will wait for the 2600 series and their prices...

 

[Night201]

I'm curious about the final size and power requirements. Still looking at an 8800gts 640MB, but that could change when I upgrade in August...we'll see how the prices are then.