Xbitlabs review

[Cookie Monster]

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A indepth review from xbitlab mainly talking about architecture, IQ, noise, cooling system etc. Performance maybe the upcoming part2 of the R600 review. (we can expect quite abit of games)

When we first tested Nvidia GeForce 8800 graphics card several months ago, we noticed that the launch ForceWare driver had issues with fog in Half-Life 2. Well, today we have an unpleasant surprise: the new ATI Catalyst driver has the same issue.

Conclusion

We still to have to find out performance of the Radeon HD 2900 XTX in real-world games and cannot make any final conclusions now. However, we can already state certain things about the newcomer, which was expected to emerge back in the Q4 2006, but was delayed by nearly half a year.

ATI Radeon HD 2900 XT is here, it works; it has unified shader architecture; it has over 700 million transistors, an absolute record to date; it features 512-bit memory bus, for the first time with the industry; it supports many interesting features and technologies; but it also has drivers that need to be improved to utilize the new promising features and its has only 16 texture units, which limits performance even in synthetic 3D benchmarks.

The main advantage of ATI Radeon HD 2000 is exceptional computing power of all chips as well as modular design, something, which may allow the company to rapidly create new chips based on common building blocks ? 5D scalar shader processors, texture processors and render back end processors. But if it takes the company another year before it boosts performance of its performance mainstream, mainstream and entry-level chips, the scenario that happened with transition from the Radeon X1600 XT to Radeon X1950 Pro, AMD risks to lose market share to Nvidia, who is consistently sticking to its policy of renewing the product lines every two quarters.

The new full-scene antialiasing methods look promising, but not all of them are ideal to say at least, as in certain cases we see substantial blur over our screenshots, which is unacceptable in the year 2007, when games tend to feature textures with a lot of small details as well as micro-geometry. We hope that ATI?s adaptive edge detect filter antialiasing will bring the new image quality heights into consumer 3D graphics.

Another potentially good thing about the Radeon HD 2000 is built-in hardware tesselator, similar to tesselator inside Xbox 360 GPU, which may catalyze game developers to take advantage of it and games will look more detailed on ATI Radeon HD 2000 graphics cards.

Multimedia features of the Radeon HD 2000 family also look promising, but, unfortunately, AMD/ATI unified video decoder should yet to be fully implemented into drivers. Even though the chip now officially supports decoding of VC-1 as well as features audio controller for audio data transmission over HDMI, the lack of certain software features make such capabilities useless for now.

Finally, despite of the fact that power consumption of $399 graphics card is not a really important factor to consider and around 160W is not really a lot for modern power supply units, cooling system that produces rather loud nice is something that should definitely be corrected on commercial Radeon HD 2900 XT graphics cards.

 

[Wreckage]

No game benchmarks yet, although xbit usually tests ALOT of games when they do.

However the noise\heat\and power draw are just plain crazy.

 

[kreacher]

Its just an architecture review. They haven't benchmarked any games.

 

[ronnn]

I certainly am looking to see power consumption at idle and load. I am assuming that amd now takes the power pig award from nvidia, but until the idle figures are in - as a jury I am out.

 

[swtethan]

same fog problem? bleh

 

[Wreckage]

Originally posted by: ronnn
I am assuming that amd now takes the power pig award from nvidia, but until the idle figures are in - as a jury I am out.

ATI has pretty much owned the power pig award for the last several years.

 

[gorka]

I'll get a 640mb GTS for now.

Wait for the R700 @ .65 or .45 and 1Gb.

The 2900xt is just way too rough around many edges.

again...even if drivers were fixed, power draw and noise would still be *major* concerns for me.

 

[swtethan]

Im putting off stepping up to the GTX, because july 22nd i am buying a quad core.

 

[BFG10K]

Power draw is irrelevant; what kills it for me is the noise.

 

[A554SS1N]

power draw is very relevent to someone like me as it affects my electricty bill, and that thing is a whopper.

 

[A554SS1N]

Now I've looked closer, the Idle and Peak 2D figures are quite nice though considering the class of card, so it's not all bad.

 

[theprodigalrebel]

Bit-tech has posted an excellent review (I mean the review itself and not what the review is about).

OS: Vista x86
Resolutions: 1600x1200, 1920x1200, 2560x1600 - all with 0xAA & 4xAA.

Cards tested:
NV - 7900GTX, 8800GTS 320 OC, 8800GTS 640 OC, 8800GTX, 8800 Ultra (plus 8800GTS 320/640 & GTX in SLI)
AMD - HD 2900XT, X1950XTX (plus Crossfire results for both)

Games: Company of Heroes, Supreme Commander, Oblivion, Call of Duty 2, FEAR, Prey & Quake 4
Average as well as minimum frame-rates

Graphs can be tough to read so it's best to take down the relevant numbers (for comparison) in Excel or something.

They gave it 10 on Features, 8 on Performance, 6 on Value and an Overall Score of 7/10.

 

[BFG10K]

power draw is very relevent to someone like me as it affects my electricty bill, and that thing is a whopper.

If a few extra dollars on your monthly power bill really matters to you then you likely can't afford the card to begin with.

 

[yacoub]

power draw is more relevant when it comes to whether or not he needs to upgrade his PSU than electrical cost

 

[A554SS1N]

Originally posted by: BFG10K

power draw is very relevent to someone like me as it affects my electricty bill, and that thing is a whopper.

If a few extra dollars on your monthly power bill really matters to you then you likely can't afford the card to begin with.

You've obviously got money to burn then.... nice to hear that.

 

[BFG10K]

power draw is more relevant when it comes to whether or not he needs to upgrade his PSU than electrical cost

Fair enough.

You've obviously got money to burn then.... nice to hear that.

No, that isn't what I'm saying. What I'm saying is if a few dollars a month makes a difference then how can someone drop down $300 for a video card?

 

[dreddfunk]

Maybe careful savings? It may be hard to imagine that a lot of people fall into this category (willing to buy a $300 GPU and also worried about an extra $5/month) but I'm sure that there are a lot of gaming enthusiasts living on a budget out there.

In any event, initial price and continued-cost-to-own are two separate issues. Everyone should think about TCO issues when buying something, even if just in passing.

 

[apoppin]

Originally posted by: BFG10K

power draw is more relevant when it comes to whether or not he needs to upgrade his PSU than electrical cost

Fair enough.

You've obviously got money to burn then.... nice to hear that.

No, that isn't what I'm saying. What I'm saying is if a few dollars a month makes a difference then how can someone drop down $300 for a video card?

will it even be a few dollars a month difference?

try calculating the difference assuming the average rig is 'on' for 8 hours a day
[you can multiply x 4 for the 24 hours a day people]

that would be the 'idle' diffferences

how many hours a day do you game

that would be the 'load' difference

i cant imagine ANY of you really care ... MOST of you get 10 miles per gallon with your SUV environment killers

and i am going "all solar" after i refi my house
-disconnect from the grid

 

[tw1164]

add what's being reviewed to the topic please

 

[apoppin]

Originally posted by: tw1164
add what's being reviewed to the topic please

make sure you address the OP

 

[Munky]

Originally posted by: yacoub
power draw is more relevant when it comes to whether or not he needs to upgrade his PSU than electrical cost

Who in their right mind would build and run a high end system with a crappy PSU?

 

[apoppin]

quite a few, evidently

check out a recent thread in CPUs where they buy the 'top' CPU and try to save a nickel on a PS

 

[Wreckage]

Originally posted by: theprodigalrebel
Bit-tech has posted an excellent review (I mean the review itself and not what the review is about).

Yet another site that gives the nod to the GTS640

First off, the card is obviously late. Very late. And normally when you?re late, you have to do something special. Unfortunately for AMD, R600 just isn?t that special because not only is Nvidia?s performance crown still intact, the card AMD has chosen to attack ? the GeForce 8800 GTS 640MB ? has come away with all but a few chinks in its armour.

 

[kreacher]

Nice review by Bit-tech. Since the 8800GTS prices will fall faster than the 2900XT (at least until the 2900XTX comes out) it is the card to buy.

 

[Pabster]

Originally posted by: ronnn
I certainly am looking to see power consumption at idle and load. I am assuming that amd now takes the power pig award from nvidia, but until the idle figures are in - as a jury I am out.

Worrying about power consumption on high-end graphics card is a moot point. If you're dropping $400+ I think a few kilowatts of electricity isn't a concern.

Heat and noise, however, are a concern. And not coincidentally, they increase proportionately to power consumption.