Pretty sure by the time were at catalyst 7.14/7.15, the 2900 will be at its maximum potential. Since the 3000 series is a tweaked and die-shrunk r600, it shouldnt be far off optimum about then either.
Hopefully when crysis comes out, the first thorough benchies will be done with the new catalysts (7.11) and the new 3850's & 3870's.
The 3Dmarks06 are impressive but the crysis demo shows that 3dmarks isn't everything. This was my first thought until I noticed the massive difference in the min FPS. It just can't be over looked as Min FPS 0.40 at frame 109 for the 8800GT and the HD3870 Min FPS 9.13 at frame 1936. I think this is what the conclusion was referring to on the 8800GT not being smooth. The 0.40 FPS Min will be a death sentence in multi player.
The 3Dmarks06 are impressive but the crysis demo shows that 3dmarks isn't everything. This was my first thought until I noticed the massive difference in the min FPS. It just can't be over looked as Min FPS 0.40 at frame 109 for the 8800GT and the HD3870 Min FPS 9.13 at frame 1936. I think this is what the conclusion was referring to on the 8800GT not being smooth. The 0.40 FPS Min will be a death sentence in multi player.
I would have thought when playing multiplayer most people will be turning down the shader settings at the very least... at 1280x1024 with low graphics settings over 100fps average will be easily achievable on both cards with no major worries about min FPS. Crysis does SCALE very well, with just about any card you have to sacrifice image quality to get performance at the moment. With multiplayer being a competetive game the image quality will have to take the back seat for a while till hardware catches up with the game.
Neither card is any use for running crysis in multiplayer mode with graphics maxed... The graphics card for doing that will be released in the run up to christmas next year I should think (thats pure guess work not based on any rumour at all.)
I wonder how high the clocks can be overclocked. I though I heard that the 2900xt could be pushed pretty good with proper cooling. I'm wondering if the smaller die will result in high over clocks.
Check out vr-zones review of the 2900xt. They modded the air cooler and got it up to 880mhz core (850 with standard cooling). They added more volts and chilled it down to like -60 celsuis, got 1ghz out of it.
I would have thought when playing multiplayer most people will be turning down the shader settings at the very least... at 1280x1024 with low graphics settings over 100fps average will be easily achievable on both cards with no major worries about min FPS. Crysis does SCALE very well, with just about any card you have to sacrifice image quality to get performance at the moment. With multiplayer being a competetive game the image quality will have to take the back seat for a while till hardware catches up with the game.
Neither card is any use for running crysis in multiplayer mode with graphics maxed... The graphics card for doing that will be released in the run up to christmas next year I should think (thats pure guess work not based on any rumour at all.)
Using a little math even at 100FPS you may see a low of about 2.4FPS where 0.4 times 6. 8800GT averages 16.77 on this test and 16.77 times 6 is 100.62 FPS. I think Nvidia will have some driver work to do here and will most likely come at a cost of both max and average FPS.
I wonder how high the clocks can be overclocked. I though I heard that the 2900xt could be pushed pretty good with proper cooling. I'm wondering if the smaller die will result in high over clocks.
I'm hoping when you say "proper cooling" you mean the stock, because on the 2900's, it really is awesome (and amazingly loud)
For fun, lets say this is right. Well the clocks are lower on the one tested in the OP's review. And the prices would be very nice for sure. SHould be fun to see once NDA breaks and made more interesting by the near non-existent supply of 8800GT's.
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MSI P6N SLI Platinum, Q6600, 2GB Crucial Ballistix Tracer PC8000, SLI BFG 8800GT OC 512MB, SB X-Fi Fatality, Antec TruePower Trio 550W, Windows XP pro
In the past this was true, but the Geforce 8 series has slightly higher quality anisotropic filtering than the HD 2900 series. It's really about identical at this point in time.
Going from a x1950xtx to a 8800gts in the past month. I have to say ATI has better color quality, and overall picture quality by a noticable amount. Even in the past going from a 9800pro to 6800gt ATI had better quality. Of course I won't talk about speed, but the 2xxx and 3xxx close the gap quite a bit. I have yet to those in operation so I can't comment on their color and picture quality.
pogsnet 
(thats pure guess work not based on any rumour at all.)