Mendoza :
umm hope you have a good Power supply cusz the 2900 series chews INSANE juice. you were better off getting 2 3850 with 512 megs of ram then 2 2900s.......of course 2 3870 r better and 2 8800 gt or higher r better to. But the 2900 series consumes way way too much power.
Plus 3850 = 2900 Pro.
Thats just plain wrong/misleading, 3850 = 2900 pro yes at standard pro clocks, but the pro can be clocked up to and beyond 800 mhz, has the full 512bit bus and 512mb frame buffer and the cooler even at 33% fan speed is really very very good. The beauty of the pro - if you can live with the power consumption lol - is that in hardware its very nearly an xt at a much lower price. Personally I do think its speed binned, the price for one screams speed binned and the extra heat pipe on the cooler suggests something is a little amiss also. The memory is also not the same, being 1.1ns chips versus 1.0ns on the xt. Im not putting this across very clearly lol but the pro can clock much much higher than its stock speeds. An overclocked 3850 will be faster but will also be stuck with just 256mb. Not to mention 512mb versions are not at all easy to source in the u.k. Maybe things have improved, but when I was looking for an upgrade 2 weeks before christmas 3870s and 512mb 3850s were next to non-existent. Especially the better packages with decent software and games bundled.
i have a pro by the way, bought of ebay, as of a week ago, and at 1400x900 (monitors max resolution) no game I play even bothers it except of course crysis. (these games are, with max settings, resolution and 2x aa: battlefield 2 & 2142, STALKER, Supreme Commander, Quake Wars and the occasional bit of Oblivion).
Crysis at 1152x864 I get 35-40 fps average (given that most of the game im running around dense jungle shooting, my minimum is not much lower than that, above 25fps put it that way) with all high except shadows, particles, effects and post processing on medium (no xp hack) with a core 2 duo e6300 @2.6ghz on windows XP using catalyst 7.12. Yes thats right dx9 card owners, high shader and 40fps. (its the most common value fraps gives while playing)
Moving to 1400x900 reduces my average fps by what appears to be exactly 10fps. But then again overclocking would remedy that pronto, although the slight change in proportions (everything is slightly taller and narrower which looks a bit odd) will stay the same
On the same system @1152x864 my old 7900gt overclocked to 700mhz core and 850mhz memory gave me a shuddery and unenjoyable 20-30fps (30 fps when looking at the ground lol ) with all on medium, water and physics on high. That was with the latest driver as of last week. Havent tried the patch yet with either card.
Im soooo chuffed if you havent worked that out already lol cos my newly installed pro at stock speeds doesnt just beat but destroys my enormously overclocked 7900. And thats why im all "the pro is amazing blah blah blah" lol. If you can pick one or two up cheap then with overclocking you really are laughing. On a side note, I havent tried overclocking quite yet, it only just fit into my case and the psu gets quite warm (Tagan 550w), which it never did with my 7900gt.
Cheers
#End of mindless rant#
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