R600: Finally DX10 Hardware from ATI - Page 4

I don't think the 2900 XT is all that terrible, but it'd have to get at least a few bucks below the price of an 8800 GTS 640 before I'd recommend it.

If Ati/Amd is smart, they'll undercut the 8800 GTS 640 by a notable margin, and release an HD 2900 XL to compete with the 8800 GTS 320 that is also cheaper.

Only way the 2900 is going to get any street cred is with a lower price...

Exactly. Win some consumers with the wallet, and then make some great driver enhancements to make them really feel they have a bargain.

A good formula for sucess.

Sadly for me, I was one of those that waited and now having seen the results I'm not gonig to buy either 8800 or 2900. I'd be close to buying an 8800 but I don't like the lack of onboard HD support, unlike the 8600.

So it's next next generation cards for me

I dunno....

I'm still running the "flop" X1800XT 512MB card. Bought it for $275 CAN.

This card still kicks ass and it was considered too little too late.

People are so quick to judge in this instant gratification world we live in.

OK OK My turn! 8)
AMD/ATI HD 2900XT is an awesome beast.no doubt!
All of you agree that it has some serious(?) driver issue. :?
With the current drivers, IF it costs about 350~375$ it would be a good buy.
It doesn't have to stand against 8800GTX cause it's much cheaper!
Still it can win 8800GTS 640MB in some(?) tests!
The fact is :
It doesn't deserve that much waiting i believe... :?

Here are the answers to some of your main questions:

Q: How much power do i need to have a full stable HD2900XT(none OC'ed) system :?:
A: Something like this will be good enough(not overkill though :!: )


Q: I heard that HD2900XT is so quiet.Is this true :?:
A: Yes my friend 8) .It's as quiet as this!


Q: I have lots of money.witch one to go? 8800GTX/Ultra or HD2900XT :?:
A: That's the dumbest question that i have ever heard! even a day old baby knows that single HD2900XT is at least 2~3x SLI'ed 8800GTX/Ultra!

Q: I heard that AMD is going to release a new driver that can double the HD2900XT's performance (ATI Fanboy).Is this true?
A: Yes.It's true. Here is a picture of the leader of the AMD/ATI's driver writers team!


Q: Why it took AMD 6 more months to release the HD2900XT :?:
A: Cause they were enjoying Multiplayer Supreme Commander(on some SLI'ed 8800GTX system)instead of making graphics cards! :?

Q: Final word?
A: Go buy HD2900XT! 8)

I think there is more people than me who would cheerfully skip legacy support for an awesome DX10 experience. This wishy-washy generation of graphics which doesn't know which leg to stand on can't be the best way to go. Is there any future for a pure DX10 system that does away with DX9 for the extra performance and more power efficiency? And by future I mean this year. Does even vista work whithout DX9? If not pure performance can't be had.

Is anyone else a little frustrated ATM in the PC gaming world?

I was running Vista to get ready for DX10. I loved it at first as it played all my existing games okay (even old ones and emulators lol) and recorded my TV shows, but eventually went back to XP-MCE.

I was getting annoyed at the constant disk activity (even after disabling indexing, Defender, etc etc etc), laggy online gameplay in games like SF2 and reduced framerates in most of my games (especially in SCA)

Now I get to look forward to putting Vista back on and then buying a lesser card from ATi, which MAY be great in DX10 and MAY get drivers as good as their Vista X1K drivers. OR I could buy a currently superior card with inferior Vista driver support and potentially weaker DX10 shading power. And either way my existing games will start sucking again. LOL

Anyone running a Core 2 and 8800GTX with Vista and having an awesome gaming experience? Last time I tried that for a customer the drivers were junk. If so it may be time to dump this 2.9 Opty and X1800XT while saying goodbye to the idea of an 2900XT for my Xpress 3200.

Excellent example card, the X1800XT is still up there in the FPS for almost anything you throw at it at 1600x1200 or less, so it's fine. If it were me I'd keep that guy and consider upgrading when the next-gen cards come out next year--but that's just me. Heh, I just upgraded from the ATI x700 Pro 128MB card, if that tells you anything

I do, and I'm not buying this one.

This is pretty much what most of us knew about the next AMD/ATI GPU. AMD/ATI are now officially a full year behind in the race. So now it's CPU time? If the new CPUs are a "match or worse" affair then it's pretty sure bet that AMD/ATI move to salvage mode.

But without any DX10 software or good DX10 tests, does anyone know how these cards (nVidia) include will really perform? The ATI on paper looked to be a great DX10.

But even with the unknown of DX10, nVidia have 6 more months to yet again leap frog ATI just in time for the Xmas season and releases of DX10 games. Unless ATI/AMD have managed to work completely in secret on some next gen hardware that has a VERY short design to delivery cycle, I'm just not seeing how ATI/AMD plan to ever recover all that lost revenue?

I hate to see this -- without the "race" the consumer ultimately loses. And it appears the race is over.

Fact of the matter is Intel was years late with the Core 2 duo if you look at it that way. For years AMD owned the pentium with the Athlons. Now, the tide has turned. AMD will come out with thier new stuff and the tide will turn again. Do you understand? And yes whenever a company comes out with a new product that is superior to it's competition, the competition will lose money untill they come out with a new product. It's the way business works. Unfortunately this and many other forums are jam packed with impatient gamers and such who have no idea about business, yet they feel compelled to try to explain to us how one company or another is going to fail becase of competition which is completely ignorant. This is going to go on untill the earth gets sucked into the sun... if you believe that.

Gary Busey, I partied with you once though, I doubt you remember. You also trumped my point with a lot less words.

"Making them proven" would be a DX10 platform to run them on, i.e. true DX10 games. And your "company that makes the fastest top end card can also produce the best bang for your buck card" logic doesn't make any sense, nor does your "that's how this usually works" assumption.


And this isn't a flame so don't take offense to it. We're having a discussion.

If everyone plays the wait and see, then nothing will get proven -- because everyone is waiting. Vista is the DX10 platform -- maybe WinXP DX10 version if Microsoft cave to the consumer pressure (still a remote possibility).

But not sure why the platform is that relevant. The games/apps that will use DX10 will be the proving grounds (not the OS platform) of just how good the DX10 hardware is. The first round of DX10 titles most likely will not fully optimize or utilize all aspects of DX10 as the learning process will continue. Just as in DX9, developers learn better ways over time to accomplish a task and how the hardware responds to those ways can also influence the methods used in a game/app.

"Wait and see" is a good approach, but maybe I mis-understood you -- we still need the bleeding edgers (such as myself and others) to go buy the latest and greatest.

TG'ers have traditionally jumped all over people that get the latest and greatest, but at the same time say "Wait and See" -- it's a contradiction.

Top end designs filter down to bang for the buck lines -- it's the design that's winning the fight and that's why who produces the best performing GPU also captures the real meat of the market "the best bang for the buck" group.

I long since stopped being concerned about what is and isn't a flame. Just as I rarely believe anything til I have it and use it myself. This is one of those cases where I'll skip the next best thing because it doesn't do anything for me here and now. Sorta like Vista -- just doesn't do anything for me so it gets skipped until it does.

I agree that it's impossible to consider anything as 'future proof', but as mentioned, many people are buying for the long haul so if one does better in certainn aspects of a DX10 future they might want to take that into consideration when buying, just like the R9700 was better long term, the GF6800 for long term, and the X1900 for longer term. We still don't know which current design plays best with future games because we still don't know how people will code for them, if they simply tack on DX10 to an underlying DX9 game where it's not replacing shader code, then we may find that the benefits aren't realized until long after the G80/R600 have been replaced even by the next mid-range, but few people can wait that long to find out.

IMO the final straw will be if a good solid killer APP like Crysis, Halo2PC, or UT3 hit the shelves, the moment the final reviews come in for hardware on those games, bam shopping rush for whomever does them better.

Right now people have the luxury of navel gazing because there's little their current cards can't do except move the sliders a bit (or HDR or HD+AA, etc), but when those games come out, it's a whole new story, just like HL2 and D3.

Yep! I agree. The NV is the king at this moment.

We all also have to remember, as has been said before, that R600 is more depended on driver. It's more complex than n80 and need very good driver to feed all those 320 processing units. In some games it can do it at this moment, in most games it does not... So you can expect better performace in mainstream games (sooner or later), but if you play more "original" games, the NV is going to beat ATI with it's hands tide behind...
All in all we now have some competition, hopefully much more in future!

whoa triple post

I'm just wondering where you got the year statistic from? The 2900XT really makes you wonder if ATI isn't that far behind. From all we know a major release could possibly be (I said could possibly be) around the corner. Maybe they have a secret weapon. I think the 2900 is proof that they can compete.

sorry, but the 9700pro was a great card. naturally the newer ones were faster but it can play dx9 games pretty damn well. the reason it may have been the gfx card to get for dx9 was because at the time it was released there wans't a card that could take it on.

don't know which card you are thinking of but i got it back in 2002 or so and it happily played the games of that day and later on.

sorry,. bnut i am very sentimental over that card and IMO pound for pound one of the best cards to have been created.

I had a 9700pro and still have two 9800pros lying around.

They were okay without AA, up to 1024 in most DX9 games. 50-100fps.

This isn't awful, but when DooM3/Farcry/HL2 came out I needed to switch to an X800XL to get decent 1280+AA performance.

It was smart to buy them when they were new because they were the best and stayed that way for quite some time, but I ended up having to replace them anyway for a much better DX9 experience.

Buying an 8800 just because you want it for DX10 games right now would be silly. Wait for the games to come out and see whats available for cards.

Buying it because you want the best card right now would be smart Just as when the 9700pro was new, nobody could argue who was king.

EDIT: At the Ape....

Sorry dude, running HL2 and Farcry on a lower res. and without AA isn't exploiting, its supporting. I didn't say 9700pro sucked for DX9, only it wasn't/isn't stellar. If it was stellar, nobody would have bother jumping on 6800s and X800s.

If they fix the AA performance of 2900 and come out with DX10.1 this year I'll agree on your 8500/GF3 comparison.

DX10 Lost planet demo is out and there already a benchmark vs the HD2900XT and the 8800GTX:

http://www.legitreviews.com/article/505/3/

GTX win by like double fps ! But i think ati have driver problem.

http://www.lostplanetcommunity.com/

26 MINUTE LEFT GOGOGO

From some SI's I have talked to... especially Falcon Northwest, they have seem much more scaling with OC CPUs than with Ultras. Overclocking the card is different. The GDDR3 overclocks well as does the core but the higher bandwidth GDDR4 does not. I thought I should share that. I am going to push these puppies and see what I can get out of them once I get some other testing done. Don't want to break them and wait for another set.

wow i was right there to the second when the capcom website started to provide the download, but the gateway is timing out already (presumably from the load).

What system were you runing HL2 on where that was the case. I could run it at 2X AA and 1024x768 on my R9600Pro, and I was still mostly CPU limited by the OC'ed XP2000+, and FartCry was one of the games that started people heavily debating the differences between 16x12 no AA and 1280x1024 with AA on the R9800s because they could play the former better than the later quite well, and most people picked higher res with no AA. Really it was quite a capable card up until just recently.

3GHz P4-HT, 1Gig Dual Channel, i865P

Yeah, FC runs great until you start using the binos or get to the level with all the volcanos spewing, then the card starts to choke.

Many games were like this. CoD2 runs great for the first few levels, then hammers the card and you have to turn stuff down.

Benches won't show this at all if they are not scripted in these parts of the game.

Heck if you look at Cleeve's investigation the R9700P was coping well even in recent games. Sure resolution would be low now, but it's still playable, and while it may not be your idea of gaming, like has been mentioned a thousand times before, for many people that's good enough until they see a reason to upgrade.

I can understand that if you had bought one very late in the game when they were down to under a couple hundred bucks. Everyone I knew that bought them new for $550 replaced at GF6/X800 era. in the latest. Just didn't cut the mustard for us anymore.

I understand what you're saying, I just don't think you appreciate the market segment that DOES care about the impossible concept of 'future proofing' because they don't have the OPTION to upgrade every generation and they buy close to the top (like a GTS) to hang on for a few generations. Many of the cards now are destined to be looking at new games in 2009-2010.

How many people is that anymore? Enthusiasts come up with cash and excuses all the time. Outside of them, I come across the the screaming deal shoppers and the value group more than anyone else these days.

Managing a computer store, the people I don't see coming back for a few years are the cheaper mainstream buyer. ($150-200 card shopper)

Actually many people who owned R9700 and R9800s didn't jump then, because the benefit was intangible, especially to those on 1280x1024 17"CRTs and smaller 15" LCDs of the time (heck I know alot of reviewers that didn't have 1600x1200 monitors back then in either format ). Some of the people who bought the R9700/9800 bought it close to the end or even after the GF6800/X800 launched, but even then it still matters the longevity of the cards.

I saw a huge difference with my buddy's 68Ultra and my X800XL and X850XT. Even my WoW addict GF noticed big time.....

Only cost me $300 CAN each for my X800XL and X850XT. I'm not rich and I upgraded 2 9800pros. I've since replaced them too.....

Only paid $275 CAN for an X1800XT 512MB. You can get an 8800GTS (EDIT:640MB) for $365 CAN right now...

Anyone looking to own these cards for more than a year will care if either architecture has problems with the new standard. Last fall it didn't matter so much, now it matter more, and by this fall it will be the deciding factor how well these cards play DX10 titles and how they look to play more complex DX10s just over the horizon.

For the top end enthusiast they never care so much as current performance because by the time it matters new stuf is out, but for the GTS and below buyer, the closer you get to next gen the more important next gen playability becomes.

With prices dropping so badly in the industry, I don't know how true that really is anymore. If the 2900XT sells poor, I'm sure they'll be damn near giving them away in a matter of months.

Is $300 a year to keep fairly up to date that tough to manage?

I think you're thinking CRY-vision, and yeah that killed everything. Whatever you were running fluidly before now you had to drop down a level. But for the most part 16x12 in FartCry was playable and 1280x1024 was solid, without having to use workarounds like the FXs. That's the point.

COD2 was later though, and really I think you still miss the point of the playability, you're expecting far more from the hardware and too easily shift than someone who buys once in a while.

Your missing the point again, I'm not talking about the high end gamer, because let's be real they already bought a GF8800GTX at launch, right? Or are constantly rolling cards. At this stage in the game the people left are those that waited the first couple of months on the R9700 for the FX5800 to come out, then bought the R9700. Those same people are the market we're talking about now, or the people buying when the games come out. Those who constantly switch hardware couldn't care less what next week brings it's about current performance in Oblivion, Juarez, etc. because they know the cards are gone next weekend if there's something noticeably better.

Except right now that segment sucks. The GF8800GTS-320 is that buyer the HD2900XL is likely to be that buyer's market, and that's where the architecture differences will come in to play for the people who do only upgrade once every 2+years and not once every generation. They are different buyers, you say they're none, I know those very people, and see them in this forum all the time, those ones asking about 'finally upgrading the FX5900/R9800/GF6800GT/X800XL, etc. So c'mon, while I agree it's not the high end, this isn't the GF8800GTX and Ultra price range we're talking about here, nor the people who bought week one of the GF8800s' launch.

Actually many people who owned R9700 and R9800s didn't jump then, because the benefit was intangible, especially to those on 1280x1024 17"CRTs and smaller 15" LCDs of the time (heck I know alot of reviewers that didn't have 1600x1200 monitors back then in either format ). Some of the people who bought the R9700/9800 bought it close to the end or even after the GF6800/X800 launched, but even then it still matters the longevity of the cards.

I'm not saying there isn'ta difference, but you ignore those that don't buy every generation. You act as if the entire market ic comprised of the enthusiast segment when you say future performance means nothing.

All of that is about what the 'light gamers' in my office has paid in that entire period. Seriously, different segments.

Right, I notice they were giving away the GF7900 and GF7800 last round?
It won't happen until the end of the cycle.

for many yes, for an enthusiast, no, but the enthusiast market of above $250 is less than 5% of the market place, and alot of even those buyers save up to buy the best they can when the games need it, and then play the cards into the ground. Seriously the Oblivion forums were full of the FX5900 owners who suddenly needed and upgrade, and where did they go, straight to the high end, not to the GF7600GS/X1600 level, and upgraded most everything else at the same time.

Like I said your statement applies to the enthusiast market which I said isn't the issue, they could care less about 'future proofing', but those who go from 'build to build' and not 'card to card' definitely take that into consideration, and they're often the ones who go from AMD to intel and back again, same for nV and AMD, they ask around get the feel, spend what they think it good right, and then go on with other things. It's like buying a car for them. And I've seen enough of them here and in other forums to know that they are plentiful, and they all talk about the mythic 'future proofing', post 5-10 times to get feedback and are never heard from again for another 2-3 years. The enthusiasts know no such word exists, so the concern is of little use to them, they rip out their Opeteron to replace with a C2D, to replace with a quad core, etc. but they're a totally different group.

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