ATi 2900XT Benchmarks (reliable :p )

[Scinto]

will quote the whole thing incase it gets removed from the OcUK Forums , the benchies are about a month old cos of the NDA which ends in just over an Hour

Hi there

Well this might have to be removed as this product is still under NDA until midday today. However as everyone else is posting reviews I shall post the findings I had with the early test sample I had about a month ago on 8.36 drivers.


System Specification
To begin with we started testing on an Intel based system to see how well the card managed with Intel fastest processor today, the QX6800. The system specification was the following:-
Intel QX6700 @ 3.00GHz (1333FSB)
DFI ATI RD600 Motherboard
Corsair PC2-8888 (1150MHz) CAS4 DDR2 Memory
WD Raptor 150GB 10,000rpm HDD
Creative SB Fatal1ty Sound Card
Antec P900 Case
Enermax 1000W PSU
Windows XP Pro
Windows Vista Premium
BFG GeForce 8800 GTX OC 768MB GDDR3 (600MHz Core / 1800MHz Memory)
ATI Radeon HD 2900XT 512MB GDDR3 (750MHz Core / 1600MHz Memory)


Drivers
Installation with the NVIDIA card was easy under both operating systems. In testing all applications ran but Farcry had minor corruptions under both Windows XP and Vista which must be an issue with NVIDIA’s drivers. Also the Farcry benchmark programme would not run with the NVIDIA card under windows Vista. Apart from that the BFG card gave good results under Windows XP but it was noticeably slower under Windows Vista which clearly says NVIDIA still have a lot of room to make improvements on their Vista drivers.

Moving on the ATI HD 2900XT was also an easy installation under both Windows XP and Vista. All I will say is make sure that on release the cards also have the dotnet software as part of the installation too as to prevent any installation issues. Under Vista the ATI installation was very polished and superior to NVIDIA’s attempt.
Image quality was on par with NVIDIA for 2D and general windows applications. The noise levels of the card was quieter both at idle and underload, the card also ran cooler than an 8800GTX does as well, these are great points. Performance the card was every so slightly slower than the 8800GTX under windows XP, but this was less than 5%. However under Windows Vista the ATI card was quicker in both Direct3D and OpenGL application plus the card was more stable too and had no issues running my Farcry benchmarks unlike the NVIDIA card. Plus the ATI also displayed NO visual corruptions at all in Farcry wheras the NVIDIA card did.


Benchmark / Game results

NVIDIA BFG 8800 GTX OC (Overclocked) vs ATI R600 (HD 2900) at stock speeds (Overdrive ATI Speeds = 850MHz / 1800MHz)

Windows Vista

NVIDIA DOOM3 1600x1200, settings max, 8x = 57fps
ATI DOOM3 1600x1200, settings max, 8x = 68fps (71fps OC)

NVIDIA Farcry (1920x1200) = Crashes on benchmark programme
ATI Farcry (1920x1200) = Looks similar speed with better image quality and does not crash (54fps)

NVIDIA AquaMark Default Test = 154.28fps
ATI AquaMark Default Test = 155.36fps (159.54fps OC)

NVIDIA Fear 1920x1200, settings max = 33/64/140
ATI Fear 1920x1200, settings max = 22/54/108 (Possible driver issue here?)

NVIDIA 3D Mark 2005 Default test = 16,097
ATI 3D Mark 2005 Default test = 17,025 (17,457 OC)

NVIDIA 3D Mark 2006 Default test = 11,504
ATI 3D Mark 2006 Default test = 11,500 (12,504 OC)


Windows XP

NVIDIA DOOM3 1600x1200, settings max, 8x = 71fps
ATI DOOM3 1600x1200, settings max, 8x = 70fps

NVIDIA Farcry 1920x1200, 8x AF & 8x AA = 51fps
ATI Farcry 1920x1200, 8x AF & 8x AA = 55fps (ATI better IQ)

NVIDIA AquaMark Default Test = 163.43fps
ATI AquaMark Default Test = 158.37fps

NVIDIA Fear 1920x1200, settings max = 34/67/158
ATI Fear 1920x1200, Settings max = 23/57/142

NVIDIA 3D Mark 2005 Default test = 17,250
ATI 3D Mark 2005 Default test = 17,110 (17,554 OC)

NVIDIA 3D Mark 2006 Default test = 11,950
ATI 3D Mark 2006 Default test = 11,788 (12,617 OC)


As you can see from the results in brackets I overclocked the ATI card using the overdrive utility to compare against the BFG overclocked card. I ran the ATI overdrive utility which maxed out both sliders. The new clock speed were 850MHz Core and 1800MHz memory, even at these clock speeds the card still remained both cool and quiet. Now onto the results well I was very impressed as now the ATI card was pulling ahead of the NVIDIA card under Windows XP and under Windows Vista the R600 was considerably ahead of NVIDIA’s offering.
So in 3D Mark 2005, 3D Mark 2006, AquaMark, DOOM3, FarCry the ATI card won on both performance and image quality. It was only Fear where NVIDIA had quite a good lead which is no doubt due to the fact it’s a “best played on NVIDIA” game possibly or drivers?


Summary
Overall from my early testing the new ATI HD 2900XT 512MB looks like a serious contender to the GTX and GTS 640MB for gamers and benchmarkers. The only disappointing results were in the game called Fear but everything else was faster on the ATI product. The ATI card was also quieter and cooler running with fantastic overclocking potential. The product is a little more expensive than a GTS 640MB but cost considerably less than a GTX. So considering the card already has fantastic Vista drivers and far superior features to NVIDIA's offerings such as HDMI along with better video editing and DVD abilities does indeed make the HD 2900 XT worth while considering.

If your thinking of buying a new high-end card then I would suggest you don't make your decision based just on my review because my game testing is limited and as such I would recommend you check reviews done by professionals on a wider range of games before making your decision. If I was buying a graphics card and £300 was my limit then yes the HD 2900 XT would be my choice not only because its about the best performer in this price region but due to the fact it has great features, has little to no performance hit under Vista and is very overclockable. It appears most HD 2900 XT cards hit 850MHz-900MHz core and upto 2000MHz memory and beyond. However if you want the best then it does seem that the GTX does offer a performance edge on most games under Windows XP, but under Windows Vista the R600 based card is keeping pace with the 8800 GTX and for a lot less money in the programmes I tested.


Everybody already knows what the card looks like but here is one I took when I had the card a few weeks ago:-

Dropped in at £270~ :) Should drop a bit more over a week or so,

[megawhompertoo]

Re: ATi 2900XT Benchmarks (reliable :p )

http://www.theinquirer.net/default.aspx?article=39580

L'inq has their benchies up too, FEAR and Stalker appear to have some driver issues. They, however, praise the 2900xt from the perspective that you get performance approaching the 8800 ultra-ish in many games, and that you can get two 2900's for just a whisker less than the price of a single top-of-the-line offering from nVidia.

I sniff a price war, although it may be ATI's last hurrah, and it might take the whole DAAMIT empire down with it, should Barcelona be a flop.

[Corkum]

Re: ATi 2900XT Benchmarks (reliable :p )

Very Interesting. I was planning on picking up a GTX along with Vista Ultimate this summer. I may have to reevaluate that decision.

[Sir. MatDef]

Re: ATi 2900XT Benchmarks (reliable :p )

Very Interesting. I was planning on picking up a GTX along with Vista Ultimate this summer. I may have to reevaluate that decision.

Don't, the xt is a complete joke. Just look at most of the reviews, it's more expensive than a 8800gts, yet manages to be slower.

Too bad ati totally blew it this round, I was all set to get a xt, but now I guess I better pick up a gtx.

[Scinto]

Re: ATi 2900XT Benchmarks (reliable :p )

Don't, the xt is a complete joke. Just look at most of the reviews, it's more expensive than a 8800gts, yet manages to be slower.

Too bad ati totally blew it this round, I was all set to get a xt, but now I guess I better pick up a gtx.

well atm i cant get either lol, ive filled the harddrive bays in my 900 :hmm:

want the drivers to improve though

[lonegunm4n]

Re: ATi 2900XT Benchmarks (reliable :p )

I've said this before, and I'll say it again.

i'm going to wait several months for the ATi drivers to mature, then look at DX10 benchies.

[Scinto]

Re: ATi 2900XT Benchmarks (reliable :p )

it does have its advatages though it knocks the price of my x1950 pro down so i could get a 2nd one,

[megawhompertoo]

Re: ATi 2900XT Benchmarks (reliable :p )

it does have its advatages though it knocks the price of my x1950 pro down so i could get a 2nd one,

While I risk buying somewhat into the megahurts myth, the temps that l'inq reports on their overclocked 2900 (860/1966) versus their 8800gtx o'd to ultra speeds (626/2000) demonstrate the better efficiency of the 65nm process. The architecture around it may need to mature, but the chips are definitely heading in the right direction. If ATI/AMD can grow up their engineering just a tad and release a fully mature cutting-edge 65nm product (apparently not the 2900xt), and then migrate that quickly--not 9 months late--to a 45nm process, I think they'll stay competitive for the near future. Shrinking wafers simply puts the other guy (nVidia or Intel) at a severe cost-disadvantage, as we're getting a little inkling of in a top-tier ATI launch product priced at $409 versus a top-tier product from nVidia priced at $829.

Me? I'm upgrading for DX10 right after I upgrade for Y2K. I may--MAY--find it in my heart to give my x1950xt a twin sister. And then I'll wait a couple of years until they start putting the words "Fully DX10 compatible XYZ" under a section of my software called "Minimum System Requirements".

[proto]

Re: ATi 2900XT Benchmarks (reliable :p )

I'd just wait for the 2nd gen DX10 cards to come out from both companies. I mean, you don't absolute positively need DX10 right now...do ya? No.

[Scinto]

Re: ATi 2900XT Benchmarks (reliable :p )

I'd just wait for the 2nd gen DX10 cards to come out from both companies. I mean, you don't absolute positively need DX10 right now...do ya? No.

only for Crysis which gives 5 months of tweaking the drivers and hopefully releasing a better card,

but i still need a much larger case for any of that,

[[GU]LIZARD{GEN}]

Re: ATi 2900XT Benchmarks (reliable :p )

heres my original post about the 2900 XTX with 1GB of DDR4. It sucks worse then the 2900XT...

http://www.techreport.com/reviews/2007q2/radeon-hd-2900xt/index.x?pg=1

Benching starts here:

http://www.techreport.com/reviews/2007q2/radeon-hd-2900xt/index.x?pg=10

Conclusions
The Radeon HD 2900 XT is an impressive, full-featured DirectX 10-ready graphics processor. Its unified shader architecture is a clear advance over the previous generation of Radeons and is the same class of product as Nvidia's GeForce 8800 series in terms of basic capabilities. The GPU even has some cool distinctive features, like its tessellator, that the GeForce 8800 can't match. As we've discussed, the scheduling required to achieve efficient utilization of this GPU's VLIW superscalar stream processing engines could prove to be tricky, putting it at a disadvantage compared to its competition. Some of the synthetic shader benchmarks we ran illustrated that possibility. However, this GPU design has a bias toward massive amounts of parallel shader processing power, and I'm largely persuaded that shader power won't be a weakness for it. I'm more concerned about its texture filtering capacity. Our tests showed its texturing throughput to be substantially lower than the GeForce 8800 GTS with 16X anisotropic filtering. One can't help but wonder if the 2900 XT's performance in today's DX9 games wouldn't be higher if it had more filtering throughput.

The 2900 XT does match the GeForce 8800 series on image quality generally, which was by no means a foregone conclusion. Kudos to AMD for jettisoning the Radeon X1000 series' lousy angle-dependent aniso for a higher quality default algorithm. I also happen to like the 2900 XT's custom tent filters for antialiasing an awful lot—an outcome I didn't expect, until I saw it in action for myself. Now I'm hooked, and I consider the Radeon HD's image quality to be second to none on the PC as a result. Nvidia may yet even the score with its own custom AA filters, though.

The new HD video decode unit and HDMI audio support are both welcome additions, too. We haven't yet had time to test CPU utilization during HD-DVD or Blu-ray playback, but we've got that on the list for a follow-up article (along with GPU overclocking, edge-detect AA filters, dual-link DVI with HDCP on the Dell 3007WFP, AMD's Stream computing plans, and a whole host of other items).

Ultimately, though, we can't overlook the fact that AMD built a GPU with 700M transistors that has 320 stream processor ALUs and a 512-bit memory interface, yet it just matches or slightly exceeds the real-world performance of the GeForce 8800 GTS. The GTS is an Nvidia G80 with 25% of its shader core disabled and only 60% of the memory bandwidth of the Radeon HD 2900 XT. That's gotta be a little embarrassing. At the same time, the Radeon HD 2900 XT draws quite a bit more power under load than the full-on GeForce 8800 GTX, and it needs a relatively noisy cooler to keep it in check. If you ask folks at AMD why they didn't aim for the performance crown with a faster version of the R600, they won't say it outright, but they will hint that leakage with this GPU on TSMC's 80HS fab process was a problem. All of the telltale signs are certainly there.

Given that, AMD was probably smart not to try to go after the performance crown with a two-foot-long graphics card attached to a micro-A/C unit and sporting a thousand-dollar price tag. Instead, they've delivered a pretty good value in a $399 graphics card, so long as you're willing to overlook its higher power draw and noise output while you're gaming.

There are many things we don't yet know about the GeForce 8800 and Radeon HD 2900 GPUs, not least of which is how they will perform in DirectX 10 games. I don't think our single DX10 benchmark with a pre-release game tell us much, so we'll probably just have to wait and see. Things could look very different six months from now, even if the chips themselves haven't changed.

"Performance Crown DENIED"

only for Crysis which gives 5 months of tweaking the drivers and hopefully releasing a better card,

but i still need a much larger case for any of that,

http://translate.google.com/translat...language_tools

Call of Juarez DX10 will be out before crysis probably. ATI don't have enough time to really do much nVidia will just release its 8900... I am not a fan boy, except with nvidia because of the awful experience I've had with ATI... I'll stick to the graphics card company that knows what they're doing.

[Addequate]

Re: ATi 2900XT Benchmarks (reliable :p )

heres my original post about the 2900 XTX with 1GB of DDR4. It sucks worse then the 2900XT...

http://www.techreport.com/reviews/2007q2/radeon-hd-2900xt/index.x?pg=1

Benching starts here:

http://www.techreport.com/reviews/2007q2/radeon-hd-2900xt/index.x?pg=10

"Performance Crown DENIED"


http://translate.google.com/translat...language_tools

Call of Juarez DX10 will be out before crysis probably. ATI don't have enough time to really do much nVidia will just release its 8900... I am not a fan boy, except with nvidia because of the awful experience I've had with ATI... I'll stick to the graphics card company that knows what they're doing.

If your not a fan boy, then let's try to stay away from hypocritical statements, thanks.

[*FMJ*Power]

Re: ATi 2900XT Benchmarks (reliable :p )

the best most trustworthy reviews ive found are the ones from toms hardware or anandtech. they both give it surprisingly good reviews for price to power comparison with neck and next crossfire performance compared to sli.

http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=2988&p=25

http://www.tomshardware.com/2007/05/14/r600_finally_dx10_hardware_from_ati/page20.html#3dmark05__xp_pro

http://www.legitreviews.com/article/503/8/

myself i ordered two yesterday from zipzoomfly. im a Intel bad axe motherboard owner, the D975XBX so crossfire is my only choice unless i want to buy a new sli motherboard and two new 8800 gtx cards and i really dont feel like gutting out the entire water cooling setup to put in a new board, not to mention its still better in my mind to stick with a proven winner, the bad axe motherboard, there are just way to many people blue screening 3 and 4 times a day with two 8800 gtx in sli.

we will find out friday when they arrive, hehehe. for me all i care about are the crossfire reviews for 1920x1200 and they are looking pretty good.....




the bf2 crossfire performance isnt looking to shabby either and you have to remember these are infancy drivers too. although i find it interesting that one 8800 ultra beats out two 8800gtx in sli for bf2, very strange.

[LuckySeven]

Re: ATi 2900XT Benchmarks (reliable :p )

At the moment you can just pick a review you want and prove that ati/nvidia is better. Many of the test used with R600 are so new that no one has even seen them yet and are not really "mature". So forget them and only look at benchs you know you can actually play. I should wait for a couple of weeks or months before buying anything, but I know I won't be getting another radeon, so I'm ordering a GTS.

E: Not to mention the drivers, every site has different drivers and even benchmarks are different versions, like Call of Juarez.

[Sir. MatDef]

Re: ATi 2900XT Benchmarks (reliable :p )

the best most trustworthy reviews ive found are the ones from toms hardware or anandtech. they both give it surprisingly good reviews for price to power comparison with neck and next crossfire performance compared to sli.

So you only trust the reviews that agree with your preconceived notions?

Good luck with them, though I hope you have a 1kw psu to power the whole thing.

*goes off and looks at 8800gtx's*