News Headlines
- Thu, May 23
- Dead Island studio Techland announces new shooter 'Dying Light,' published by Warner Bros.
- Xbox One HUD image could be teasing half a dozen unannounced games
- Nintendo's E3 Nintendo Direct event to go live on June 11 at 7AM PT, prepare your Wii U
- Need for Speed Rivals announced, "destroys" the line between single and multiplayer racing
- Trailer for new BlazBlue: Chrono Phantasm is a treat for the fans and shows off new characters
New Articles
Related Articles
Before we get to the high definition content, I'd like to quickly comment on the physical aspects of the card.
The reference design of the ATI Radeon HD 2900XT is both conservative and not. The card has the same overall Radeon red looks going on, in fact the whole design looks to be like a throw back to the X1950 XTX, with some modifications to the fan design. One thing to note about the heatsink is that the fan has changed from the normal windmill style to the spindle or waterwheel style that is akin to the fans on G80 cards. Size wise the card is almost exactly the same length (9inches) as the X1950XT and just a hair longer than the 8800 GTS. On the page after this you can see an array of various cards pictured together to give you an idea of scale.
The 2900XT board also has a dual everything option on it, with dual DVI, PCI-e connector and CrossFire. None of this is new, as we've seen dual 12-bit CrossFire connectors before but these are necessary logistics that should be mentioned.
HD 2900 XT on top, X1950 XTX on bottom
The HD 2900 XT and GTS OC cards one beside the other
In the namesake of the new card (HD replacing the X), ATI has made significant enhancement to the video quality and high definition abilities to the new card. Unifed Video Decoder or UVD debuted some time ago on an ATI OEM video card and in short, acted as a GPU offload to take some video playback computations off of your CPU. UVD is supposedly most efficient when paired with a slower CPU, so that the pair can handle high bitrate decoding together and suffer less bottlenecks. This is very similar to NVIDIA's PureVideo HD, nearly the same process in fact. Well now ATI has implemented UVD into the silicon of all its new GPU minus the 2900XT which is inexplicable to me. The suggestion is that a 2900XT would already be paired alongside a powerful enough CPU which would be able to handle HD-DVD or BLU-RAY decoding on its own. This is also the same thinking that leads NVIDIA to not include their newest PureVideo HD offloading support in the 8800GTX.
UVD is part of the new ATI Avivo HD technology which was developed to utilize the new GPUs for more than just gaming. In the diagram above, it shows the decoding process of the newly released 8600/8500 Geforce series in comparison to the UVD scheme. Note how the 8600/8500 GPU's will not actually do the bistream processing and entropy decoding with their BSP, while ATI's UVD will participate in that part of the chain. VC1 is an alternate to H.264 for HD content and decoding of VC1 is mandatory for all Blu-Ray and HD-DVD devices, so ATI's solution can be said to be more complete than NVIDIA's. ATI has also prompted UVD to reduce processing burden on both the CPU and GPU pipelines, thus reducing power draws. I personally hope this is true, but still find myself cautious to any power reduction claims. UVD certainly sounds good, just as PureVideo HD does but I'll leave out my verdict on it until there are high rates of HD-DVD/BLU-RAY adoption and until we actually try it out.
A couple of other HD additions are HDCP/HDMI adaptation and the audio controller. While the HD 2900XT only has the standard dual DVI ports on the back of the card, a special HDMI dongle is bundled with the it. This HDMI dongle is literally one of the coolest innovations we've seen in a while: not only will it carry the HDMI video signal, it also incorporates the audio signal too, so home theater enthusiasts will really get the most out of this card. Also, while HDMI is pretty straight forward, the HDCP and audio controller components of this card are a little harder to explain. Basically, ATI has developed a cheaper way to implement HDCP decryption onto their cards without CryptoROMs (ATI has mentioned HDCP will be on all their new card series). With HDMI and HDCP taken care of, ATI took the extra step of including an audio controller right on their cards. Just as this diagram below suggests, any of 2000 series cards will natively support audio through HDMI which is Windows Vista compliant.
A couple ending notes about the new R600 series is that ATI will also be releasing a new set of GPUs based on the HD 2600 XT on down. ATI mentions in their press kit that the 65nm fabrication and new Power management software PowerPlay 7.0 will work together to lower power per watt usage and increase idle efficiency. Lastly, the new architecture will also improve folding@home GPU functions. There was been a lot of buzz lately about the PS3 and its stellar Cell processor folding performance, it seems like ATI wants the same kind of splash with its new GPUs, and actually the Folding@Home project's initial work on folding with ATI GPU's is probably what inspired the PS3 folding project. Support for Folding@Home is actually a big draw for enthusiasts and has actually helped a lot of F@H participants to retire folding networks of multiple older boxes with new boxes powered by ATI GPUs.
The reference design of the ATI Radeon HD 2900XT is both conservative and not. The card has the same overall Radeon red looks going on, in fact the whole design looks to be like a throw back to the X1950 XTX, with some modifications to the fan design. One thing to note about the heatsink is that the fan has changed from the normal windmill style to the spindle or waterwheel style that is akin to the fans on G80 cards. Size wise the card is almost exactly the same length (9inches) as the X1950XT and just a hair longer than the 8800 GTS. On the page after this you can see an array of various cards pictured together to give you an idea of scale.
The 2900XT board also has a dual everything option on it, with dual DVI, PCI-e connector and CrossFire. None of this is new, as we've seen dual 12-bit CrossFire connectors before but these are necessary logistics that should be mentioned.
HD 2900 XT on top, X1950 XTX on bottom
The HD 2900 XT and GTS OC cards one beside the other
In the namesake of the new card (HD replacing the X), ATI has made significant enhancement to the video quality and high definition abilities to the new card. Unifed Video Decoder or UVD debuted some time ago on an ATI OEM video card and in short, acted as a GPU offload to take some video playback computations off of your CPU. UVD is supposedly most efficient when paired with a slower CPU, so that the pair can handle high bitrate decoding together and suffer less bottlenecks. This is very similar to NVIDIA's PureVideo HD, nearly the same process in fact. Well now ATI has implemented UVD into the silicon of all its new GPU minus the 2900XT which is inexplicable to me. The suggestion is that a 2900XT would already be paired alongside a powerful enough CPU which would be able to handle HD-DVD or BLU-RAY decoding on its own. This is also the same thinking that leads NVIDIA to not include their newest PureVideo HD offloading support in the 8800GTX.
UVD is part of the new ATI Avivo HD technology which was developed to utilize the new GPUs for more than just gaming. In the diagram above, it shows the decoding process of the newly released 8600/8500 Geforce series in comparison to the UVD scheme. Note how the 8600/8500 GPU's will not actually do the bistream processing and entropy decoding with their BSP, while ATI's UVD will participate in that part of the chain. VC1 is an alternate to H.264 for HD content and decoding of VC1 is mandatory for all Blu-Ray and HD-DVD devices, so ATI's solution can be said to be more complete than NVIDIA's. ATI has also prompted UVD to reduce processing burden on both the CPU and GPU pipelines, thus reducing power draws. I personally hope this is true, but still find myself cautious to any power reduction claims. UVD certainly sounds good, just as PureVideo HD does but I'll leave out my verdict on it until there are high rates of HD-DVD/BLU-RAY adoption and until we actually try it out.
A couple of other HD additions are HDCP/HDMI adaptation and the audio controller. While the HD 2900XT only has the standard dual DVI ports on the back of the card, a special HDMI dongle is bundled with the it. This HDMI dongle is literally one of the coolest innovations we've seen in a while: not only will it carry the HDMI video signal, it also incorporates the audio signal too, so home theater enthusiasts will really get the most out of this card. Also, while HDMI is pretty straight forward, the HDCP and audio controller components of this card are a little harder to explain. Basically, ATI has developed a cheaper way to implement HDCP decryption onto their cards without CryptoROMs (ATI has mentioned HDCP will be on all their new card series). With HDMI and HDCP taken care of, ATI took the extra step of including an audio controller right on their cards. Just as this diagram below suggests, any of 2000 series cards will natively support audio through HDMI which is Windows Vista compliant.
A couple ending notes about the new R600 series is that ATI will also be releasing a new set of GPUs based on the HD 2600 XT on down. ATI mentions in their press kit that the 65nm fabrication and new Power management software PowerPlay 7.0 will work together to lower power per watt usage and increase idle efficiency. Lastly, the new architecture will also improve folding@home GPU functions. There was been a lot of buzz lately about the PS3 and its stellar Cell processor folding performance, it seems like ATI wants the same kind of splash with its new GPUs, and actually the Folding@Home project's initial work on folding with ATI GPU's is probably what inspired the PS3 folding project. Support for Folding@Home is actually a big draw for enthusiasts and has actually helped a lot of F@H participants to retire folding networks of multiple older boxes with new boxes powered by ATI GPUs.
next: Bundle and Setup »
Article Index |
|
The bad:
The good
Final value analysis for me goes like this:
The 8800 GTS 640MB card is as much as $80-100 cheaper than the HD 2900 XT, but it doesn't come with a game bundle ($more than a $50 value right there) and doesn't have HDMI with audio support. It doesn't even have HDMI support
If you don't care about HDMI (I don't have a use for it) and you won't play the games (I only want one out of the 4 titles they give you ) then the 8800 GTS is looking pretty good. Otherwise the HD 2900 XT becomes a fairly good choice. I think I'd rather save the $100 at this point though
This message was edited by Redemption on May 14 2007.
1) The 512 bit memory bus is VERY significant; I really expect future drivers to get noticeably more performance out of the card
2) Some of the benchmark results look wonky, suggesting that there is a lot of work to be done on the drivers
3) Some benchmarks gave VERY good results
4) It will be really interesting to see DX10 results
All in all, I really like the performance of the 8800GTS and the potential of the 2900XT - more performance for more reasonable $$$ than the 'ultra' and xtx cards :-)
This message was edited by Tweaker on May 14 2007.
My thinking is that ATI/AMD would never just release the HD 2900 XT with 65nm process. They really have no need. If they can get it to the 65nm process you would start seeing the HD 2900 XTX, HD 2950 XT, and HD 2950 XTX or whatever they decide to name the remainder of the high end price points because they would use the additional headroom and temperature/power savings to crank the clockspeeds.
Btw I forgot to add that HDMI with Audio is a great boost for gamers using their TV's as the gaming display too. I think this is ultimately a very good thing for that particular type of gamer. A 52" LCD with 1 to 1 pixel mapping would make for a pretty sweet game setup - whoever said convergence would lead to nothing?
A die shrink should help the power problem, which is what the R650 is...
While the GTS is 100 bucks cheaper now, i can see it becoming way cheaper... just remember that the current GTS, GTX and Ultra prices are those of release time with no opponent, now that ATi/AMD have finally released there R600, i can see nVidia lowering the price ready to start the battle...
It's pretty obvious, but you can't overstate it. Just look at the 3dmark scores. How can the pixel fill rate just barely be more than x1950? wtf is that about?
I've also been hearing disappointing news about AMD's new line of CPUs. Could their merging and subsequent business plan have doomed the company? Only time will tell. It was a good run with competition causing card performance to double every generation, but the 2900XT doesn't deliver the mind blowing performance you think 320 shaders would give you. And right now AMD doesn't have any CPU that hang with Intel's newest hardware as far as I know. Whatever the reason, I hope AMD's Barcelona and ATI's HD 2900(or whatever their top end card will eventually be called) can get back in the game.
Monopoly always leads to crappy products. Like Madden football. Only football franchise for a few years and it turned to crap, a really really bad game. People that like it are idiots. The game peaked on XBox around 2004, right before it had a few years of no competition and completely fell apart.