While debatable, the card presents itself as a top memory contender

Everyone these days is out for some niche to call their own, be it the most cores, the fastest memory clocks / technology, the overall pipeline counts or many other areas. Today Diamond Multimedia comes in to lay claim to their throne this time. Today the company announces the release of the 1GB HD 2900XT to the marketplace, yes 1GB in a single card for the consumer market. In the past we've seen workstation cards aiming at this level but now consumers get a taste of that magic.

The specs are pretty nice given that they're ramping up memory really high.

Specifications

• ASIC: RV600
• Core Clock: 743 MHZ
• Memory Size: 1 GIG ( 1024 MG)
• Memory Configuration: 16Mx32 GDDR4
• Memory Interface: 512-Bit
• Memory Speed: 1100 Mhz
• Display Formats: x2 Dual Link DVI + HDTV-out with VIVO* (HDMI support through dongle)

Features at a glance

• Plug-and-play CrossFire support
• Dynamic Game Computing Technology
• 320 Unified Stream Processors
• 512-bit memory interface
• High-speed 128-bit-HDR (High Dynamic Range) rendering
• Physics processing support
• Up to 24X Custom Filter Anti-Aliasing
• Native PCI Express® x16 bus interface
• 512-bit GDDR4 memory interface
• High Dinamic Range (HDR) rendering
• Superscalar unified shader architecture

Thats a pretty hefty package right there, especially given that this card is still crossfire compatible for a total of 2GB of GDDR4 goodness if someone was so inclined to jump on that.

If their whole claims about the worlds fastest card hold true with this memory upgrade, then this is quite the piece to add to your hardware collection. Now lets see them continue to bring this when the next variant of the R600 arrives.