Guru3D ATI Radeon HD 2900 XT 512MB review

Decane: give up mate , your intentiled to your opinion but you just sound more like a ATI fanboy more and more with every post you mkae

 

I don't care what you or anyone else thinks? If I did care, I probably wouldn't write posts resembling the ones I do, now would I? Apparently you failed to acknowledge this and attempted to make me stop by appealing to something which you thought I would wish to conceal. "Fanboy" is a bit harsh, but fine... I do tend to like ATI's drivers a lot more than nVidia, and their customer support is superb. Not just technical support, but support in general. The monthly driver updates alone prove this. Unfortunately the same can't be said for nVidia.

Do not however mistakenly conclude that I am blinded by loyalty to a company. I will tend to purchase whoever's product is more suitable for me, and I feel it is only natural to lean towards either company based on your own personal preferences. I can't appreciate nVidia's driver policy, so I will naturally prefer ATI over them for this reason. If however nVidia would shape up and start releasing quality drivers like ATI, I just might convert.

 

obviously mate , i have a very slighty nvidia preference but i dont mind ATI either (im not loyal to either , neiter has done anything wrong as far as im concerned , i just perfer nvidia drivers), i was just sayign that id wouldnt waste your time as this will soon turn into a war

 

I don't speak Russian so I have no clue as to the credibility of this website but they do use some very easy to read graphs.

http://www.ixbt.com/video3/r600-part3-d.shtml#p818

Edit: I did a little more digging and this site looks completely legit. Even more so than many of the usual suspects that we refer to for reviews, with Guru3D being an obvious exception.

 

According to those graphs, the game shines in Chaos Theory, even with what could be labeled as beta drivers. Outperforming the 8800GTX by almost 100% at 1600*1200 is quite good even if I do say so myself. Overall it seems the 2900XT is trading blows with the 8800GTX, the 8800GTX performing more consistently of the two due to more mature drivers (although, what's interesting is that the 2900 seems to beat the 8800GTX in the majority of benches).

I reckon they were using the new preliminary drivers? Because if they weren't, those graphs are hardly reliable.

 

They seem to be getting better reults than almost every other site.

Too many graphs for one page though, arrrgh, my eyes!

They should get someone to design decent web pages for them

 

I have no clue. I add/dropped Russian back in college. After my second class, I asked myself; what are you? a masochist?

I noticed that. But, if you click around the rest of that website, it's completely straight-up.

 

Which is why I said that the graphs are only reliable if they used the newest drivers. Think about it: Their results will naturally differ from the reputable websites if they are the only site that has managed to bench with better drivers. The reputable websites are usually among the first to write a review, also meaning that the performance presented in them will be lower than that presented in later reviews due to older drivers used in the first reviews (since newer ones aren't yet out). Though something tells me that those results are biased....

 

The comparisons were done against the 8800GTS 640MB, not the 8800GTX. The GTX still beats the 2900 handily in almost all tests.

 

Huh? Are you seeing something I'm not? Because I clearly see the 8800GTX being benchmarked as well in almost all cases.

EDIT: I'm looking at the last bench from each game by the way... The ones taken at 1600*1200... No point looking at ones taken with a lower res IMO.

 

My bad. I must still be buzzed from last night.

 

Would you not think it odd that some obscure Russian site has the latest drivers to bench before everyone else?

Great if its true, but seems a little far fetched to me.

 

Yeah, but you said you're looking to buy when Crysis comes out. Which won't be the current environment, heck, by then (about 6 months from now) there will be a new batch of cards out, 8900's and 2900XTX. I'm just saying hanging on every little benchmark now, trying to decide which one will be better for Crysis, when you don't even plan on buying in the CURRENT ENVIRONMENT , is a waste of your time. Enjoy the kicka$$ card you already have and go kill some DX9 baddies, DX10 isn't here just yet.

Oh, and sorry, my first, "duh" post was a bit dickish, though it was meant in a lighthearted manner.

Peace

 

i do speak russian, but even without the language one should be able to notice that they use different clocks in each test. that doesn't mean the results are illegit, but that overclocking the 2900xt to give it a win is a little questionable. and no, they don't mention that they're doing this in the text.

i just skimmed it, but in the review's conclusion they argue that the card ought to cost the same as the 8800gts to be worthwhile (but that this is unlikely with such a new card). and they raise the usual complaints about power usage and noise. but they are also quite happy with the IQ and say that the biggest problem at present is the immature driver.

for what it's worth...

EDIT: forgot to add the test system details for you gurus

Intel Core2 Duo Extreme X6800 (2930 MHz) (L2=4096K);
EVGA nForce 680i SLI
2 GB DDR2 SDRAM Corsair 1142MHz (CAS (tCL)=5; RAS to CAS delay (tRCD)=5; Row Precharge (tRP)=5; tRAS=15);
WD Caviar SE WD1600JD 160GB SATA.
Windows XP SP2 DirectX 9.0c; Windows Vista DirectX 10;
Dell 3007WFP (30").
ATI driver 8.37; NVIDIA drivers 158.18/158.19

 

lawl who we kiddin

lol id be pretty happy as a pig in you know what with either of those cards and that kind of computer!!

 

Good point there.

 

Ah, and they used the older nvidia drivers... most sites are testing with the latest.

 

http://www.************/?i=4946&s=11

 

Decane has raised his AMD/ATI banner really high after he got his X1900 XT (he become ATI fan in no time after that). I have to say that some Decane's comments are not so objective anymore. Both cards have bad drivers and NVIDIA has not really even started to optimize them because they have had hard time on releasing stable drivers. NVIDIA has done magical driver tricks before (I remember when first Detonator were released) and there's no reason why they wouldn't do something like that again.

It's not really fair to compare these cards yet because drivers for them are beta/alpha quality. But currently and with newest drivers 8800 GTX is fastest card because it is faster in most of games and I doubt that anyone can disagree with that. There are many other more trustworthy sites than that Russian site.

 

my only concern is, with both companies trying to outdo each other in the performance arena, could they compromise IQ to achieve higher benchmarks? that has happened before right?