ATI Radeon HD 2900XTX (R600) lost with knockout

Hi folks,

ATI Radeon HD 2900XTX (R600) core clock is 750Mhz, memory speed is 2002Mhz also memory size is 1GB GDDR4 with 512-bit path to memory.

NVIDIA Ge-Force 8800GTX core clock is 575Mhz, memory Speed is 900Mhz moreover it supports 768Mb GDDR3 memory size 384-bit path to memory.

Now lets look at the test...

* Higher FPS is better.

awful performance for such a card which has been delayed for 5 months after Nvidia 8800GTX published.

Hmmm i doubt the ATi drivers are even mature enough yet for this card, what version of Catalyst were used in these tests?

Test system,

* AMD HD ATI Radeon 2900 XT (745 MHz core, 800 MHz GDDR3)

* AMD ATI Radeon HD 2900 XTX (750 MHz core, 1010 MHz GDDR4)AMD HD ATI Radeon 2900 XTX (750 MHz core, GDDR4 1010 MHz)

* AMD ATI Catalyst v8.361 (drivers slated for retail)AMD ATI Catalyst v8.361 (drivers slated for ret sixty)

* NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GTX (650 MHz core, 1000 MHz GDDR3)NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GTX (650 MHz core, 1000 MHz GDDR3)

* Asus P5N32-E SLI (nForce 680i)ASUS P5N32-E SLI (nForce 680i)

* Intel Core 2 Extreme QX6800Intel Core 2 Extreme QX6800

* Corsair XMS2 PC2-8500 (800 MHz, 5-5-5-18, 1T)The departure of Corsair XMS2 PC2-8500 (800 MHz, 5-5-5-18, J)

* Acer X241WAcer X241W

Something just doesn't add up with these early tests....

This test is telling me that 210 more mb of GDDR4 memory (2900XT vs 2900XTX) is only delivering 1.7 better frames on Elder Scrolls played at 1900x1200... That just doesn't seem right to me.

Hell, look more closely.... this test is essentially screaming "do not buy a 2900xtx...get a 2900xt!"... Why would AMD build cards that perform like that?

Beyond the Catalyst version whats the software test bed? XP... Vista? etc...

And i'll make a short point about any fan boi that loves their brand... Competition is king... wish for it... AMD need some wins for us all.

Rumous has it that ATI's XTX's are actualy perfoming worse than XT's because of the DDR4 higher latency, but beware that all benchmarks ever donne untill NDA is broken are dubious and contradictory.

The data I have see till date seems to indicate 2900XT integrators beleive it will be very competitive failing only to beat the NVIDIA's top dog 8800 GTX 768MB while the XTX will be out of their initial portfolio. The projected price tag makes it a very interesting proposition I wouldnt count it out.

Ooooold ... known bug that XTX is only as fast as XT. That's the reason AMD/ATi rescheduled the release date of the XTX.

XT's target is the 8800GTS and it's priced similar. ($399 list price - about 360€)

This sounds terrible.. I certainly was expecting a better start here ..

Lets see what happens next... It might be too early to judge, but Like I said this doesn't look good...

~S~

Blaze

Ooooold ... known bug that XTX is only as fast as XT. That's the reason AMD/ATi rescheduled the release date of the XTX.

 

XT's target is the 8800GTS and it's priced similar. ($399 list price - about 360€)

The ULTRA is an insult to intelligence. Only rich richies will buy it to get some kind of special status. It barely gives any advantage at all and cant even be felt in most games. I might get ATI's 2900XT if it comes out in time for my build at the end of this month (not waytin) and if its price perfomance is competitive with entry 8800's.

I second that. Furthermore stock overclocked 8800GTX versions are already available for a price about $100 less than Ultra.

The drivers are still in an optimization process according to AMD. The power consumption during load is quite high (about 350W for the whole box with overclocked X6800). We can hope that the prices drops and so nVidia has to decrease the prices for 8800GTS, too.

Currently the only "pro" for the new AMD/ATi card is the excellent AA quality IMHO (though 8800's is very good, too).

I was going to go with an ATI card but on second thought I decided to stay with Nvidia ... I've actually bought a new Asus P5B32-E SLI...

Its should be here some time soon, the tracker said it was on the truck for delivery today, so I'm now patently waiting for it ...

The Commando that is in my system now is coming out of the case today, Not a bad board but it's not SLI compatible, its a crossfire MB.. So I'm going to sell it on e-bay for $100.00 USD.. Yeah I'm taking a loss as I paid $320.00 USD 2 months ago...

Lock On is about the only sim that I have been into and eventually I'm going with SLI .....

I'll just drop in another 8800 but I'm actually not that concerned with the GPU....

I mean Lock On is much more of a CPU then GPU oriented simulation ...

But who knows what we'll need when BS is finally released....

~S~

Blaze

SLI is only worth if you have a monster monitor. WHat GFX you have right now?

I'm using a Samsung 32" LCD...

I had this setup running originally with the 680i, but had some problems getting it run properly.. After I RMA'ed the 680i board and had the Commando installed I found out that the issues I was having were memory related and all I needed to do was bring the settings down one notch...

So I was hearing that ATI's new card was going to be a killer so I kept it in and waited to see how this card stacked up...

Well the 680i Bd. has just arrived and I'm beginning to remove the Commando from my case..

The card that I'm running is a BFG 8800 gts 620 Mb.. It actually gives a very sharp picture on the Samsung.. The issue is the shadows settings in Lock On, but this I can live with.. The new drivers that were released 2 or 3 weeks ago have helped a little in this respect.. but I'm happy with this cards performance and I think I made the best decision..

~S~

Blaze

Yep 32" is BIG :D

The P5N32(not B) SLI 680i MOBO is a great MOBO. I have it under my eye myself for my new build (feel free to coment on the thread below) ;)

Yep 32" is BIG :D

 

The P5N32(not B) SLI 680i MOBO is a great MOBO. I have it under my eye myself for my new build (feel free to coment on the thread below) ;)

I found this board on MWave.. for $ 212.00 USD .... And they were the cheapest.. Other sites have it listed for around $ 300.00 USD, but its not easy to find as the demand for it is high ...

I did have it installed in my system about 2 months ago ... I'm actually installing it now again.. It's very fussy regarding the RAM that you select, so the best way to find out what's compatible is by going to the Asus web sight to find this out...

~S~

Blaze

Well I got the Bd. mounted in the case but I tried to copy the raid drivers from the disk but I couldn't because its loaded on a DVD.. And my old Sony just has a CD player recorder...

And I went to the Asus web sight looking for raid drivers but all that they now have available for download is raid vista drivers, well I'm not quite ready for Vista....

But the good news is that I managed to figure out what I was doing wrong and why I could load the raid drivers into my AMD which has a DVD in it...

So I have got it powered up but then P5N-32 disk wouldn't open because the AMD is now running XP Pro 64 ...

But I got around it by right clicking and opening it up that way and there is XP 32 bit drivers there..

So everything is cool for now.... I'm going to get some sleep and get a fresh start in the morning... So by tomorrow night I should have this bad boy powered up... I hope... LOL

~S~

Blaze

Your story is a bit confusing right now but if understand correctly you still have CD players only on your machine?! (no DVD?) Why do you have a modern piece of hardware like the P5N32 and no DVD? :huh:

I used to go to NVIDIA site to get all my MOBO drivers, not to my BD manufacturer (MSI). There you should find RAID drivers for win XP. As far as I can tell RAID setup through NVIDIA aplet utilities is realy easy as its donne in windows interface. Just set the afinity of LOMAC to a different core other than core0 to make sure the first core manages all the OS operations such as RAID handling.

As soon as I build my system Ill do all that instead of loading the drivers from the disk that comes with the board.

Sorry for confusing you... My Sony Vaio had a DVD but over the years,5 to be exact it crapped out.. So when I began building the AMD, to save money I just bought a cd player for it and put a DVD player plus a cd player in the AMD...

Well anyway I've been using Asus for now, and I normally get the raid drivers from the web sight.. They are usually the latest out, newer than the drivers on the DVD.. And I get my video drivers from the Invidia web sight...

About 80% of everything that's being released now has been in DVD format..

But I should be ok from here on out, the AMD is running fine again and I'm going to keep this as my backup....

I've been toying with the idea for future reference of flashing my bios with a flash drive....

Anyway I hope that I've cleared up a few things, and I'm almost ready to boot up the 680i so I'll keep you up to speed...

~S~

Blaze

Well yesterday I finally got my AMD XP Pro 64 reformatted ..

And today I spent a few hours with the intell system, after installing the MB last night, I got around to powering up today...

The first try didn't go to well, there wasn't any video and a sono alert was going off...

I put it back on the work table and unplugged everything.. Then I removed the CPU to see if I had it installed properly...

Next I remounted the CPU and checked all of the plugs as I refitted them..

I think I found that the 8800 power plug was mistakenly plugged into a fan power lead... LOL ...

I move the CLRTC jumper to clear the BIOS, checked all of the connections once more and proceeded to power up again... This time everything worked perfectly..

The next step was to set up the HD to RAID 0... the system began to load windows and everything went fine until I hit the installation of the RAID drivers floppy...

Well this is usually where I have most of my problems when formatting..

So by now I was feeling tired so I'm going to wait until tomorrow and slowly retrace all of my steps for setting up the floppy...

I'm sure that I'll get it...

I'm going to get some sleep and give it a fresh try tomorrow...

~S~

Blaze

Want to comment about your TV - sure it's big in size, but unless it's 1080 capable, your gfx card doesn't have that much work to do. It's all about resolution, size doesn't matter.

All I expect from ATI is superior picture quality in LOMAC, nothing else. If they achieve that goal, I'm buying it, since LOMAC is the only game I play for the last 3 years.