2900XT CAT 7.5 Benchies

Boogle · 20 Jun 2007 at 09:42

I know Cat 7.6 is coming out very soon, but Xbit have a nice chunk of benchmarks using Cat 7.5 here: http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/video/display/xfx-gf8800ultra-extreme_7.html#sect1

Performance seems to be up in most areas, where previously the GTS had a comfortable lead, its now only 2-4 fps in most cases. Still the odd game, like Neverwinter, where performance seems to be worst-case and the 2900XT is utterly slaughtered. X3: Reunion performance seems to be significantly better than before, so some nice performance if you play that game.

But I like the few benchmarks where the 2900XT is within a few frames of the overclocked 8800 Ultra

willhub · 20 Jun 2007 at 09:43

This looks very intresting if they are 100% correct

Boogle · 20 Jun 2007 at 09:45

willhub said:
This looks very intresting if they are 100% correct

Don't want to swap that GTS just yet though:

Teaf · 20 Jun 2007 at 09:46

That's a nice performance boost, as from what I'm aware, the Cat 7.5's were just a thrown out 7.4 with 2900XT support to get the 2000 series into the Cat rather than a standalone driver? Correct me if I'm wrong

Regarldess, nice benchies

looking forward to my 2900XT next week!

willhub · 20 Jun 2007 at 09:46

Boogle said:
Don't want to swap that GTS just yet though:

Thats only one game though and I'm sure they'll improve, I mean this game is also one I will never play

, I wont be swapping aswell, I'll be selling my 8800 and getting a 2900, or maybe getting my bday money in the bank and buying the 2900 first and getting the 8800 sold by 22nd july.

Boogle · 20 Jun 2007 at 09:51

flibby said:
That's a nice performance boost, as from what I'm aware, the Cat 7.5's were just a thrown out 7.4 with 2900XT support to get the 2000 series into the Cat rather than a standalone driver? Correct me if I'm wrong

Regarldess, nice benchies

looking forward to my 2900XT next week!

Cat 7.4 supported 2900XT

But yeah afaik 7.5 was barely an improvement over 7.4 in terms of dev time. This can only be a good thing

Ghosteh · 20 Jun 2007 at 09:54

Bah, stalker still down lol. My favourite game too, especially when the v1.1 patch is released . Still, I'm going to get the HD2900XT lol. The other games were performance has increased gives me hope for other games to start taking advantage of the cards power.

jrodga2k5 · 20 Jun 2007 at 10:02

its safe to assume the hd 2900xt is like a fine wine at the moment

in early 2008 it could be amazing lol

willhub · 20 Jun 2007 at 10:09

jrodga2k5 said:
its safe to assume the hd 2900xt is like a fine wine at the moment in early 2008 it could be amazing lol

It needs to be much much much sooner than early 2008, by then the G92's will be out and they'll be the second gen DX10 cards too.

Teaf · 20 Jun 2007 at 10:17

willhub said:
It needs to be much much much sooner than early 2008, by then the G92's will be out and they'll be the second gen DX10 cards too.

Definetly, although fair play to AMD, they have worked very hard on the drivers this past month or so and it's really starting to show. Just hopefully it not before it's too late.

willhub · 20 Jun 2007 at 10:19

flibby said:
Definetly, although fair play to AMD, they have worked very hard on the drivers this past month or so and it's really starting to show. Just hopefully it not before it's too late.

I dont think it will be too late, there doing a brilliant job with drivers and the improvement made allready looks to be reay hopefull. I'll be buying a HD2900XT and keeping my 8800 for abit too I think so I can directly compare to 2 in the same system

Ghosteh · 20 Jun 2007 at 10:30

meh I don't mind if its really shining until 2008, I wont be upgrading again before then. tbh, don't know why I'm upgrading now lol. I'm off to start Army Basic Training in September/October, when I'm there I wont be touching my PC for 14 weeks lol. still, a few months worth of good performance will be worth it... I hope

MystaEB · 20 Jun 2007 at 10:31

Still really poor performance in SupCom and downright bizarre results in Company of Heroes. (Look at the min fps)

At least ATI are pushing the card forward with drivers, though.

Teaf · 20 Jun 2007 at 10:36

The 1280x1024 resolution in Call of Juarez is also weird. I guess it's why a lot of people can't make their minds up on this card, as you don't really know whether performance like that is due to a bug in the drivers that isn't applying AF/AA properly, or whether it's actually doing it properly and it's a beast. Also when you see it ahead of the GTX in some games, or near on par, then in other games it's 20 FPS behind a GTS, is also confusing. Personally I'd like to think that AA/AF is being applied properly, and particular games use certain things that the 2900XT is capable of handling better, and the 20 FPS below the GTS stuff is due to dodgy driver performance in that game, but really it's hard to say.

Hoping for some better conclusions with the 7.6 Cats, maybe we'll see a more stable view of the card.

MystaEB · 20 Jun 2007 at 10:40

The inconsistent performance that the X2900 seems to display is the primary reason why I find it difficult to recommend it to people over a GTS/GTX. It's a fine card but since it's impossible to tell what the future holds for it, I'd never personally buy one.

Boogle · 20 Jun 2007 at 10:44

The card will never be as stable as an 8800 in terms of performance scores.

The 2900 architecture groups 5 units into 1, and to make use of all 5 units one instruction has to be issued that, well, uses all 5. This is the cornerstone of VLIW (Very Long Instruction Word).

If a shader uses the same kind of instruction over and over, and requires instructions to occur before the current one can be executed - then you're effectively cutting the 320 shader units down to 64 since you're using only 1/5 units each cycle. This is worst case scenario.

Best case is there's lots of instructions that can be executed in parallel, and you use all 320 shader units to the max and greatly outstrip the Ultra's performance.

In reality VLIW architectures rarely use more than 80% of their capacity, even when the application is designed specifically for that architecture. ATI's drivers have to take in the shader code, reorganise the instructions as best they can, to make maximum use of the shader power available.

The reason ATI have gone with this architecture is simple: Its easier to design and potentially offers great performance. On the flip side it's very hard to program drivers that make full use of the architecture. This has a positive side though - the performance of the card really will increase over it's lifetime. As the lead designer said, in one year this card will be a lot faster than it is now. Whether that matters to your or not, depends on how long you plan on keeping the card. But since people are still happy with the X1900XT, which is over a year old I would assume it's a good thing.

Good performance now, great performance later; its win-win!

MystaEB · 20 Jun 2007 at 10:54

But it's very hard to say that the card will, in a years times, have gained enough performance through software and driver updates to make it worth purchasing now.

The problem in my opinion is that the card is so late already, that by the time it really kicks off due to it's unique architecture, there will be another card available that makes it completely useless. It's already slower than a GTX right now which is a big issue. Obviously there is a price difference but I'll never buy a piece of hardware based on "what if", I just don't have enough faith to do that.

I guess the only way to look at it is to hope ATI perfect drivers now, then produce a faster refresh card using the same tech and the advancements they have made software-wise help create a solid release.

Teaf · 20 Jun 2007 at 10:58

There was also a nice performance analysis done by TweakTown which can be viewed here. Seems to just give a view over the beta driver, the 7.4 cats and the 7.5 cats to show performance differences. Some look okay, but I was a little baffled at why the performance in some of the later drivers dropped compared to the very old driver. Such as this screenshot:

Cyber-Mav · 20 Jun 2007 at 11:46

http://enthusiast.hardocp.com/article.html?art=MTM1MSwxLCxoZW50aHVzaWFzdA==

hardocp also redid their reviews using the 7.5cats.

Tom|Nbk · 20 Jun 2007 at 11:55

Ghosteh said:
Bah, stalker still down lol. My favourite game too, especially when the v1.1 patch is released . Still, I'm going to get the HD2900XT lol. The other games were performance has increased gives me hope for other games to start taking advantage of the cards power.

Those STALKER benchies are just wrong wrong wrong. I have everythig maxed in STALKER and never seen it below 30. It's around the same perf as my GTS was.