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2900GT

Frippy

Frippy

Frippy

Permabanned
Joined
31 Jan 2006
Posts
296
Picked up one of these today for not a lot of money. Put it in the new rig, dual core E2140 @ 2.4 gig and Fatal1ty HD-190 motherboard. 3DMark 2005 with stock settings was just a touch less than 12K on VISTA.



Considering what I paid for it, it's a bargain. Only game I have played so far with it is COD4. 1440x900 4x AA and it ran perfectly smooth. I'll try and run a fraps report and upload some pictures. Cracking card though.

Pictures and a few screenies for you. Games never dropped below 30 FPS, games ran at 1440x900 and set to high detail. Very pleased with the card, the VIVO functionality is good as well. It is quiet as well, never hear it at all, excellent mid range card.










 
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Interesting :) Just to make sure that is definitely 3dmark2005 score and not 2006 score? What did you get with 2006?

Please do update us on the actual performance :)
 
OK read some reviews and it looks like it performs the same as 1950pro (worse in some tests!!) so don't think there is much point with this card apart from the DX10 marketing hype :(
 
This is giving quite impressive reults, can't overclock at the moment as the card is not recognised in ATI TOOL/TRAY TOOLS and there is no Overdrive option on the drivers on the disc.

Any idea regarding a programme that'll help me overclock the card?

I'll stick frap reports up in a bit.
 
Frippy said:
This is giving quite impressive reults, can't overclock at the moment as the card is not recognised in ATI TOOL/TRAY TOOLS and there is no Overdrive option on the drivers on the disc.

Any idea regarding a programme that'll help me overclock the card?

I'll stick frap reports up in a bit.
Click to expand...

RivaTuner
 
Yeah, I was looking at these as they looked like they could be quite good price/performers, but the R600's heat output put me off a little, although articles do state it only requires a six-pin connector (confirmation please?). And yeah, the 2900 GT was referenced in an 8800 GT review, but only performed up to the X1950 Pro in those tests.

That was only one review, not even for that card, so judging performance on that may be jumping the gun a little.

EDIT:

Here we are.
 
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Do you still need 2x PCI-E 6 pin for this card? Is it as big and chunky as the pro/xt? I suppose the only difference is the lack of 8 mem chips at the back of the card (being 256bit)?
 
1x6pin connector. Riva tuner is no good at all. I did install the original drivers on the Sapphire CD. So I am going to install the 7.10 suite and see what options I have now. Seriously fast for the money.
 
It seems like the 2900gt performs roughly on the same level as an x1950xt 256mb, but has the slight advantage of having dx10. For just currently 100-130 to be honest, that is a reasonable performing card in my book.

Matthew
 
HI there

A daft question but from looking at one of these they look identical to the 2900 Pro and 2900 XT's which leads me to believe the extra pipelines are just disabled.

Has anyone tried unlocking the pipelines or flashing the 2900 GT with a 2900 Pro BIOS?
 
Indeed it does look the same, I am really tempted to try this Gibbo. If anyone can give me a guide to flashing the card, I'll try it. I don't have a floppy drive though, it would be interesting to find out if this could be flashed.
 
Wouldn't try it to be perfectly honest somethings are fundamentally different; it's not just the stream processors but the pro/XT has extra 8 mem chips at the back of the card because of the 512bit bandwidth, and also the lack of second PCI-E power connector means it won't have enough power even if the flash does work.
 
Ok bit of an update. AMD clocker allows clockspeed manipulation, by pushing the gpu up 50 mhz and the ram 100 mhz, I now get this. I'll clock it more later.




Ok, now at 750 core and 900MHZ ram.



Quite possibly I'm cpu limited now.
 
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Final results. 750 core and 1000 memory. E2140 clocked at 2.8 gig.


tadaob2.jpg



Total cost of build, £266.
 
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