2900XT or 640GTS?

Tom|Nbk · 17 Jun 2007 at 22:35

Cyber-Mav said:
ouch, if i were dumb enough to get a 2900xt to replace my x1900 id be doing a downgrade

Yet youv'e clearly seen otherwise above

, tbh Mav if this card washed your dishes and wiped your arse you still wouldnt have it

. I think we all know good and well that you despise this card and would never have one. Your word dosn't make it law though.

Cyber-Mav · 17 Jun 2007 at 22:35

LoadsaMoney said:
Should have got the 2900, its better

i agree.

Cyber-Mav · 17 Jun 2007 at 22:36

Tom|Nbk said:
Your word dosn't make it law though.

it will one day.

LoadsaMoney · 17 Jun 2007 at 22:38

If only it didnt use so much power, id have had one then.

MaXXeH · 17 Jun 2007 at 22:38

i did get the 2900xt.. i changed my order. though i would take a gamble.

LoadsaMoney · 17 Jun 2007 at 22:39

MaXXeH said:
i did get the 2900xt.. i changed my order. though i would take a gamble.

nice one.

Cyber-Mav · 17 Jun 2007 at 22:41

MaXXeH said:
i did get the 2900xt.. i changed my order. though i would take a gamble.

good one. now you get to feel the wrath of ATi

Tom|Nbk · 17 Jun 2007 at 22:42

Cyber-Mav said:
it will one day.

Never

, the 2900 uses software programable AA resolve unlike the 8800 which uses the hardware resolve, until the driver team understands more of its flaws the 2900 will stay as it is, the bonus with the 2900 is its on a very tweakable arc, we should see some good improvements down the line.

, If we don't ill be the first person to sell up believe me. I speak to AMD closely and have seen behind the scenes, If i had my doubts otherwise I wouldn't have the card.

Cyber-Mav · 17 Jun 2007 at 22:46

Tom|Nbk said:
Never , the 2900 uses software programable AA resolve unlike the 8800 which uses the hardware resolve, until the driver team understands more of its flaws the 2900 will stay as it is, the bonus with the 2900 is its on a very tweakable arc, we should see some good improvements down the line. , If we don't ill be the first person to sell up believe me. I speak to AMD closely and have seen behind the scenes, If i had my doubts otherwise I wouldn't have the card.

i spoke to ATi 6 months ago regarding this gfx card and when i was informed about the architecture i offered them a few pointers on what to do to fix its shortcommings. and they just hung up on me.
if they asked me for my advice now and even offered to pay me id tell them where to stick it. :cool:

Tom|Nbk · 17 Jun 2007 at 22:48

Cyber-Mav said:
and they just hung up on me.

LOL, I dont blame them tbh.

fornowagain · 17 Jun 2007 at 23:29

TheRealDeal said:
Well one of the reviews above is wrong as they both have fear in there
and one shows hd2900xt winning other gts.

http://www.legitreviews.com/article/503/5/
http://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/2007/05/31/evga_e_geforce_8800_ultra_superclock/2

They used different machines, drivers and CPU's. Doesn't make either wrong. I think its all to easy to cherry pick a few results to **** off or praise a card. Better to at least compare apple to apples.

Seems the FEAR result is pretty accurate wrt to a GTX and the XT.
http://forums.overclockers.co.uk/showthread.php?t=17740832&page=9

Tute said:
They're all just wrong, I mean 2900XT Crossfire slower than a single card? The EVGA Ultra Superclocked outperformed by GTSes, GTXes, and what on earth is the X1950 doing in F.E.A.R?

Eh? Aren't they SLi results as well?

There is some good stuff on the R600 from Sir Eric on B3D Forums. Looks like swings and roundabouts, definitely has potential with a few drawbacks.

sireric said:
In terms of filtering quality and performance, generally, it should be higher than our previous generation in terms of quality (if nothing else, subpixel improvements will help), and should have similar performance degredation to R5xx -- Perhaps a little worst, as the quality is generally better. However, GTX does have the advantage of significantly more texture filters; though they don't always have the BW to supply that many consummers.

sireric said:
But it's power isn't as low as one would hope and the performance of this arch on current games is less than it will be on future games.

sireric said:
The scalar/VLIW architecture is fine and better than previous archs, but is not an advantage compared to our newest competition.

sireric said:
The drivers are very stable and deliver the expected performance in many cases. There are certainly quite a few left to address.If someone is expecting a 2x boost in all apps, well, I'm sorry, but it won't happen. There's a couple of places where that kind of delta is possible, and a lot where 10 ~30% is possible too. But we are shipping a good product at an awesome price. People should buy based on current expectation (or near current), with the possibility of future improvements.

sireric said:
The actual number of units working on AA wrt to R580 isn't substantially different - thought the new ones are focused on 64b pixels. There are cases where moving the resolve to the shader has hurt performance -- That's typically where the frame rate is very high (i.e. > 100fps). Those are cases we were aware of and only really show up in benchmarks, not so much in real game play. It sort of caps the max fps to 200~300 or so, depending on resolution. Again, not something we felt would seriously impact real game play. It can also be mitigated by selecting the proper AA modes.

Tom|Nbk · 17 Jun 2007 at 23:37

Originally Posted by sireric
The drivers are very stable and deliver the expected performance in many cases. There are certainly quite a few left to address.If someone is expecting a 2x boost in all apps, well, I'm sorry, but it won't happen. There's a couple of places where that kind of delta is possible, and a lot where 10 ~30% is possible too.

Yup exactly what ive seen behind the scenes, basically whereever the 2900 results look odd or fall very far behind the GTS, this is where the 2900 will catch up in future drivers.

willhub · 17 Jun 2007 at 23:50

Just thought i'd say it

I have made my decision to go for the HD2900XT, if its a bad of good idea, I'll have to live with it, I will post a large post about how I thought the transfer went and which card I think is better, then i'll do another one when drivers are more mature, I should be getting the HD2900XT on thursday all been well

Grrr this PC Hardware business is so stressing, worse than college work :eek:

, this will be my 3rd high end card, 2x 8800GTS, 1x HD2900XT, maybe even back to GTS? Who knows whats going to happen, but dammmmmn, stressss at the momemt :eek:

Tom|Nbk · 17 Jun 2007 at 23:55

willhub said:
Just thought i'd say it

I have made my decision to go for the HD2900XT, if its a bad of good idea, I'll have to live with it, I will post a large post about how I thought the transfer went and which card I think is better, then i'll do another one when drivers are more mature, I should be getting the HD2900XT on thursday all been well

Grrr this PC Hardware business is so stressing, worse than college work , this will be my 3rd high end card, 2x 8800GTS, 1x HD2900XT, maybe even back to GTS? Who knows whats going to happen, but dammmmmn, stressss at the momemt

If you do go back you may aswell make it the GTX you go back to.

willhub · 17 Jun 2007 at 23:57

Tom|Nbk said:
If you do go back you may aswell make it the GTX you go back to.

I wont be able to afford it, well yea I will lol, but it will leave me abit low on funds for the G92 if I dont manage to get a job in the holidays, if I get a job, hell I'll keep the 2900 and get a GTX

Ghosteh · 17 Jun 2007 at 23:58

willhub said:
Grrr this PC Hardware business is so stressing, worse than college work , this will be my 3rd high end card, 2x 8800GTS, 1x HD2900XT, maybe even back to GTS? Who knows whats going to happen, but dammmmmn, stressss at the momemt

I agree completly, i've been stressing about what to go for, wether to spend extra & get a 8800GTX, or try and decide between the HD2900XT or 8800 640GTS. Must have changed my mind so much, read so many differnet reviews, spent ages asking people, looking around forums. Never had such a difficult time making a Hardware decision lol. THINK i've decided on the HD2900 now, i dont really need to spend the extra on the GTX, and i've got my hopes for the 2900 to improve. hopefully it wont be the wrong choise. Still, i've got about 4 days to change my mind back and forward before PayDay haha

willhub · 18 Jun 2007 at 00:00

Ghosteh said:
I agree completly, i've been stressing about what to go for, wether to spend extra & get a 8800GTX, or try and decide between the HD2900XT or 8800 640GTS. Must have changed my mind so much, read so many differnet reviews, spent ages asking people, looking around forums. Never had such a difficult time making a Hardware decision lol. THINK i've decided on the HD2900 now, i dont really need to spend the extra on the GTX, and i've got my hopes for the 2900 to improve. hopefully it wont be the wrong choise. Still, i've got about 4 days to change my mind back and forward before PayDay haha

I knew I should have gone for a HD2900XT at the time I bought this 8800GTS, thats whats making me so stressed, how can I be so silly, I mean going through 2 GTS's, how insane :eek:

, at least I dont need to go through loads of Power Supplys like GPU's.

Tom|Nbk · 18 Jun 2007 at 00:02

willhub said:
I knew I should have gone for a HD2900XT at the time I bought this 8800GTS, thats whats making me so stressed, how can I be so silly, I mean going through 2 GTS's, how insane , at least I dont need to go through loads of Power Supplys like GPU's.

Just make sure you make a new vid when you get your 2900

Ghosteh · 18 Jun 2007 at 00:06

willhub said:
I knew I should have gone for a HD2900XT at the time I bought this 8800GTS, thats whats making me so stressed, how can I be so silly, I mean going through 2 GTS's, how insane , at least I dont need to go through loads of Power Supplys like GPU's.

yeah, i probably would have gone for a GTS if i had the money earlier on, but i've only just had the cash over the past few months to slowly upgrade bits and peices. Was New Motherboard & Ram, then new PSU, New Monitor, then finally new GFX card, all went in a nice order lol

Tom|Nbk · 18 Jun 2007 at 00:07

Ghosteh said:
yeah, i probably would have gone for a GTS if i had the money earlier on, but i've only just had the cash over the past few months to slowly upgrade bits and peices. Was New Motherboard & Ram, then new PSU, New Monitor, then finally new GFX card, all went in a nice order lol

I think you meant to say 2900