Cheap 2900's

Tom|Nbk · 15 Sep 2007 at 22:53

willhub said:
You think the XT will still sell for around £190 when they are released?

You can get an XT for 190? :confused:

willhub · 15 Sep 2007 at 22:55

Tom|Nbk said:
You can get an XT for 190?

I mean 190 second hand.

Rackerz · 15 Sep 2007 at 22:57

I'll have it for £190

.

willhub · 15 Sep 2007 at 23:18

Rackerz said:
I'll have it for £190 .

Well, if I hear these new ones will overclock to XT speeds, I might just get me 20 quid by selling this and getting the pro.

Rackerz · 15 Sep 2007 at 23:33

I wonder if they'll overclock to XT speeds, interesting to find out.

RaiderX · 15 Sep 2007 at 23:33

if they are just underclocked XTs, ill be getting a couple and clocking them

Gibbo · 15 Sep 2007 at 23:50

RaiderX said:
if they are just underclocked XTs, ill be getting a couple and clocking them

Hi there

I believe they pretty much are, however they are extremely limited in numbers. The 2900 Pro is just a stop gap product until ATI releases the new RV670 in November which will be an even cheaper option.

I believe these 2900 Pro's are just downclocked 2900 XT's but will confirm on the memory interface stuff. Fact is they are only 150MHz slower on the core and just 50MHz on the memory so they won't be that much slower anyway and they will no doubt be great clockers.

Margaret · 16 Sep 2007 at 00:01

So why the hell did they not just cut the price of the 2900XT? Who the hell is going to buy them if the Pros clock to XT speeds.

killer_uk · 16 Sep 2007 at 00:08

Gibbo is looking to confirm the memory interface, maybe it isn't 512 for the reasons you've said.

HangTime · 16 Sep 2007 at 00:09

Jihad said:
So why the hell did they not just cut the price of the 2900XT? Who the hell is going to buy them if the Pros clock to XT speeds.

Judging by pricing it is because they want to have a direct competitor to the GTS320. Plenty of people buy cards with higher stock speeds as either they do not overclock, or just want something faster (remember you can overclock an XT too...)

As an example, people still bought the 6800ultra even though the GT could clock to Ultra speeds.

killer_uk · 16 Sep 2007 at 00:10

Just found this: "2900 Pro is expected to clocked around 600MHz and has 256-bit memory interface. "

http://www.vr-zone.com/articles/HD_2900_Pro_&_GT_Cards_In_Sep-Oct/5182.html

From another site: "The Radeon 2900 PRO will feature a performance between the GeForce 8600 GTS and GeForce 8800 GTS 320MB:"

There you have it then?

willhub · 16 Sep 2007 at 00:13

Is the RV670 gonna be an even cheaper one that beats the 2900XT?

They might aswell of kept the 512bit interface and just gave the 2900Pro 320mb or 256mb memory then.

killer_uk · 16 Sep 2007 at 00:16

Seems the RV670 is the 2900 pro, so no it won't beat the 2900xt.

willhub · 16 Sep 2007 at 00:18

killer_uk said:
Seems the RV670 is the 2900 pro, so no it won't beat the 2900xt.

So whats this 2900Pro?

killer_uk · 16 Sep 2007 at 00:30

Tom|Nbk · 16 Sep 2007 at 00:46

If these are really just downclocked XT's AMD is onto a sure fire winner!, these are also bound to sell extremely fast.

killer_uk · 16 Sep 2007 at 00:48

Doesn't look like they are though, however I guess the spec could have changed or those websites may have it entirely wrong. I guess we will know for sure when Gibbo confirms one way or the other

oweneades · 16 Sep 2007 at 01:02

Tom|Nbk said:
If these are really just downclocked XT's AMD is onto a sure fire winner!, these are also bound to sell extremely fast.

I just had a quick look on vr-zone and it looks like there is a bit of confusion on whether the card has a 256bit memory interface or 512bit.

At the moment both are a possibility although if they are the latter then I would assume these could possibly be HD2900XT's that couldn't hit the clocks required @ stock and hence are now being sold off as cheaper products.

Or they could only have a 256 bit memory interface which would still give them nice performance (given that the HD2900XT doesn't seem to really make use of its 512bit memory interface anyway).

Tom|Nbk · 16 Sep 2007 at 01:08

oweneades said:
I just had a quick look on vr-zone and it looks like there is a bit of confusion on whether the card has a 256bit memory interface or 512bit.

At the moment both are a possibility although if they are the latter then I would assume these could possibly be HD2900XT's that couldn't hit the clocks required @ stock and hence are now being sold off as cheaper products.

Or they could only have a 256 bit memory interface which would still give them nice performance (given that the HD2900XT doesn't seem to really make use of its 512bit memory interface anyway).

Yea just what I was thinking, these are most likely speed binned XT's. Which means they may not be good clockers. 256mbit mem interface is perfectly fine because as you said the 512mbit interface is currently going to waste.

Cyber-Mav · 16 Sep 2007 at 02:02

only way to be sure if the 512 bit memory interface is going to waste is to probably get a 2900xt card and down clock its ram to half its speed there by simulating half the memory bandwidth which is what a 256bit interface would do.
im gonna say that its probably gonna make a massive difference to performance since loosing that much memory bandwidth in one go is not just something thats gonna go un noticed.
other wise ati would have used a 256bit interface to begin with since it would be far cheaper and less complet to implement.
only time will tell though. the benchmarks as mentioned above will indeed be very interesting.