8800 GTS killer? HD 2900XT reviewed and released
Oh man, this must have been the Warcraft 3, PS3 or Duke Nukem forever of the graphics card world. Without further ado, the HD 2xxxseries of AMD/ATi VGAs is here, most notably the HD 2900XT. It will be hard released in Australia on Wednesday, so keep a look out.
Already 5 months late, the latest addition to AMD/ATi's VGA foray with the HD 2xxx series (minus the elusive HD 2900XTX). The XT varietal is retailing for $399 US, which
will probably be around the $650 mark by the time it reaches our shores. Expect competition to bring this down somewhat, as we can be assured there will be fierce battles between this card and the 8800GTS.
From the looks of it, the HD2900XT goes neck and neck with the 8800GTS 640MB, but is coming out on top due to its insane amount of pixel processing power (even greater than the 8800GTX). The card draws about 230W under load, which is actually more than the 8800GTX by 17w, but apparently can overclock very well (~850MHz from the stock 740MHz core).
Here's a few sites i recommend you all check out to get an idea of performance:
Phew, there's some light reading for you. For the most part, i think the card has potential. Drivers are still new, so some games completely drop out when any form of Anti Aliasing is turned on. Otherwise, the card is very well equipped to take on - and beat - the 8800GTS. While it's not king of the hill, the thing has plenty of potential and at the retail price, i don't think anyone is complaining. Sure, it's very very late, and nVIDIA have already made a fortune in the last 8 months unopposed by ATI, but let's hope that some competition will provide the end users (that's us!) with better bang for buck. 8800GTS killer? Most definitely a worthy rival, once again it seems that time will tell on this one.
