DirectX 10 CARDS

[emoners]

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ASUS Radeon HD 2900XT vs. ASUS GeForce 8800 GTS

source: http://legionhardware.com/document.php?id=645

[img width=500 height=305]http://www.legionhardware.com/Pics/ASUS_Radeon_HD_2900XT_vs_ASUS_GeForce_8800_GTS/Image_01.jpg[/img]

Conclusion

The Radeon HD 2900XT has been called a lot of things over the past few days and to be honest we were expecting a complete dud, but it just isn’t! Yes the Radeon HD 2900XT is not as powerful as we were expecting, the drivers probably are not as polished as they would be and the card runs hot as hell but... for $400 US this product is quite good value. While we found the performance to be a bit up and down, there was one thing that remained fairly constant and that was the Radeon HD 2900XT’s lead over the GeForce 8800 GTS graphics cards.

There are just three big problems we had with the Radeon HD 2900XT, one of which can be solved, the other to a certain extent and the biggest problem we will have to live with. The biggest problem being of course power consumption, the Radeon HD 2900XT really needs a lot of power to get the job done! In fact the card is rated for 215 watts, while we believe it can use up to 250 watts of power alone. This is significantly more than the GeForce 8800 GTS graphics cards and even more than the GTX version.

Power consumption is a major issue that cannot be overcome at this stage, the 65nm versions of the Radeon HD 2900XT may fix this problem, but we will have to wait and see. Now because the Radeon HD 2900XT uses so much power, it also produces a significant amount of heat. In fact we have found that having a single Radeon HD 2900XT in a computer case is similar to having two GeForce 8800 GTS graphics cards in SLI, as far as heat is concerned.

Then when you have a lot of heat to remove, you generally have a loud fan and this is exactly what you have with the Radeon HD 2900XT. The fan is pretty quiet during normal 2D usage, but once you fire up a 3D game the vacuum cleaner starts up and even your expensive 5.1 headphones will struggle to save you. So power consumption, heat output and operating volume seem to be the biggest down fall of the Radeon HD 2900XT, and they are.

These problems aside, at $400 US you get a good performing DirectX 10 graphics card with a new programmable tessellation unit. The card comes with 512MB of GDDR3 memory onboard, using a 512-bit wide memory bus. The card offers HDCP straight out of the box and comes with a HDMI adapter with audio support! Adding to all this, ASUS has thrown in a free full-version copy of S.T.A.L.K.E.R just to sweeten the deal.

Picking between the Nvidia GeForce 8800 GTS (640MB) graphics card that we already know so well and the new AMD Radeon HD 2900XT is going to be a tough choice. Those that bit the bullet and went with the GeForce 8800 GTS really have nothing to regret, as it is still a fantastic product. The Radeon HD 2900XT still seems a little mysterious to us, as we only had such a short period of time to test it before handing it back over.

Should the Radeon HD 2900XT mature quite well over the next few months, it could become a real threat to the GeForce 8800 GTX, particularly given it costs significantly less. In some games the Radeon HD 2900XT has proven to already be faster than the 8800 GTX, while in most others it is a little bit slower, and then in some games, such as Supreme Commander, it is much slower. So the Radeon HD 2900XT is a mixed bag of results then and obviously AMD knows this, hence the $400 US price tag!

Reviewed By Steven Walton

[emoners]

Well...nagpagawas na jud ang ATI ug DirectX10 version nila hehehe.

[cHoLoCoY]

i wanna wait for the 2900XTX,.....

whats a good mobo chipset to use with the R600?

[StyM]

X38.

[jungie]

hehehe then a couple of months later these 500 dollar cards wouldnt be all that hot

[cHoLoCoY]

X38? what is that??

i mean what would work best for the HD 2900 XTX or XT

AMD/ATi


NVidia
nForce 600 Series
nForce 500 Series

[emoners]

NVidia GeForce 7600GT vs. 8600GT

source: http://www.legionhardware.com/document.php?id=637&p=0

Conclusion

Well there you have it the 8600 GT head to head with the old 7600 GT, but before we continue with the comparison here is a paragraph from the conclusion of our 6600 GT vs. 7600 GT article published around this time last year.

“So does it make sense to upgrade from the 6600GT to the 7600GT? In short, yes it does. The 7600GT is a far superior product and the cost of upgrading is very much worth it. Those that upgraded to a GeForce 6600GT almost two years ago now should be happy with how it has treated them in that time. Even by today’s standards the 6600GT is still a decent graphics card, and it is only now in the very latest gaming titles that it is beginning to struggle. Even so, games such as F.E.A.R will still play well enough on a 6600GT with medium to low quality settings enabled.”

Games such as Doom 3 saw the 7600 GT delivering 100% more performance on average when compared to the 6600 GT. Then visually intense games such as F.E.A.R were an impressive 85% faster with the 7600 GT. These kinds of gains were also seen in Quake 4 and X3: Reunion, proving that the 7600 GT was a worthy successor of the 6600 GT and well worth the upgrade! Now has the 8600 GT carried on the success of the 6600 GT and 7600 GT graphics cards?

Not at all, the 8600 GT is a joke in my opinion and does not deserve to be part of the x600 GT series. If anything, what we have see here today should have been performance delivered by the 8500 GT, not the 8600 GT. The results really spoke for themselves, as the GeForce 8600 GT was 12% slower in Far Cry, 17% slower in F.E.A.R, 7% slower in X3: Reunion and 19.5% slower in Company of Heroes. The only two games that the 8600 GT came out on top in was Prey (15.5%) and Supreme Commander (27.5%), making a two out of six effort very poor indeed.

Making matters worse is the glaring fact that the new GeForce 8600 GT currently costs $170 US where as the 7600 GT can easily be had for $110 US. This means for the extra $60 US you only get Direct X10 support, which is pretty much useless at this point in time. In fact, it will be a while before quality DX10 games out weigh DX9 games, so what is the point of the 8600 GT? As far as we can see there is no point, it’s a dud! There is little to no reason for anyone to invest $170 US into a mid-range DX10 graphics card now. Especially given by the time quality DX10 games are out, mid-range supporting graphics cards will be much faster and even cheaper!

The 8600 GT has been a massive disappointment and has tarnished the reputation of the once elite x600 GT series from Nvidia. This just goes to show that without competition consumers really suffer and many are up in arms about the 8600 series performance. These same consumers are blaming Nvidia for the release of an unexciting mid-range product series, claiming to hold off for AMD’s offerings. This is a little ironic given this could be viewed more as AMD’s fault than Nvidia’s due to the complete lack of competition from AMD.

The sad truth is that neither company is here to impress us with their products, rather their only real mission is to make a profit. Therefore without competition there is no need for Nvidia to spend more money developing a better product that will make them less profit. Instead they have developed an average product that will most likely make them more profit per sale. Currently Nvidia is dominating the high-end market and their existing GeForce 7 series products are doing very well in the mainstream segment, so they have little need for the GeForce 8600/8500 series. Nevertheless, shame on Nvidia for trying to sell us such a lemon!

Note: Many readers are asking why we compared the 8600 GT to the 7600 GT and not the 7600 GS. Some readers are telling us that the 8600 GTS should have been used in the head to head with the 7600 GT because the naming has changed. Can I just add that we understand this but we never base these head to head battles on model numbers but rather price ranges. Had we used the 8600 GTS we would have been even more disappointed given these cards cost between $200-$230 US which puts it up against the X1950 Pro and 7900 GS. The 8600 GT cards are priced between $150-$170 US which makes them more expensive than competing 7600 GT cards.

Reviewed By Steven Walton

[weezur]

that's quite surprising as on paper the 8600GT should perform better as it has 20 more pixels per clock than the 7600GT...i think it should be able to perform in upcoming DX10 .

[teH_tHirD]

So is it not worth to upgrade from 7600gt to 8600gt?

[weezur]

IMO, just hold off some more for DX10 games to come out and we'll some real benchmarks...you'r better off with current gpu for the meantime...the GTS may be a better option if you want now.