ATI Radeon HD 2900 XT 512MB

Reviews: Hardware

Motherboards | Power Supplies | Memory | Systems | Video Cards

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Max Slowik
Kurtis
ATI
May. 14, 2007

Specifications

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Performance Summary

The HD 2900 XT and the 8800GTS 640MB run neck-and-neck; NVIDIA pulling ahead in Half-Life 2: Episode 1, F.E.A.R. and Need for Speed; ATI doing better with Company of Heroes, Prey, and Splinter Cell.

While Company of Heroes throttled the 8800GTS 640MB, the gameplay of the two cards was almost exactly the same. The HD 2900 XT only outperformed it when the resolution was high enough. Up until then, they're indistinguishable.

Even though the numbers show some benefits to using one card versus the other, the reality of the matter is that they are identically-performing hardware. In most cases, the HD 2900 XT did better than the 8800GTS 640MB when anti-aliasing wasn't enabled, but not when burdened with the extra eye candy.

Unfortunately, we found that Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory's copy-protection scheme, StarForce, was tampering with our CrossFire results, so we'll be following up with those numbers in our video quality article. Suffice to say, it is because of StarForce that we will no longer be using SCCT as a benchmark.

Overclocking

It was pretty easy to use Catalysts Control Center to bump the core and memory from 743/828 to 838/888, or 12% on the core and 8% on the memory. This added a 5-8% FPS boost to Half-Life and F.E.A.R. These cards can be easily overclocked as long as they're attached to a power supply with both 6-pin and 8-pin Molex connectors. With just 6-pin power connections, while they work just fine, they're too close to their maximum power draw to do anything in the overclocking department.

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Page 10 of 11

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Page 1: Introduction
Page 2: About the HD 2900 XT, the Card, and the Bundle
Page 3: Test Setup
Page 4: Testing - Half-Life 2 Episode 1
Page 5: Testing - F.E.A.R.
Page 6: Testing - Company of Heroes
Page 7: Testing - Prey
Page 8: Testing - Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory
Page 9: Testing - 3DMark '06
Page 10: Performance Summary and Overclocking
Page 11: Conclusion

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