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ATI Radeon HD 2900 XT 512MB
About the HD 2900 XT, the Card, and the Bundle
In brief, the architecture is completely new, and nothing like the X1900's. Since this is a straight-numbers review, the details can be skipped; we'll focus on that later. First is the change from X- to HD-. Sure, it's cosmetic and a bandwagon; but X- has long oversaturated so much of the marketing world I'm glad to see it gone. It is relevant: HD 2000's fully hardware-accelerated H.264 and VC-1 on-die design has a leg up on NVIDIA's PureVideo with ATI's HD Avivo. The similarity between its heatsink and the stock cooler on the 8800-series is striking. In a lot of ways, it looks like an ATI-branded 8800 card. It's held straight by a much heftier bracket, and outweighs the 8800GTS by a small amount. The whole card is just a little longer. The fan does spin up higher, and does make more noise when it's dealing with its heat. Given that it uses solid-state power regulation and not a row of capacitors, the HD 2900 looks a lot cleaner; it is a refined product. Six months has at least given it that.     You'll notice there are two auxiliary power inputs on the top edge of the card (the 8800GTS only has one). One of them is a 6-pin connector and the other is a newer 8-pin connection (backwards-compatible with 6-pin if you don't have an 8-pin). There is a catch to the new 8-pin connection, though. If you don't have one connected, you won't be able to use ATI's Overdrive overclocking utility. On the back edge of the card there are two dual-link DVI ports. One final, very polished addition to the card is an HDMI 1.2 dongle that supports audio. By tapping directly into onboard audio, the HD 2000-series will deliver HDCP audio along with the video. This is leaps and bounds ahead of the competition. The bundle is where things really get interesting. People have been railing against bad game picks for a long time, often selecting cards with no bundle whatsoever to save a couple bucks, or dealing with software that's not fun at all. But ATI's BFF Valve has pitched in with a decidedly cool Steam coupon that includes Day of Defeat: Source, and when released, Half-Life 2: Episode 2 and Team Fortress 2. While the selection is fixed, this is a huge improvement over any other game bundles and is something a lot of people have been asking for since the start of downloadable game content.  
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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