Posted:2007-05-16 By Video card review Number of View:19617
AMD HD 2900 XT VS NVIDIA 8800 GTX
REVIEW AND BENCHMARK
By :Video card review
Posted:2007-05-16
xtreview is your : Video card - cpu - memory - Hard drive - power supply unit source
On 14 May, 2007, AMD company , finally announced the new graphic accelerators on base of R600 chips .
It is not difficult to note that the most rapid video card radeon HD 2900 XTX will not be announced . Its announcement is again postponed, but this means that video cards Radeon HD 2900 XT has to oppose alone geForce 8800 .
Well, we will talk later about performance let us note for the moment that the new card from AMD/ATI is 20- mm shorter than GeForce 8800 GTX:
This that this card can be placed in most standard ATX case. But this seems to us unessential in this price segment. The most important here is the performance level compared to nvidia G80 .
1. Technical characteristics AMD radeon HD 2900 XT and NVIDIA geForce 8800 GTX
We already published in our previous review the architecture of new graphic chip (Check it here), will give only the fundamental technical characteristics of AMD radeon HD 2900 XT and NVIDIA geForce 8800 GTX in this review:
technical characteristics
AMD radeon HD 2900 XT
NVIDIA geForce 8800 GTX
Graphic processor
R600
G80 (TSMC)
Technical process, m
0.08 (low- k)
0.09 (low- k)
Number of transistors, mln.
700
681
Graphic processor Frequency , MHz
740 (506 in 2d- regime)
575
Video memory Effective frequency , MHz
1650 (1026 in 2d- regime)
1800
Memory capacity, mb.
512
768
Type of supported memory
GDDR3
GDDR3/GDDR4
Memory Bandwidth , bits
512
384
Interface
PCI-Express x16
Stream processors Number
320
128
Shader block Frequency , MHz
740
1350
Number of textural blocks,
16
32
Number of (ROP\'s),
16
24
Supported pixel / vertex shaders version
4.0/4.0
Memory Brandwidth, Gb/s
~ 106.0
~ 86.4
Peak of required power in 3d mode operation, watts
~ 215
~ 177
Requirements power unit, watts
~ 500 *
~ 450
Sizes video card standard design, mm
250 x 100 x 40
270 x 100 x 38
Connector
2 x DVI (Dual-Link), TV-Out, HDTV-Out
Recommended/retail cost , US dollars
399/N/A
599/620
2. AMD radeon HD 2900 XT 512 Mb
The video card is sufficiently massive and heavy , it has a red color PCB.
From the back side the card is partially closed with metallic plate:
In the center section we have small information , which present the video card model :
Here is the dual slot cooling system :
Video card is equipped with two Dual link and TV- out :
In the right upper PCB part are located two additional power connectors : six and eight pin\'s :
In the upper left side we have two port for two video card in crossfire regime:
Here is the AMD Radeon HD 2900 XT without cooler :
Very complex, in our view, witch will hardly contribute to fast prices reduction ;-( . But time will show. :-)
The back side, presents also not less complex picture:
We note that the double-sided memory chips arrangement on PCB, was used long time ago on video cards.
Here is the Graphic processor, which consists of 700 (!) millions transistors :
According to the marking, it is released in Taiwan approximately at the end of January in the present year. This again prove , that AMD already long time ago finished working on r600 models and the possible reasons for the long release of this card lie in something other. The default GPU frequency is 740 MHz (743 MHz – according monitoring software ). We note again, that shader block frequency in Radeon HD 2900 XT is equal to the graphic processor frequency , whereas in GeForce 8800 , shader block functions at 2.35 times faster frequency than the processor (1350 MHz-Shader block vs 575 MHz-GPU).
The Video card AMD radeon HD 2900 XT is equipped with 512 mb standard GDDR3 video memory with effective frequency 1650 MHz (1656 MHz according to monitoring software )
The memory microcircuits are from hynix production and they are located in both video card sides . Memory chips used is - HY5RS573225A FP-1, and their default access time is equal to 1.0 ns (2000 MHz theoretical frequency), which leaves to overclocker hope for good memory overclock potential.
Here is the cooling system of the new video card.
In its base is located the copper radiator, closed with plastic cover :
Metallic plate does not make direct contact with copper radiator. This is not a good cooling solution .
However, radiator consists of copper base, copper thermal tubes and copper edges :
Here is the small fan used to cools this radiator:
According to sound (From fan), there are only two operating modes: for 2d – very quiet (practically noiseless) regime with low rotation speed , while 3d – is very noisy . GeForce 8800 GTX/GTS is a lot quieter .
But here the cooling system is about enough for this video card . Using the utility AMD GPU clock tool we where able to monitor the chip temperature . Using benchmark from F.E.A.R game with full screen smoothing 4x and anisotropic filtration 16x the GPU reach only 82.3 degree Celsius, which is modest in our day for hi-End video card :-) :
3. Test configuration
To Test the Radeon HD 2900 XT we used the following configuration:
Hard Disk : SATA- II 320 Gb, Hitachi (HDT725032VLA360), 7200 rp/min, 16 mb., NCQ;
Power unit: MGE magnum 500 (500 W) + 80- mm fan glacialTech silentBlade (~1700 rp/min, 19 dBA).
Taking in account that video card possess sufficiently high performance, we overclocked the processor to 3600 MHZ using 1.4875 v ( + 68.8% overclocking ..... Thanks to Intel ;-) ) :
In this case memory functioned at 900 MHz frequency with latency 4- 4- 4-8 and voltage 2.25 v.
All tests were executed in the operating system Windows XP professional edition SP2 (with the last updates). Motherboard chipset Drivers - Intel chipset drivers version 8.4.0.1009a. We used directX 9.0c (release date April 2007), and also video card drivers : Catalyst beta (8.361.0.0) for AMD radeon HD 2900 XT and ForceWare 158.19 for GeForce 8800 GTX.
All test where at resolution 1280 x 1024, but with quality in games set to the maximum. Two test regimes: High quality and aF16x, AA4x .
To test the performance of video card we used the following games collection:
Serious sam 2 (Direct 3d) – game version 2.070, standard demo;
Quake 4 (OpenGL) – game version 1.3.0 build 2393, our custom demo, detail in game where set to ultra quality;
F.E.A.R. Extraction point (Direct 3d) – game version 1.01, built-in benchmark, all setting are set to Maximum, Soft shadows = off;
The elder scrolls IV: Oblivion (Direct 3d) – game version 1.1.511, maximum quality, Bloom effects, distant rendering;
Prey (OpenGL) – game version 1.2, maximum quality;
Company Of heroes (Direct 3d) – game version 1.3.0, maximum quality, built-in benchmark ;
S.T.A.L.K.E.R. - Shadow Of chernobyl (Direct 3d) – game version 1.001, shader 3.0, Full dynamic lighting ;
We have tested here the GeForce 8800 GTX 768 Mb at default frequencies 575/1800 MHz and overclocked to 621/2052 MHz.
4. Radeon HD 2900 XT performance tests
The picture is identical in most case : Radeon HD 2900 XT in quality regimes is inferior to GeForce 8800 GTX.
In quality regime the video card radeon HD 2900 XT lags behind GeForce 8800 GTX on 14- 15% average . At the same time in high quality regimes with anisotropic filtration and full screen smoothing the delay is even larger and it is located in 33- 34%.
Conclusion
As average the new high end solution from AMD lags behind NVIDIA by 25%:
Thus, taking in account the recommended prices for NVIDIA video card , the enemy of this card will become the GeForce 8800 GTS 640 Mb.
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