amd hd 2900 xt vs nvidia 8800 gtx review and benchmark

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AMD HD 2900 XT VS NVIDIA 8800 GTX REVIEW AND BENCHMARK

AMD HD 2900 XT VS NVIDIA 8800 GTX REVIEW AND BENCHMARK

Posted:2007-05-16 By Video card review
Number of View:19629

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 .
HD 2000 serie
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:

HD 2900 XT vs 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:

AMD radeon HD 2900 XT 512 Mb back side
In the center section we have small information , which present the video card model :

AMD radeon HD 2900 XT 512 Mb model number
Here is the dual slot cooling system :

AMD radeon HD 2900 XT 512 Mb cooling system dual slots
Video card is equipped with two Dual link and TV- out :

AMD radeon HD 2900 XT 512 Mb ports
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:

AMD radeon HD 2900 XT 512 Mb crossfire connector
Here is the AMD Radeon HD 2900 XT without cooler :

AMD radeon HD 2900 XT 512 Mb without cooled
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 :

AMD radeon HD 2900 XT 512 Mb : the video chip
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 )

AMD radeon HD 2900 XT 512 Mb : hynix memory
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.

AMD radeon HD 2900 XT 512 Mb cooling system
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 :

AMD radeon HD 2900 XT 512 Mb : cooling element tube + radiator

Here is the small fan used to cools this radiator:

AMD radeon HD 2900 XT 512 Mb cooling fan
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:

Motherboard: ASUSTek P5B deluxe/wiFi-AP (Intel p965), LGA 775, BIOS 1101;
Cooling system (chipset): Thermaltake extreme spirit II (~ 2500 rp/min);
Processor: Intel core 2 Duo e6400 2133 MHz, 1.325 , L2 2048 KB, FSB: 266 MHz x 4, SL9S9 malay (Conroe, B2);
Cooling system (CPU): Enzotech Ultra- X (~1550 rp/min);
Memory: 2 x 1024 mb. DDR2 corsair dominator TWIN2X2048-9136C5D (SPD: 1142 MHz, 5-5-5-18, 2.1 v);
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 ;-) ) :

Core 2 Duo e6400 @ 3.6 GHZ
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%:

AMD Price
Thus, taking in account the recommended prices for NVIDIA video card , the enemy of this card will become the GeForce 8800 GTS 640 Mb.

xtreview is your : Video card - cpu - memory - Hard drive - power supply unit source

AMD HD 2900 XT Vs Nvidia 8800 GTX review and benchmark

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