ATI Radeon HD 2900 XT: Calling a Spade a Spade
by Derek Wilson on May 14, 2007 12:04 PM EST- Posted in
- GPUs
Power Supply Requirements
With new product launches, we expect to see increased power requirements for increased performance. With the 8800 series, we saw hardware that offered excellent performance without breaking the bank on power, while the highest end part available required two PCIe power connectors. We can forgive the power gluttony of the 8800 GTX as the 8800 GTS offers terrific performance with a more efficient use of power.
R600 goes in another direction. We have a new part that doesn't compete with the high end hardware but has even more stringent power requirements. While NVIDIA's $400 hardware offered good power efficiency, AMD's Radeon HD 2900 XT eats power for breakfast. In fact, with the R600, we see the first use of PCIe 2.0 power connectors. These expand on the current 6-pin power connector to offer up to 150W over an 8-pin configuration.
The 8-pin PCIe 2.0 power connector enables graphics cards to pull up to 300W of power just for themselves. With 75W delivered through the slot, 75W through a 6-pin PCIe power cable, and 150W sliding down the PCIe 2.0 wire, the R600 has plenty of juice on tap. While it doesn't pull a full 300W in any test we ran, overdrive won't be able to function without the combination of a 6-pin and 8-pin connector.
All is not lost, however, as two 6-pin connectors will still be able to power the R600 for normal operation. The 8-pin receptacle will accept a 6-pin cable leaving two holes empty. This doesn't degrade performance when running R600 at normal clock speeds, but overclocking will be affected without the added power.
The bottom line as we'll shortly show is that AMD has built hardware with the performance of an 8800 GTS in a power envelope beyond the 8800 Ultra. We will take a closer look in our performance benchmarks when we actually test power draw under idle and load using 3dmark06.
The Test
| CPU: | Intel Core 2 Extreme X6800 (2.93GHz/4MB) |
| Motherboard: | EVGA nForce 680i SLI ASUS P5W-DH |
| Chipset: | NVIDIA nForce 680i SLI Intel 975X |
| Chipset Drivers: | Intel 8.2.0.1014 NVIDIA nForce 9.53 |
| Hard Disk: | Seagate 7200.7 160GB SATA |
| Memory: | Corsair XMS2 DDR2-800 4-4-4-12 (1GB x 2) |
| Video Card: | Various |
| Video Drivers: | ATI Catalyst 8.37 NVIDIA ForceWare 158.22 |
| Desktop Resolution: | 2560 x 1600 - 32-bit @ 60Hz |
| OS: | Windows XP Professional SP2 |
Facebook
Twitter
RSS
86 Comments
View All Comments
GoatMonkey - Monday, May 14, 2007 - link
That's obviously BS. This IS their high end part, it just doesn't perform as well as nVidia's high end part, so it is priced accordingly.poohbear - Monday, May 14, 2007 - link
sweet review though! thanks for including all the important and pertinent cards in your roundup (the 8800gts 320mb inparticular). also love how neutral Anand is in their reviews, unlike some other sites.:pCreig - Monday, May 14, 2007 - link
The R600 is finally here. I'm sure the overall performance is not what AMD was hoping for. Nobody ever shoots to have their newest product be the 2nd best. But pricing it at $399 and including a very nice game bundle will make the HD 2900 XT a VERY worthwhile purchase. I also have the feeling that there is a significant amount of performance increase to be realized through future driver releases ala X1800XT.shady28 - Tuesday, May 15, 2007 - link
Nvidia has gone over the cliff on pricing.
I know of no one personally who has an 88xx series card. I know one who recently picked up an 8600 of some kind, that's it. I have the best GPU of anyone I know.
It's a real shame that there is so much focus on graphics cards that virtually no one buys. These are niche products folks - yet 'who is best' seems to be totally dependent on these niche products. That's patently ridiculous.
It's like saying, since IBM makes the fastest computers in the world (they do), they're the best and you should be buying IBM (or now, lenovo) laptops and desktops.
No one ever said that sort of thing because it's patently ridiculous. Why do people say it now for graphics cards? The fact that they do says a lot about the mentality of sites like AT.
DerekWilson - Tuesday, May 15, 2007 - link
We don't say what you are implying, and we are also very upset with some of NVIDIA's pricing (specifically the 8800 ultra)the 8800 gts 320mb is one of the best values for your money anywhere and isn't crazy expensive -- it's actually the card I'd recommend to anyone who cares about graphics in games and wants good quality and performance at 1600x1200.
I would never tell anyone to buy an 8600 gts because nvidia has the fastest high end card. In fact, in this article, I hope I made it clear that AMD has the opportunity to capitalize on the huge performance gap nvidia left between the 8600 and 8800 series ... If AMD builds a part that performs in this range is priced competitively, they'll have our recommendation in a flash.
Recommending parts based on value at each price or performance segment is something we take pride in and will always do, no matter who has the absolute fastest hardware out there.
The reason our focus was on AMD's fastest part is because they haven't given us any other hardware to test. We will absolutely be talking a lot and in much depth about midrange and budget hardware when AMD makes these parts available to us.
yacoub - Monday, May 14, 2007 - link
$400 is a lot of money. Not terribly long ago the highest end GPU available didn't cost more than $400. Now they hit $750 so you start to think $400 sounds cheap. It's really not. It's a heck of a lot of money for one piece of hardware. You can put together a 650i SLI rig with 2GB of DDR2 6400 and an E4400 for that much money. I know because I just did that. I kept my 7900GT from my old rig because I wanted to see how R600 did before purchasing an 8800GTS 640MB. Now that we've seen initial results I will wait to see how R600 does with more mature drivers and also wait to see the 640MB GTS price come down even more in the meantime.vijay333 - Monday, May 14, 2007 - link
http://www.randomhouse.com/wotd/index.pperl?date=1...">http://www.randomhouse.com/wotd/index.pperl?date=1..."the expression to call a spade a spade is thousands of years old and etymologically has nothing whatsoever to do with any racial sentiment."
yacoub - Monday, May 14, 2007 - link
Yes, a spade was a shovel long before muslims enslaved europeans to do hard labor in north africa and europeans enslaved africans to do hard labor in the 'new world'.vijay333 - Monday, May 14, 2007 - link
whoops...replied to the wrong one.rADo2 - Monday, May 14, 2007 - link
It is not 2nd best (after 8800ULTRA), not 3rd best (after 8800GTX), not 4th best (after 8800GTX-640), but 5th best (after 8800GTS-320), or even worse ;)Bad performance with AA turned on (everybody turns on AA), huge power consumption, late to the market.
A definitive failure.