ATi 2900 XT 1GB DDR4 for pre-order...

[Shtal]

Problem is, as consumers, no amount of discussion can fix the negative vibe given to every R600 owner through AMD's bad publicity, bad marketing, and bad product control.

Heck, the first string of product boxes weren't even labelled properly...


Do i need mention UVD?

do I need mention horrible performance, lack of Crossfire support for numerous applications, lack of "hardware AA"....

IT seems all in all, this card is just that...lacking. ot me this speaks volumes about AMD's execution, and lack of control, in fact...I used to only buy AMD/ATI products. This recent fiasco has me in the position now that I won't ever buy another, and I won't be spending the company budget on AMD products either...

I own every ATI product released into the consumer PC space. I used to be proud about it. Now it just embarrasses me.


The discussion continues, because the shock still hasn't worn off. Die-hard fans are still hoping for a miracle fix, and until it comes, or a completely new product is released, AMD will have this hanging over thier head. If they fail to deliver AGAIN..well..i don't want to discuss that.


When I contacted AMD about UVD not working...at first thier supprt techs assured me UVD WAS working. Then they changed thier minds, and stated that it didn't work...

When I asked them about getting this functionality, I got "Sorry, but we do not have control over our board partners. R600 never had UVD, nor was it meant to, and we told our board partners that, and they mislabelled their boxes against our wishes. As such, we hold no responsibility, and there is nothing we can do to help you with this issue"

Then Mr Farhad Sadough of AMD Professional Services asked me for proof that these boxes said what they did.


Proof? He already knew about the problem!He had a prepared response!

That contact from AMD soured my stomach. You know, I'm glad they took the time to call personally, rather than email, but the complete lack of professionalism, the complete denial of any problem, the complete lack of customer satisfaction, really, really, is gonna hurt AMD.

In fact, the desparaging remarks you refer to..they are just part of it.

They didn't even acknowledge there was an issue. They took the time to give a statement about the "Lost Planet" demo in release reviews, but failed to mebntion that reviews that stated R600 had UVD were false, failed to call "tests" that meansured UVD performance FAKED...


They've just swept it under the rug.

That attitude will see them swept under the rug if it doesn't change, very soon...you mark my words.

I’m not really happy with ATI either.

Back in 2002, I order new just announced/released ATI AIW 9700Pro AGP8X Retail box, when I received the card, it was bad from the Box. So I send right back to ATI for anew replacement with the message the card is bad. So ATI send me anew one; well I was happy. Later; 2 ½ years down the road, - AIW-9700Pro had overheated and died. So I tried to RMA again back to ATI, but ATI would not take it back, their response was your card is out of warranty do to we had already replace before for you once. But I said - hey that is not fair, it is completely not my fault that I received bad card from you in the first place back in 2002, I did not had a chance to use it at all, I said to ATI you should take care your customer, but ATI refused it.

Back to the main topic please!!!!
[Edit: As of now ----> extra 512MB onboard for HD2900XT-1GB seems not really needed; by the time it would, R600 will be old]

 

[Rangers]

Problem is, as consumers, no amount of discussion can fix the negative vibe given to every R600 owner through AMD's bad publicity, bad marketing, and bad product control.

Heck, the first string of product boxes weren't even labelled properly...


Do i need mention UVD?

do I need mention horrible performance, lack of Crossfire support for numerous applications, lack of "hardware AA"....

IT seems all in all, this card is just that...lacking. ot me this speaks volumes about AMD's execution, and lack of control, in fact...I used to only buy AMD/ATI products. This recent fiasco has me in the position now that I won't ever buy another, and I won't be spending the company budget on AMD products either...

I own every ATI product released into the consumer PC space. I used to be proud about it. Now it just embarrasses me.


The discussion continues, because the shock still hasn't worn off. Die-hard fans are still hoping for a miracle fix, and until it comes, or a completely new product is released, AMD will have this hanging over thier head. If they fail to deliver AGAIN..well..i don't want to discuss that.


When I contacted AMD about UVD not working...at first thier supprt techs assured me UVD WAS working. Then they changed thier minds, and stated that it didn't work...

When I asked them about getting this functionality, I got "Sorry, but we do not have control over our board partners. R600 never had UVD, nor was it meant to, and we told our board partners that, and they mislabelled their boxes against our wishes. As such, we hold no responsibility, and there is nothing we can do to help you with this issue"

Then Mr Farhad Sadough of AMD Professional Services asked me for proof that these boxes said what they did.


Proof? He already knew about the problem!He had a prepared response!

That contact from AMD soured my stomach. You know, I'm glad they took the time to call personally, rather than email, but the complete lack of professionalism, the complete denial of any problem, the complete lack of customer satisfaction, really, really, is gonna hurt AMD.

In fact, the desparaging remarks you refer to..they are just part of it.

They didn't even acknowledge there was an issue. They took the time to give a statement about the "Lost Planet" demo in release reviews, but failed to mebntion that reviews that stated R600 had UVD were false, failed to call "tests" that meansured UVD performance FAKED...


They've just swept it under the rug.

That attitude will see them swept under the rug if it doesn't change, very soon...you mark my words.

Sounds like you wont be buying any AMD products ever again. And that's that. Problem solved.

 

[WaltC]

Problem is, as consumers, no amount of discussion can fix the negative vibe given to every R600 owner through AMD's bad publicity, bad marketing, and bad product control.

I confess that what I was talking about was how the so-called comparative "product reviews" were all over the place, depending on which web site you cared to visit. As well, much of the direct reader commentary I've read about R600 is very positive, which stands in sharp contrast to some very negative opinions I've seen on some web sites.

For instance, in the recent Firing Squad piece, when we get to the DirectX10 titles (purportedly, that is what they are) I noted with much curiosity that Firing Squad was able to find only two such games to compare, and that mysteriously all the nVidia cards that had been compared to R600 throughout the rest of the article were suddenly *missing* in one of those two game comparisons...! Firing Squad never bothers to even attempt to explain the glaring omission, which presumably means they are hoping no one will notice it... It just seems terribly odd to me, if not terribly skewed, to feature nVidia cards in every single comparative frame-rate bar chart in the article--except for a single "DX10" game in which no nVidia products are compared with R600 at all--and then to just say nothing about that particular omission.

This is the kind of thing I'm talking about.

Heck, the first string of product boxes weren't even labelled properly...

Honestly, I hadn't noticed. I've been more interested in reading about R600 as opposed to studying some of the boxes in which it initially shipped.

I own every ATI product released into the consumer PC space. I used to be proud about it. Now it just embarrasses me.

Why? Many of the products ATi has shipped, beginning with R300, were without peer for long periods of time. ATi's driver program with the Catalysts is, in my opinion, still without peer. I mean, it just seems a little over the top to let your current impressions of R600 embarrass you about everything else ATi has done in recent years. For me, whatever's going on with R600 has no bearing on my use of and enjoyment of my x1950 Pro.

When I contacted AMD about UVD not working...at first thier supprt techs assured me UVD WAS working. Then they changed thier minds, and stated that it didn't work...

When I asked them about getting this functionality, I got "Sorry, but we do not have control over our board partners. R600 never had UVD, nor was it meant to, and we told our board partners that, and they mislabelled their boxes against our wishes. As such, we hold no responsibility, and there is nothing we can do to help you with this issue"

Then Mr Farhad Sadough of AMD Professional Services asked me for proof that these boxes said what they did.


Proof? He already knew about the problem!He had a prepared response!

Well, this is the first I've read about UVD "not working"...what I have read thus far is that UVD wasn't hardware accelerated in the 2900XT, which of course doesn't mean that if you install a 2900XT you cannot display UVD, does it? Additionally, from what I have read, this is also how the GF8 series handles UVD display. The complaint I saw was about the fact that UVD displays took up more cpu time than they would have done with hardware support--so this information about "UVD not working" is news to me. Additionally, is it not true, as well, that in the cheaper R600 variants, that UVD support is in fact built into the gpu hardware?

I mean, maybe you are right and I've missed something here. So were you talking about "UVD not working" or did you mean to say that when using the 2900XT UVD works, but does so sans gpu hardware acceleration?

 

[WaltC]

I’m not really happy with ATI either.

Back in 2002, I order new just announced/released ATI AIW 9700Pro AGP8X Retail box, when I received the card, it was bad from the Box. So I send right back to ATI for anew replacement with the message the card is bad. So ATI send me anew one; well I was happy. Later; 2 ½ years down the road, - AIW-9700Pro had overheated and died. So I tried to RMA again back to ATI, but ATI would not take it back, their response was your card is out of warranty do to we had already replace before for you once. But I said - hey that is not fair, it is completely not my fault that I received bad card from you in the first place back in 2002, I did not had a chance to use it at all, I said to ATI you should take care your customer, but ATI refused it.

Back to the main topic please!!!!
[Edit: As of now ----> extra 512MB onboard for HD2900XT-1GB seems not really needed; by the time it would, R600 will be old]

Sorry to hear it. As for me, however, the original ATi 9700 Pro I bought back in September of 2002 is still going strong last I heard--I sold it a year ago to a friend who installed it in the computer his children use, and only after it had cycled through the box hierarchy my family enjoys--it's a hand-me-down system--I get the goods first, then my wife gets them, and then my (now grown) kids, until at last they are sold or stored or discarded. Two consecutive anythings going bad is highly unusual--but it happened to me once with two consecutive Abit motherboards I bought several years ago, so you have my sympathies...

 

[Sobek]

Would you lot mind not shitting all over this thread with offtopic ranting? I'm considering getting a 1gb R600 soon and i'd damn well like this thread to still be here when I do.

 

[Xmas]

Well, this is the first I've read about UVD "not working"...what I have read thus far is that UVD wasn't hardware accelerated in the 2900XT, which of course doesn't mean that if you install a 2900XT you cannot display UVD, does it? Additionally, from what I have read, this is also how the GF8 series handles UVD display. The complaint I saw was about the fact that UVD displays took up more cpu time than they would have done with hardware support--so this information about "UVD not working" is news to me. Additionally, is it not true, as well, that in the cheaper R600 variants, that UVD support is in fact built into the gpu hardware?

I mean, maybe you are right and I've missed something here. So were you talking about "UVD not working" or did you mean to say that when using the 2900XT UVD works, but does so sans gpu hardware acceleration?

UVD stands for Universal Video Decoder. ATI's name for a hardware unit that accelerates video decode. You can't "display UVD" or have it not hardware accelerated.

 

[cadaveca]

Hi Walt. I am runnign Crossfired HD2900XT's, Vista 32-bit Home premium, and am not able to get ANY proper VC-1 decoding, due to "UVD".

737-27804: Frame flipping may occur while playing, or seeking during certain VC-1 content titles



The information in this article applies to the following configuration(s):
Cyberlink PowerDVD
Radeon™ HD 2400 series
Windows XP Professional
Windows XP Home Edition
Windows XP Media Center Edition
Windows XP Professional x64 Edition
Symptoms:

Frame flipping may occur while playing, or seeking during certain VC-1 content titles
Solution:
Currently there is no solution.

ATI Engineering has been advised of this issue and is investigating. Any updates will be published when they become available.

IN regards to UVD and 2900XT, AMD states that 2900Xt does not support UVD:

737-27824: Radeon™ HD 2900 series - Wrong Information Regarding UVD Support on Retail Box



The information in this article applies to the following configuration(s):
GeCube Radeon™ HD 2900XT
HIS Radeon™ HD 2900XT
Sapphire Radeon™ HD 2900XT
Windows Vista 32-bit Edition
Windows Vista 64-bit Edition
Windows XP Professional
Windows XP Home Edition
Windows XP Media Center Edition
Windows XP Professional x64 Edition

Some AIB Partners indicate UVD (Unified Video Decoding) support on their Radeon™ HD 2900 retail box.

Note: UVD is the abbreviation for Unified Video Decoding and not Universal Video Decoding.


Explanation:
Radeon™ HD 2900XT does NOT support UVD. Radeon™ HD 2600 and 2400 series will be supporting UVD.

ATI has been advised of this issue and is currently communicating with AIB partners. Any updates will be published when they become available.



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DISCLAIMER

The information presented in this document is for informational purposes only and may contain technical inaccuracies, omissions and typographical errors. AMD reserves the right to revise this information and to make changes from time to time to the content hereof without obligation of AMD to notify any person of such revisions or changes.

AMD MAKES NO REPRESENTATIONS OR WARRANTIES WITH RESPECT TO THE CONTENTS HEREOF AND ASSUMES NO RESPONSIBILITY FOR ANY INACCURACIES, ERRORS OR OMISSIONS THAT MAY APPEAR IN THIS INFORMATION. AMD SPECIFICALLY DISCLAIMS ANY IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY OR FITNESS FOR ANY PARTICULAR PURPOSE. IN NO EVENT WILL AMD BE LIABLE TO ANY PERSON FOR ANY DIRECT, INDIRECT, SPECIAL OR OTHER CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES ARISING FROM THE USE OF ANY INFORMATION CONTAINED HEREIN, EVEN IF AMD IS EXPRESSLY ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGES.

I'm sorry, Sobek, but 1gb cards are affected the same way. AS such, this relates very much ot these cards as well as the 512mb ones.


I really feel that peopel should be aware of what a product offers before they buy, and no single review covers this. HD Video decoding uses upwards of 60% cpu-time, and if you read the release reviews, many mentioned HD-decoding...with very little cpu usage. I bought a few cards based on these reviews...

Problem with this situation is that although there IS hardware acceleration(albeit minor acceleration), not a single driver until 7.6 supported this properly. As such, and knowing that review sites did not have access to any driver that allowed hardware acceleration, I find this very troubling...as I cannot trust any review that mentions decoding...especially if they reviewed the decoding...


I also bought 1gb cards as soon as they came out. I found that as it stands now, they do not offer anything extra to the consumer over the 512MB cards. Of course, I'm sure a driver may remedy this problem, however no such driver is to be had ATM.

 

[Shtal]

Sorry to hear it. As for me, however, the original ATi 9700 Pro I bought back in September of 2002 is still going strong last I heard--I sold it a year ago to a friend who installed it in the computer his children use, and only after it had cycled through the box hierarchy my family enjoys--it's a hand-me-down system--I get the goods first, then my wife gets them, and then my (now grown) kids, until at last they are sold or stored or discarded. Two consecutive anythings going bad is highly unusual--but it happened to me once with two consecutive Abit motherboards I bought several years ago, so you have my sympathies...

Thanks!

Just to let you know; I also have my old ATI AIW 9800Pro, and it works great even till this day - with NO problem. I still like ATI!!!!

Long time ago when I bought ATI AIW X800XT and When I opened my retail Box, it had glue stick on AGP interface, but hey! I removed it and the card POST just fine.

-------
Sorry, I will try to get back on topic....

 

[Sobek]

Damnit. I'm sitting here, finger poised over the 'complete purchase' button on an HD2900xt (Sapphire). And yet after all this time I can't seem to force myself to press that button. I keep thinking "But the 8800GTX... would this even be an upgrade for me?".

Does anyone know if any benchmarks exist that directly compare the x19xx cards against the HD2900? That's what I really want to see right now, but I can't find anything

Is it possible to have one of those 1gb cards shipped to Australia? I checked but I didn't see any immediate way of doing so.

 

[Evildeus]

Need to search more

 

[AlexV]

Damnit. I'm sitting here, finger poised over the 'complete purchase' button on an HD2900xt (Sapphire). And yet after all this time I can't seem to force myself to press that button. I keep thinking "But the 8800GTX... would this even be an upgrade for me?".

Does anyone know if any benchmarks exist that directly compare the x19xx cards against the HD2900? That's what I really want to see right now, but I can't find anything

Is it possible to have one of those 1gb cards shipped to Australia? I checked but I didn't see any immediate way of doing so.

Young padawan, patience may be useful in this regard. Master Yoda said to be mindful of the future:let the prices go down a little bit more(as they certainly will). Paying the premium for the 1Gb version isn't warranted IMHO, especially not now. If you've got x1900s, you're fairly OK for a while still. And I think Xbit had reviews comparing it to R5XXs...dunno for sure though.

 

[fellix]

Well, what can I say now, is that my upgrade path from x1900XT to 2900XT was a rather happy one.
Except for the heat issues, the overall impression--in respect to the performance--was nothing short of superb. For instance, playing R6:Vegas on R580 with maxed out settings was nearly mission impossible, while 2900 didn't complain for almost three-fold up more frames. Not to mention the furious boost in STALKER. Oblivion also liked the new hardware much, but apparently 512MB of video memory was quite scarce for smooth motion in the game, with fancy hi-res distant textures mod applied... oh, and Q4 was much more playable with 4xAA, same for CoD2.

For some time, I was opted out to wait for the 1GB flavour, but given the memory mapping limitations on the 32-bit Windows platform, I wasn't sure those extra 512MB will come into play for the money, at the moment. And moving to 64-bit environment was, and still is, out of option.

 

[Away]

HD2900XT's SPs units are having a great efficiency , right ?

So , R600's main problem is with TMUs/Rops , yes ?

Does HD2900XT have 16 tmus against 32 from 8800GTX ? How is that ?

People here are so smart and know so much , I would be grateful if you explain that to me

 

[ShaidarHaran]

HD2900XT's SPs units are having a great efficiency , right ?

Depends on the workload...

So , R600's main problem is with TMUs/Rops , yes ?

Arguably.

Does HD2900XT have 16 tmus against 32 from 8800GTX ?

Essentially.

How is that ?

What do you mean? Why such a disparity?

People here are so smart and know so much , I would be grateful if you explain that to me

Flattery will get you nowhere. Stiny, bring me a danish!

 

[Pete]

Welcome to the forums, and don't take my answers as the last word. Just thought I'd start you off until the more informed members weigh in.

HD2900XT's SPs units are having a great efficiency , right ?

I'm not sure that point of view has been put forward yet, but R600 sure has a lot of shader units.

So , R600's main problem is with TMUs/Rops , yes ?

Those are the obvious culprits, but GPUs seem too complicated and R600's drivers seem to be too early to pronounce those its main problems.

Does HD2900XT have 16 tmus against 32 from 8800GTX ? How is that ?

'S okay, I guess.

People here are so smart and know so much , I would be grateful if you explain that to me

I'm not one of the smart and knowledgable ones, but some of them have made an effort, and apparently there's more analysis headed our way. In the meantime, Scott over at TechReport writes some pretty compelling and readable material himself, so you could check out his R600 review while you wait for Rys to get back from the pub.

Though I get the feeling R600 has made its strengths and weaknesses generally clear, I'm also waiting to see if newer drivers fix some puzzling problems (like scoring too close to R580 in, well, anything). That said, I'm not expecting any miracles from any drivers.

Edit: Heh, beaten to the punch, and so concisely.

 

[ShaidarHaran]

Though I get the feeling R600 has made its strengths and weaknesses generally clear, I'm also waiting to see if newer drivers fix some puzzling problems (like scoring too close to R580 in, well, anything). That said, I'm not expecting any miracles from any drivers.

Given the identical ROP/TMU counts and the minor core clock differences, (resulting in minor fillrate and texturing ability differences) in situations that are bottlenecked by these abilities it only makes since that R600 would barely outperform R580. AMD screwed the pooch in that aspect. It's too bad they couldn't hit 900-1000MHz clocks as originally targeted.
Oh well, there's always the refresh.

Edit: Heh, beaten to the punch, and so concisely.

Yeah, but your flowery words sound better to nubish ears

 

[Twinkie]

It's too bad they couldn't hit 900-1000MHz clocks as originally targeted.

I thought they clocked the R600 above the original target? Which was 600 ~ 700mhz?

 

[Rys]

I thought they clocked the R600 above the original target? Which was 600 ~ 700mhz?

Not quite (3rd QA).

 

[nicolasb]

Oh well, there's always the refresh.

What refresh?

I've heard no rumours of a refresh for a long time. The only rumours are of an RV670 (presumably not a high-end part) officially in Q4/07 but really in Q1/08, with R700 following in Q2. (Given that G92 is supposed to ship in November, this is not promising).

 

[ShaidarHaran]

What refresh?

I've heard no rumours of a refresh for a long time. The only rumours are of an RV670 (presumably not a high-end part) officially in Q4/07 but really in Q1/08, with R700 following in Q2. (Given that G92 is supposed to ship in November, this is not promising).

R650 is real. I have a working sample in my closet. Some guy in a van down by the river sold it to me.

Seriously though, I doubt AMD can afford to trail NV by any significant amount of time with their next GPU launch and still expect to retain any significant amount of marketshare/mindshare at the high end. If G92 is out before the end of the year and R700 doesn't ship until the middle of next, bye-bye Radeon.