Question.HD2900XT or 8800GTS

[swaaye]

Perhaps more importantly is that even if the software is bugged and will be fixed within a year, so what? That's too long in this industry. The next generation of cards will be out by then, with hardware fixes and refinements. For all we know R650 or whatever will be what NV35 was to NV30; cooler, quieter, and seriously faster.

And it is also important to remember that R600 has been on cards for many more months than it has been at retail. We were seeing pics of it last year, I believe. So if the driver team couldn't get it together by now, something has to be wrong with the hardware. Either that or the driver team is a mess and that means it's really rather hopeless, I'd think. Maybe it's too tough to make it work well with apps. Too much fine-tuning is necessary, say. It's obviously hard to make it go fast predictably. It falls apart in speed with AA and AF, things G80 doesn't mind at all. In just how many games does it perform exceptionally in all cases? None? What happens when you want to play a non-AAA game that won't get ATI's close driver team attention? It's not like R600 is winning popularity contests, at least in the Steam polls.

So, basically, by buying one you're betting one 1) the driver team getting their act together after 8 months or so of development 2) the hardware not being really flawed or broken 3) its supposed advantages meaning a damn before the next generation from both sides nullifies them and reduces its monetary value significantly. I think there is only the now in this market. Betting on the future is expensive and hopelessly risky, especially when it's a high-end $400 bet.

 

[ShaidarHaran]

Sorry, it's not worth it. Either you have faith that R600 will have its major bugs worked out or not. No point in arguing over it.

Edit: I don't say this to demean anyone, your opinions are every bit as valid as mine.

 

[Skrying]

Sorry, it's not worth it. Either you have faith that R600 will have its major bugs worked out or not. No point in arguing over it.

Edit: I don't say this to demean anyone, your opinions are every bit as valid as mine.

See, you still don't get it. It doesn't matter if they will be worked out or not, what matters is that right now the competition has a working product (or at least much more working than ATi) and ATi doesn't.

 

[Albuquerque]

See, you still don't get it. It doesn't matter if they will be worked out or not, what matters is that right now the competition has a working product (or at least much more working than ATi) and ATi doesn't.

Agreed. If I want to spend $300 on a brand new video card, then I want one that deliver the performance I expect when I buy it. I don't feel the need to spend $300 only to wait for another two, four, six, twelve months until the developers associated with my card figure out why it isn't performing. IF they figure it out...

It would be like going out and buying a $1.3 Million 650HP Twin-Turbo Porsche, only to find out that the engineers haven't entirely figured out how to get any more than about 350HP out of it. But don't worry, we'll fix it -- when we figure it all out. In the meantime, don't concern yourself that a $35k US-market GTO will hand you your ass. We're gonna fix it!!!!!!11!1!1one!eleven!!Lim(x->0): (Sin x)/x

 

[Sobek]

Way to barf on the thread guys.

I'll say that after having spent this last day with this card apparently 'working' as it should (or at least very close to), there's no way in hell i'd swap it for an 8800 now. After using CCC for a couple of hours, i'm damn glad that I have ATT to go back to. I couldn't imagine using a videocard without it... I tried Nhancer in here at work, it's average. Very average.

I love this card now. Finished Halo 2 last night, that ran perfectly too, as it should, constantly 80+ framerates, even when lots of shit was going down. I also tried out a bunch of older games, and saw similar boosts. Bridge Commander is now a dream to play... previously, an exploding ship would cause a brief pause, followed by a few seconds of sub-20fps framerates as the explosion started, before clearing up (I use NanoFX 2 and a billion other addons and texture replacements)...and ingame performance in general was iffy. But now it's silky smooth, exploding ships cause no stutters or pauses, and with the AA right up, it looks damn sexy.

I love this card now. Nvidia can go shove it To think I almost purchased an 8800... What was I thinking?!

 

[BRiT]

I'm glad it's working for you now. I hope it works as it should when you try out new games. The inconsistent performance between different games kept me from picking it up.

 

[Sobek]

I'm glad it's working for you now. I hope it works as it should when you try out new games.

Hahah, yeah, me too...

Given all the positive things i'm seeing regarding Crossfire (many users reporting massive gains in some games, some showing 100% improvements), i'm seriously considering getting a second one now and going Crossfire.

And just to re-iterate, this is quite possibly the quietest card i've ever used. No whine on startup, and inaudible over the sound of my AMD stock cooler. Just heaven.

 

[karlotta]

Hahah, yeah, me too...

Given all the positive things i'm seeing regarding Crossfire (many users reporting massive gains in some games, some showing 100% improvements), i'm seriously considering getting a second one now and going Crossfire.

And just to re-iterate, this is quite possibly the quietest card i've ever used. No whine on startup, and inaudible over the sound of my AMD stock cooler. Just heaven.

my 2900 CF is a nice setup now. and with them being in the 360$ range at times, just wow on the cost to performance. 8800gtx is king, but 2x 2900xt is better.(now)

 

[swaaye]

I just find it interesting that you guys picked up the card even after reading the disappointing reviews of it. The heat output, power use, and AA/AF performance issues kept me away. I am amazed ATI went from a great AA and AF performance implementation in their older cards to what R600 does. I am disturbed by the heat output from my 8800 GTX. 2 HD2900s ought to be a nice home heating system in addition to playing games.

Before my 8800, I hadn't bought a NV card other than what's in my laptop. Was a Matrox then ATI guy for years, other than some hand me down GeForces and such. No complaints here at all from what 8800 delivers.

 

[Sobek]

I've got to say, the heat output isn't an issue (the card barely pumps out any heat at all, and stays reasonably warm to the touch... no more so than my x1900). Power doesn't seem to be a problem, i've got this 550w Antec (ordered something better but stock isn't in, i'd go somewhere else but it's a bargain price i'm getting), and i'm running an X2 4600+ @ 2.90ghz, 7 hdd's (4 x SATA, 3 x IDE), a DVD burner, 6 x 120mm case fans, 2 x 80mm's, an X-Fi and a DFI Ultra-D motherboard (with its 4 power connectors that it requires).

Power wise, voltages are rock solid, there' no additional 'noise' coming from my PSU or anything. These cards aren't half as bad as people seem to make them out. Reviews can be so misleading... the AA/AF performance isn't bad at all, shit, when you're running things at 100+fps, you just don't notice. CMR DiRT and Lost Planet seem to show about a -3% drop in average framerates for me with 2xAA...is that so bad? I think it's overrated.

I love everything about this card, except for the piece of shit BSOD I get in ATI3DUAG.DLL, that no online fix seems to...fix. Fortunately I know what i'm doing that's causing this BSOD and I can avoid it, but I want to find out why it's happening to begin with.

*edit* Sorry, kinda rushed all that because I was in a hurry to go pick something up. Regardless, I see no issues with the card's power requirements, and the hit with AA is nothing to get all pissy about. I only see a major hit in framerates now with 8xAA selected, 2x and 4x both seem to perform near-identical. And my issue with the BSOD is probably because I use ATi Tray Tools on this 2900 (need a newer version designed to better take advantage of it...like CFAA and such), and Vietcong. Because Vietcong detects ATT as a Direct3d Hook and kicks me for 'hacking', I have to fire up my VC profile, alt-tab, kill ATT, and then run it again when I finish playing. The thing is that when I run it again AA is still forced to max, and when I try and set it back to App Controlled, I get the BSOD. Also, if I do the same thing (run game, kill ATT, run ATT again after the game) and don't change any settings in it, the very next game I play will BSOD about 5 into playing it...regardless of what game. Wierd issue, but something I can avoid for the time being until a new release of ATT comes out.

 

[Skrying]

Sobek... no wonder why you think its quiet.... 6x120mm and 2x80? No matter what voltage that is at... that's going to be way to loud for me.

 

[Sobek]

Silent fans in a Stacker...it's barely a whisp (and I don't keep my case next to my head! )

 

[NRP]

Glad you got it (mostly) sorted out, Sobek. From reading some of your earlier posts when you first got it, I thought you were going to kill somebody.

 

[Sobek]

Damn right I was. I still don't really know what was wrong eh? I find it a bit suspect that I can go through 3 or 4 driver reinstalls and find the same problems and inadequacies each time, only to suddenly have the next reinstall 'work'. While everything seems pretty darn good now, i'm still yet to sort out why Gmod absolutely dies around deep water, or why my CS Source stress test is still a good 20fps lower then when I first installed this card (which is conversely when everything else was running like absolute crap)...sigh, who knows. At least the large bulk of my other games are working nicely (though, I have to admit, i've got this feeling in my gut that i'm still not seeing as good a performance level as I should. Vietcong still dips into the 70's in areas that my x1900 pumped out 100+ at...and this is with NO AA on the 2900, compared to the 6xAA on my x1900. Bewildering).

Hopefully once the 7.8's reach final I can install them and perhaps clear up a lot of problems. I'm just happy playing DiRT and such now at smooth framerates (bar when other cars come onscreen, stutter-central that is). :smile:

 

[ShaidarHaran]

Damn right I was. I still don't really know what was wrong eh? I find it a bit suspect that I can go through 3 or 4 driver reinstalls and find the same problems and inadequacies each time, only to suddenly have the next reinstall 'work'. While everything seems pretty darn good now, i'm still yet to sort out why Gmod absolutely dies around deep water, or why my CS Source stress test is still a good 20fps lower then when I first installed this card (which is conversely when everything else was running like absolute crap)...sigh, who knows. At least the large bulk of my other games are working nicely (though, I have to admit, i've got this feeling in my gut that i'm still not seeing as good a performance level as I should. Vietcong still dips into the 70's in areas that my x1900 pumped out 100+ at...and this is with NO AA on the 2900, compared to the 6xAA on my x1900. Bewildering).

Hopefully once the 7.8's reach final I can install them and perhaps clear up a lot of problems. I'm just happy playing DiRT and such now at smooth framerates (bar when other cars come onscreen, stutter-central that is). :smile:

Source performance issues are supposed to be cleared up in 7.8 L'inq

But of course this can't be right, since R600 is broken and all...

 

[Blazkowicz]

I've got to say, the heat output isn't an issue (the card barely pumps out any heat at all, and stays reasonably warm to the touch... no more so than my x1900). Power doesn't seem to be a problem, i've got this 550w Antec (ordered something better but stock isn't in, i'd go somewhere else but it's a bargain price i'm getting), and i'm running an X2 4600+ @ 2.90ghz, 7 hdd's (4 x SATA, 3 x IDE), a DVD burner, 6 x 120mm case fans, 2 x 80mm's, an X-Fi and a DFI Ultra-D motherboard (with its 4 power connectors that it requires).

so you're saying a 2900XT works well with a nice PSU and a shitload of cooling, who would have guessed so .

 

[ShaidarHaran]

so you're saying a 2900XT works well with a nice PSU and a shitload of cooling, who would have guessed so .

The whole "HD 2900 is loud, hot, and consumes way too much power" thing is getting really old...

Tech Report

 

[swaaye]

Shaidar,
Yup it's loud. 9 decibels louder than a GTX, and decibels aren't linear.

This thing is noisy, folks. There's a nearly 10 decibel gap between the 8800 GTX and the 2900 XT 1GB GDDR4 when running a game. That may not look like much in the graph above, but believe me, it's an awful lot when you're in the same room with it.

The fact that it uses similar power but is significantly louder is just another oops on ATI's part. When will they build a quiet cooler? After the crap they've put out over the years (R480 and R5x0 high end coolers, for ex).....

My GTX gets quite loud when the fan spins up in some games. It's enough to annoy me. Go louder than that and I think you're approaching FX Flow.

I find it ridiculous really just how hot these NV and ATI cards get. They are so hot that they are seriously becoming an engineering challenge to cool down. The aftermarket coolers are slim pickings and are usually insanely huge, unless you want to go water (no thx). And those power usage levels are just as nuts as the heat output. An idling G80 or R600 is using a significant portion of the total power usage. What a waste of electricity.

 

[BRiT]

The difference in loudness is nothing to write off. It's pretty scary that people consider the 2900XT to be "quiet". It's twice as loud as the 8800 GTX. A 10 dB increase in sound level corresponds approximately to a perceived doubling of loudness.

 

[Sobek]

It's pretty scary that people consider the 2900XT to be "quiet". It's twice as loud as the 8800 GTX. A 10 dB increase in sound level corresponds approximately to a perceived doubling of loudness.

Consider? Oh lord no, I can say with absolute certainty that it's quiet...'quiter', even. There's no two ways about it, this thing is half as loud as my x1900 ever was with the exact same PSU / Cooling setup. The most I have heard from this thing so far was while playing ArmA, and that was with framerate-destroyingly detailed scenes (ie; hundreds of units spammed into a test map all over the place, bringing the FPS down to about 10 or so), and even then it was a bare whisp of air for about 2 seconds. I don't know how hot it's running since i'm not presently using CCC (did for a while, the god awfull Profile management made me uninstall it).

Perhaps these reviewers are doing their reviews in hotbox rooms with no aircon, and no cooling bar their CPU HSF installed. It's the only way they could conceive of it being so loud. Either that or I got a super-special silent edition card. Perhaps it's because i've got one of the 3-pipe heatsink design versions, keeping temps lower?

so you're saying a 2900XT works well with a nice PSU and a shitload of cooling, who would have guessed so

More like; Works well with a 'substandard' (By ATi's terms) PSU and decent cooling, with a lot of additional components all running at the same time.

Source performance issues are supposed to be cleared up in 7.8 L'inq

But of course this can't be right, since R600 is broken and all...

Oh you

The thing is, it's not the fog issue that's bugging me, it's the performance... and contrary to what you say, I don't see any mention of performance issue fixes in that upcoming release. Hmm? I hope it does something about it though!