Gaming Shootout: HD 2900xt vs 8800gts vs 8800gts: X-Bit labs

[Babrbarossa]

Nothing too surprising in this rather exhaustive review. Likely (hopefully) because of immature drivers, the 2900xt lags behind the GTS in some games. This table might help you choose the right card for the games that you play.


* - first place
** - second place
*** - third place
Equal amount of asterisk means draw.

More from X-Bit LAbs

[SKYMTL]

All of that and none of Xbit's usual excellent power consumption benchmarks?

[Jmac]

You would think that with a 6-month hiatus from the high-end market, AMD/ATI would have offered something that performed better right at its release. Yes, I've seen the architecture and it's definitely got potential, but to be 6 months behind and STILL not living up to the card's potential is unacceptable, IMO. Hopefully AMD/ATI will have these issues sorted out by the time DX10 games/benchmarks come around because, if they don't, they're going to lose on another generation of cards, which AMD really can't afford to do right now given that they're getting killed in the high-end CPU market, too.

[Babrbarossa]

Yeah-- the only area that they're actually competing well in is the mobile processors.

The little stock price bubble that was occurring last week that brought stocks from mid-$13 to almost $16 has popped too- currently down to 14.75.

[sswilson]

Have any of the reviews commented on visual quality?

I've been running ATIs for quite a few years (only bump was my first PCIe card which was a used 6600gt) and would probably pick one of the ATI mid-range cards if past experience on "what it looks like" continues to hold.

Holding the top benchmark isn't all there is to a vid card purchase...... :)

[Babrbarossa]

As it stands, I don't think there's alot of difference:

"Which one do you prefer?? I really can't choose... " from a review at VR-Zone discussing image quality

But the thing that we're waiting for is software to take advantage of the programmable tesselation feature as he one promising the greatest improvements.

The Radeon HD 2000 series offers several image quality improvements over the previous Radeon X1000 line. There's new custom filter anti-aliasing (CFAA) support that allows for programmable filters, which can be updated with new video card drivers. New CFAA modes include "narrow tent" and "wide tent" filters that sample neighboring pixels in addition to sampling within the primary pixel to create smoother blends. The drivers also offer an additional "edge detect" filter that determines if a pixel is lined up on an edge and gives additional weight to samples along that same edge. The new CFAA modes are a mix and match of the various tent and edge detect filtering options.

The ATI Radeon HD 2000 also has a programmable hardware tessellation unit that can transform a basic polygon model into a highly detailed model by recursively subdividing existing triangles into a more accurate shape. The tessellation unit will let games use high-quality models with much lower bandwidth overhead. The Xbox 360 graphics have a similar tessellation unit, which Rare used in Viva Piñata. It's a forward-looking feature because it requires game developer support, but ATI's head of developer relations Richard Huddy has told GameSpot that he expects to see a handful of PC games with tessellation support as soon as this holiday season.

From GameSpot

[Scratch]

These cards are at stock speeds also and this 8800GTS OC's like a champ. I believe with an OC'd card you would get a much different outcome but for testing purposes I understand the need to generalize

[Jmac]

Originally Posted by Babrbarossa

Yeah-- the only area that they're actually competing well in is the mobile processors.

The little stock price bubble that was occurring last week that brought stocks from mid-$13 to almost $16 has popped too- currently down to 14.75.

Well, just a year ago it was trading at $32/share and has peaked at $45/share ... If you think AMD will pull out of this tail spin, it's a good time to invest.

[Babrbarossa]

I already bought in at 14- I wish i had got in at 12.50 tow weeks later.....

[sswilson]

Originally Posted by Jmac

Well, just a year ago it was trading at $32/share and has peaked at $45/share ... If you think AMD will pull out of this tail spin, it's a good time to invest.

I followed ATI stock for a couple of years and the fluctuations in the early/mid `90s were crazy!!! (Very much like the $45 down to $14 we're seeing in AMD stock ATM).

I suspect that AMD stock will end up being a good investment over the long run. I can't see them going away completely, and they've got their fingers in quite a few more pots than just the "king of the hill" benchmarks.

If we look historically.... AMD chips in laptops is really only a recent development (There were only a few high end ones available when I bought 4 years ago) and they are well placed to produce high end integrated chipset/proc/gfx solutions for the laptop market which is where the money is going to be over the next few years.