Sapphire Radeon HD 2900 XT CrossFire @ [H]

InorganicMatter said:
I have to wonder why your results so starkly contrast Falcon Northwest's article on 2900XT Crossfire. I trust the [H]'s reviews over FNW any day of the week, but you guys results are much more in line with current 2900XT performance numbers, while FNW was proclaiming Crossfire as the saving grace of the R600 chips. What gives? (Besides the fact that FNW wants to sell you two pieces of crap instead of one piece of crap. :p)
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Well, we don't sell them....
 
Something is up with the FSX scores for 1600x1200. The 2900XT is getting much higher framerates than CF!
 
harpoon said:
Something is up with the FSX scores for 1600x1200. The 2900XT is getting much higher framerates than CF!
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Yes, we specifically addressed this issue on the conclusion page. We have no answers as of yet.
 
I must say, I'm not surprised at all. I only read about half of the review to confirm that. As for Nvidia, I think their R&D is still moving on as planned but releasing another top of the line card is just going to butcher their current lead. From the rumors of the 'net' that I hear, it's G92 as in based off of the G90 core. The G92 supposedly will provide a true mid-range DX10 card, between the 8600GT and the 8800GTS. Therefore I think they will wait until early 2008 to release their next generation family. But, you never know for sure so we'll all see. One thing though, I don't think the gap will be 3x than a 8800Ultra for example. Maybe 2x, but going from this well executed architecture you never know.
 
Devistater said:
I wasn't trying to be rude to you... I was just taking an opportunity to grab your post and run with it...
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Alrighty, but changing a guy's words, deliberately misquoting them, really doesn't provide any additional opportunities, except to start the flames. Regardless, I'll just look upon it as two assholes passing in the thread and forget it ( I know I certainly am one of them!). I don't want to inject any negatives into yet another thread, so let's just wipe up and not let cling-ons be cling-ons, OK? ;)
 
I would really like it if you guys would start including Vista benchmarks, even if it's only a small one page deal with an apples to apples run.

People are using Vista, and DX10 is the defining reason for most peoples next video card upgrade. Another reason for benching in Vista: it may put some fire under ATI/Nvidia to get quality drivers out.

It's my understanding that ATI's drivers are better in Vista, so some of these results may be reversed under that OS, I'm not putting any money on it though.
 
harpoon said:
Something is up with the FSX scores for 1600x1200. The 2900XT is getting much higher framerates than CF!
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It was discussed on page 6, and the conclusion. My theory currently is that the game is defaulting to SuperTile mode, and that is causing a performance decrease. However, without any kind of CrossFire visual indicators like SLI has (which was also mentioned in the conclusion), it is impossible to say what is really happening. What we know right now is if you are playing FSX, disable CrossFire for the best performance.
 
I am sad that CrossFire is still not as awesome as I wanted it to be. At one time, I was going to
use CrossFire in my new system.

In other news:

If you re-arrange the letters in CrossFire, you can spell Score Firs. So yeah. You may not be
able to play Flight Simulator X very well, but you can score some fir trees. Which is handy...
around Christmas time.

balsamfir300jpgpb1.jpg
 
Brent_Justice said:
Vista will be used from here on out
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Brent, I'm expecting that will be Vista 32-bit, correct? Or will you go with 64-bit and throw in some 4-Gigs of RAM action? I for one would be interested in seeing the delta between Vista32 w/ 2 Gigs, and Vista64 w/ 4 Gigs. Just for shits and giggles, how about it?
 
Brent_Justice said:
It was discussed on page 6, and the conclusion. My theory currently is that the game is defaulting to SuperTile mode, and that is causing a performance decrease. However, without any kind of CrossFire visual indicators like SLI has (which was also mentioned in the conclusion), it is impossible to say what is really happening. What we know right now is if you are playing FSX, disable CrossFire for the best performance.
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Did you try setting Cat AI to high? That forces AFR in DirectX games.
 
Brent_Justice said:
Vista will be used from here on out
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Frankly, while I do see the value in benching with Vista as well as XP, I dont think it should be the focus yet IMO of your bench runs. Vista is a tiny amount of the OS market, and even further smaller within the gaming community I would surmise.

Since most games will still support XPfor a LONG time, I think that should be where the core focus is at, while possibly also providing some Vista benches in there too.

Other than that, another great review.
 
:eek: Well I am running a Opty 175 and waiting for a good xfire for it. Which is my XP game machine. I guess I will be waiting for a while yet.

My new computer with 8 cores at 3.0 ghz will have to wait for a good graphics card until next summer I guess. This is my Vista 64 game machine.

Because neither nVidia nor Ati have a good solution yet.

OH WELL:eek:
 
Brent can i ask why the grass draw was turned down in Oblivion in this review for the 8800s when in the reviews for them it was maxed out?:confused:
 
Elios said:
Brent can i ask why the grass draw was turned down in Oblivion in this review for the 8800s when in the reviews for them it was maxed out?:confused:
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are you talking about the Ultra @ 2560x whatever? if so, Brent mentions it was turned to 50% to throw some AA love in there :p
 
I find myself wishing AMD had bought nVidia instead of ATI...

The big-picture position of nVidia may be more precarious in the long run, but right now they are executing their hardware beautifully (driver development is another matter). I would rather see them hold off on a new GPU release and put more time into refining their design. Then they can hopefully hard launch a faster part with lower power consumption and all the features, as opposed to the 7000 series and 8000 series where their flagship part (first launched) lacked video features that were on the midrange chips.

ATI needs to haul ass on a die shrink and refresh. This is an embarassment.
 
I am about to buy a video card and have been looking for good reviews. That's why I come to this site. I realize it probably wasn't available at the time of the review, but I would like to see the comparison of the latest video card from ATI that is out.

The 2900XT 1gb version with GDDR4, the latest OS which is Vista and on 64 bit which this hardware is supposed to perform best under. I have heard this really tightens the gap and turns the tables in several benches.

I am not biased either way, just want the best for the money. I own both ATI and Nvidia and just want to see comparisons with the latest of everything.
 
GRJericho said:
I am about to buy a video card and have been looking for good reviews. That's why I come to this site. I realize it probably wasn't available at the time of the review, but I would like to see the comparison of the latest video card from ATI that is out.

The 2900XT 1gb version with GDDR4, the latest OS which is Vista and on 64 bit which this hardware is supposed to perform best under. I have heard this really tightens the gap and turns the tables in several benches.

I am not biased either way, just want the best for the money. I own both ATI and Nvidia and just want to see comparisons with the latest of everything.
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The 1gb version is more of a custom thing from what I understand, its not going to be a main stream product and is just a special edition. Its also the same price as a GTX.
 
GRJericho said:
I am about to buy a video card and have been looking for good reviews. That's why I come to this site. I realize it probably wasn't available at the time of the review, but I would like to see the comparison of the latest video card from ATI that is out.

The 2900XT 1gb version with GDDR4, the latest OS which is Vista and on 64 bit which this hardware is supposed to perform best under. I have heard this really tightens the gap and turns the tables in several benches.

I am not biased either way, just want the best for the money. I own both ATI and Nvidia and just want to see comparisons with the latest of everything.
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Well look around the net for some benches. Not many reviews on the 2900XT 1GB as well as using vista and 64 bit, although if you look at the anandtech forums, there was a guy who was benching/testing the 1GB under Vista, not sure if it was 64-bit though. Results were overall slightly under the GTX but very stable in Vista by comparison.
 
After a good long few years with ATI, 9500 (modded) X800 and most recently the X1900, I made the move to the 8800gts 640meg. It's rather disappointing to see even with crossfire, ATI have dropped the ball.

Hope they can pick it up with the next generation of cards....
 
jmackay said:
The 1gb version is more of a custom thing from what I understand, its not going to be a main stream product and is just a special edition. Its also the same price as a GTX.
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Its slightly under the GTX in price and it was originally intended as OEM-only, though some companies decided to retail them anyways.
 
That's interesting. I hadn't heard that. My main rig has 2x X1950XTX cards. I have another desktop with a 5900 Ultra and my XPS M170 laptop has a 7800 GTX. I do about 50% of my gaming on my laptop so I didn't want to spend the amount of the GTX Utra. The $489 price of the 1gb 2900XT looked decent, just haven't found any good comparison reviews.

I did want to get rid of the 2 Radeons with the crappy dongle. They do perform pretty good, but I want to put in my Audigy sound card, have directx 10 capability and have good quality HD for my Dell 30in widescreen monitor.
 
Yet another ATI review that doesn't match any other results around the web.

Don't you guys get tired of basically rewriting the same article over and over again?
 
Oberon said:
Yet another ATI review that doesn't match any other results around the web.

Don't you guys get tired of basically rewriting the same article over and over again?
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I prefer [H]'s style of review, there's plenty other apples to apples reviews out there, and if I wanted that style I wouldn't visit [H] first. They are unique as far as I've seen.
 
Evil_SPanKY said:
Frankly, while I do see the value in benching with Vista as well as XP, I dont think it should be the focus yet IMO of your bench runs. Vista is a tiny amount of the OS market, and even further smaller within the gaming community I would surmise.

Since most games will still support XPfor a LONG time, I think that should be where the core focus is at, while possibly also providing some Vista benches in there too.

Other than that, another great review.
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While I appreciate your opinion, we cannot afford to do all the work twice. Vista has been out long enough that both AMD and NVIDIA should have their ducks in line by now. Moving to Vista in our real world evaluation process should put more pressure on them to get everytrhing working correctly as well. You will see our first Vista article this week.
 
GRJericho said:
I am about to buy a video card and have been looking for good reviews. That's why I come to this site. I realize it probably wasn't available at the time of the review, but I would like to see the comparison of the latest video card from ATI that is out.

The 2900XT 1gb version with GDDR4, the latest OS which is Vista and on 64 bit which this hardware is supposed to perform best under. I have heard this really tightens the gap and turns the tables in several benches.

I am not biased either way, just want the best for the money. I own both ATI and Nvidia and just want to see comparisons with the latest of everything.
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I think that would be useful for a great many of us. That's two votes for Vista 64!

jmackay said:
The 1gb version is more of a custom thing from what I understand, its not going to be a main stream product and is just a special edition. Its also the same price as a GTX.
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It's still too new to get a fix on going price, but the 1Gig card is definitely seeing the mainstream light of day in several countries at the same time. I asked my guy here in China and he says if I wanted, he could have it here in three days. Regardless of value or performance, there are people who want it, apparently.
 
jmackay said:
I agree that vista should not be the primary OS used, as less than 2% (1.68%) of valve's hardware survey users are running it.

http://www.steampowered.com/status/survey.html

Samples at time: 758,529 users

Some more XP vs Vista stuff would be very nice though, to see how it progresses.
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I also agree. Although your numbers are off :)
Its about 6.66% (OMG 666? is that a final confirmation that MS is evil? heh) running vista.
The 1.68% are the ones running vista WITH a dx10 card. So in other words, only 1/4th of average gamers with vista have bothered to upgrade to a dx10 capable card, most are still running dx9 cards.

Unfortunately, I imagine [H] will be going to vista only, its a huge additional burden for them to test all the benchmarks in TWO os versions, let alone one.
Whatever they do, people will complain. They complained that vista wasn't used (I'm betting the 2900 will perform about the same relativly speaking compared to other cards in vista). And if/when [H] goes to vista only, the vast majority of average gamers who still use XP won't be targeted by the reviews, and some of them are liable to complain as well. Heck, I'll probably complain if they do vista only :)
The question is, is eliminating some of these complaints by testing on two OS versions worth the huge additional time it will take?
There's already lots of complaints about how long it takes [H] to do some reviews or parts of those reviews. Like people were complaining that crossfire wasn't tested in the original 2900 review.
Personally, I prefer in depth detailed reviews that might take a little longer, compared to most other reviews that are rushed. But I know I'm in the minority, and the longer [H] takes to do a review, the more people will check other sites that DO have the reviews.

Edit, yeah Kyle confirmed what I thought, they won't do both OS.
 
Oberon said:
Yet another ATI review that doesn't match any other results around the web.

Don't you guys get tired of basically rewriting the same article over and over again?
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No, but I do get tired of the cookie cutter reviews that don't really get to the heart of the matter, and that is real world gaming performance. If real world gaming evaluations showed the same thing as canned benchmark reviews, then I would save the money, and rewrite nothing but 3DMark scores over and over again.

I do get tired of readers that are not smart enough to understand the process though....now you can get of our forums and troll elsewhere.
 
Devistater said:
I also agree. Although your numbers are off :)
Its about 6.66% (OMG 666? is that a final confirmation that MS is evil? heh) running vista.
The 1.68% are the ones running vista WITH a dx10 card. So in other words, only 1/4th of average gamers with vista have bothered to upgrade to a dx10 capable card, most are still running dx9 cards.
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Yeah sorry should have been more clear, only included the DX10 hardware & software for the numbers, as gamers look @ vista will do so for DX10 games :).

I have my Vista disk sitting next to my computer, just waiting for drivers and SP1/improvements before I ditch XP.
 
jmackay said:
Yeah sorry should have been more clear, only included the DX10 hardware & software for the numbers, as gamers look @ vista will do so for DX10 games :).

I have my Vista disk sitting next to my computer, just waiting for drivers and SP1/improvements before I ditch XP.
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I probably won't even then. I'm looking forward to SP3 for XP, as long as MS doesn't abandon its userbase.

So far we have 1 or 2 DX10 games (and 2 vista "exclusive" games), and neither are very much differant from running it in dx9 mode. We also have a dx10 patch or two from games like Company of Heroes, which adds stuff like additional non functional ground debris. Wow!

If a game comes out that truely takes advantage of DX10, I'd probably do vista then, but only as a dual boot. I like XP too much, and dislike too many things about vista.
 
Devistater said:
Well you could always do a short review for n00bs that has nothing but 3dmark scores and uses words like OMG a lot. Have one review for n00bs and one for everyone else.
j/k ;)
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Yeah, and sign up Crayola as an advertiser! Ah... Tangerine Orange was by far the tastiest color. :p
 
Devistater said:
LOL, don't forget barbie... oh and deer hunter! That game is so popular its not even funny.
BTW, I like your sig
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Perhaps [H]ardOCP could mod the game Operation so instead of bones, a n00b could practice retrieving dropped screws that have wedged underneath the motherboard tray. The way things have been going of late, it might be best for Kyle to send some over to ATI.

As for the sig, thanks. I made a mistake, so that's my way of ribbing myself over it. :D
 
Brent: Have you benchmarked the 2900 XTs in Crossfire against your space heater?
 
something must be wrong......... 2 2900xt = 1 8800 gts? ...........
 
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