HD 2900 Pro Incoming

A good performer at the $150-250 is the sweet spot for the majority of gamers out there who won't spend the $300+ on a current high end card, but a sub $150 card ain't going to cut it.
 
Wow now thats probably the magic mid range card I've been looking for :) Thinking about getting a x1950xt because of it's bang for the buck but this card has alot of potential
 
I can't wait for the performance tests...:rolleyes: . I'm not "hoping" for anything special, but maybe I'll be surprised. I wonder if nV will follow suit (OMG G92!) or maybe something of the 8800GS idea. It'll be another excellent HW review by the [H] fo sho tho :cool: .

EDIT: Hecks-yea! The word "excellent" in my post has been selected for advertising to support teh [H] lol!
 
hmm will see if this is any good but has to come it at the 150 to 200 price range or its not going to work out

Miscommunication: so did the word edit lol
 
I hope they keep around 14 rops and dont kill too many stream proccessors.
 
I'm not sure if they can cut a quad in half, it'll either be 12 or 16, as for their advertised 300SP's for the R600, i'm sure this'll have 75% of the SP's on the same memory buss, core and memory cut as well.

$200 for something 75% of the HD 2900XT? thats a very well placed card.
 
It all really depends where the performance lies - if this card manages to fit just below the 8800gts 320mb, while being far enough ahead of the 8600gts...200 dollars would be perfect! the new x1950pro! :) We might have a real competitor here!
 
Watch it have the same kind of bs problems like the x1950pro, watch it not overclock. Then watch the seemingly weak competition beat it.
 
Will it come out before NVidia's next products? It says Q4. I'm guessing that since the G80 is nearly 9 months old, NVidia has something new. I would imagine that as soon as the next NVidia is launched, 8800's of some flavors will be dropped into the $200-$250 price range to get rid of old stock, not to mention I'd imagine there will be a raft of GTX's and GTS's sold by upgraders around that time.

Right now, or at least by next month is when ATI needs to have those on the shelves if they would like to have a truly viable contender. If they wait until NVidia releases the next thing, they will have to not only compete on performance, but price (not to mention image quality on R600 is not as good as the 8800's)
 
What ATI needs to do to capture the mid-range level is to set the 2900XT pricing to the $200 level and introduce a really kick ass card that can actually compete with the 8800 Ultra level and price it at around $400.

I don't think there is a need to introduce a dumbed down version of the 2900XT.

Let's face it, the 2900XT can't compete with the high end segment because of it's rather lackluster performance, and it should be priced accordingly (which happens to be mid range segment).

Problem solved for the midrange market!
 
Even with its current architecture, all nVidia would have to do is introduce a G80 card with one or two more shader/TMU blocks disabled than on the 8800GTS, to get a card that would drop in nicely between the 8600 and 8800 and still blow away the 2900 Pro. Or, they could drop the street price of the 8800GTS 320 from around $260 to $220. Either way, they wouldn't have to break a sweat to fend off this card. The only way I can see a 2900 Pro succeeding is if it's based on a new core revision that addresses some of the deficiencies of the XT.
 
Well supposedly theyve been considering a revision and refresh of the 2900XT (if the rumors out there are to believed as a new one popped up today) so its not out of the question they do a revision. Besides, if the R700 is supposed to be based on the R600 core but with multi-core etc., they better have revisions in the books.
 
Just think if the R600 really did have present but broken hardware AA, as rumored. If that's true, a revision that activated the AA units could make a huge difference. Not only would performance using AA go up, but the shaders allocated to it under the current scheme could be used to boost pixel and vertex shading performance.
 
Well there's definitely still hope. Rumors were that current leakage and issues were the biggest reason the R600 had hardware problems, esp. with AA. The latest batches of 45nm produced by TSMC and with collaboration with IBM believe are apparently good batches. If they revise the core architecture and get good transistors in there, I can see good potential, esp. if paired up with the new GDDR4 :D
 
BTW latest news was posted today at: http://www.nordichardware.com/news,6654.html

A while back we reported about how ATI was working on a new chip called RV670. This is still very much true, but the report said that it was a mid-end chip, it's not. RV670 is a die-shrink of the R600 with some redistributed resources; a better proportion between shader processors and TMUs and ROPs. Basically this means less shader processors in favor of more TMUs and ROPs, which should seriously improve the gaming performance of the Radeon HD 29XX (the XXs are since we're not sure what it will be called).

At the same time, Chilehardware reports that a new beta driver reveals another new card, the Radeon HD 2900 Pro. This card will be based on the R600 core, probably a bit stripped down and with lower frequencies.
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take it fwiw
 
I think a stripped down R600 would have to be cheap to sell. Much more interested in RV670.
 
At 200$ that would be perfect if the performance are close to the 8800gts 320.:)
 
In all honestly, disabling a quad wouldn't hurt the core on a R600 that much, the thing is massively inefficient that cutting down on some hardware would probably help scheduling a bit (as far as programing goes). Also make it require ALOT less power :D

Well supposedly theyve been considering a revision and refresh of the 2900XT (if the rumors out there are to believed as a new one popped up today) so its not out of the question they do a revision. Besides, if the R700 is supposed to be based on the R600 core but with multi-core etc., they better have revisions in the books.
Click to expand...

GPU's are already massively parralelled multi-GPU paltforms. Puting multiple chips on a board is possible, ATI has alway had good support for this how ever almost no one ever takes advantage of this and ATI never puts forth the drivers for it. (also it would be impossible to route that much power over a single PCB for 2 R600 chips)

BTW latest news was posted today at: http://www.nordichardware.com/news,6654.html
Click to expand...

Adding more TMU's and ROPS to a core isn't easy, not to mention will require alot more development time as well as making the core bigger, I doubt ATI is going to do this so I wouldn't put alot of faith into that article.

If this card is based on the 90nm process I thin I'll pass.
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I think the Low-K 90nm died with the last gen, I wouldn't worry about a company going to a past size that will probably cost them more money to produce products at.

Zerazax said:
Well there's definitely still hope. Rumors were that current leakage and issues were the biggest reason the R600 had hardware problems, esp. with AA. The latest batches of 45nm produced by TSMC and with collaboration with IBM believe are apparently good batches. If they revise the core architecture and get good transistors in there, I can see good potential, esp. if paired up with the new GDDR4
Click to expand...

Where are you getting your info from :confused:

they have no plans to even go wit 45nm on the R700 as of right now, I doubt the R600 will even get close to being produced on that. The leakage isn't the main problem, the problem is the lack of Shader efficiency, it isn't there even with out AA involved, most likely due to a chunk of SP's being reserved for AA processing and post processing through the drivers

and no we aren't going to bring up the fact that this whole generation sucks with AA, its sad but its there and beated so bad it looks worse then paris hilton.
 
Um they've already started 65nm on their 2400 and 2600 and are supposedly coming out with 55nm by the end of this year so that's the logical next step for the 2900 revision or next generation. In fact, its certain they will do so and with the die shrink it should make adding things easier.

As far as the leakage info, that's what a lot of people were speaking about from supposedly the inside and was a reason but that was a month or two back.
 
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