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HIS Radeon HD2900XT SLI vs. HD2900XT One thing I continually thought about during this review was price. $400 for the new HD2900XT is the same price a couple of GeForce 7900GS would cost for a SLI rig. So to that end, we fired STALKER back up but scaled back to all settings at max with FSAA turned off and had a look at $400 worth of 7900GS cards in SLI versus the HD2900XT.
Minimum 7900GS SLI - 11 / Minimum HD2900XT
- 25 Our results for the 7900GS cards in SLI within STALKER was on par with the X1950XT which was another surprise here today. But the big thought here is that the HD2900XT smoked the two junior GeForce cards and still has room to double its pleasure in Crossfire. Image Quality Image quality is a subjective measure to a large degree. Below is an everything we got shot at 1600 x 1200 with FSAA maxed. Things are more than acceptable but notice the side of the brick outhouse and roof edges.
Other operation notes With the HD designation it is only proper to assume the HD2900XT's fan is silent or close to it for the HTPC/Gaming TV crowd. The fan is variable rate as we mentioned earlier but perhaps I've been spoiled by HIS's IceQ3 coolers because the reference design cooler is barely adequate. Under power, the card runs silently until a graphics intensive program starts up at which time its other setting of 'dust buster mode' takes over. Silent or WFO is a far cry from the nice scaling of fan speed (and noise) we've seen in the past from HIS. This is an issue I actually blame on ATi's reference design and not HIS. With HIS's track record, I would bet they will be ditching this fan and its sensor for the IceQ3 unit in the immediate future. Conclusion The reference design of HIS's HD2900XT is a nice improvement over the last generation. It is able to play everything on our shelf here smoothly with the eye candy on enough to ooh and aah. Native Crossfire as we saw with the X1950Pro is back and I'm thankful to not see ATi regressing with the native Crossfire and taking the dual posts off the PCB as they did with the X1950XT a few months back. HIS specifically gets a pat on the back for inclusion of a nice bundle; blending cables, adapters and software to make their package shine a bit brighter than the rest of the field. The issues we ran into however, made the HD2900XT a card we liked, enjoyed playing on and with but difficult to love. Its performance was simply nothing that rocked our world as was the case with NVidia's GeForce 8800 series. Turning on FSAA actually made us gawk and stare wondering what was going on. We fully expected the HD2900XT to stretch its legs here but it did the opposite. The two biggest issues other than raw horsepower were the card's length and its noisy fan when under load. The 9 1/2 inches is long enough that it looked and felt quite awkward. Installing the card in several cases here our fears of not being able to fit in some cases appears to be dispelled. But the fan's two setting rate going from silent to full honk was a big hit keeping me from loving the HD2900XT. ATi has indeed offered an nice product with its R600 VGA card. HIS has brought it to market exactly as ATi intended with no modifications in cooling or performance boosts (HIS's 'Turbo'.) I make this preface so I can lay responsibility where responsibility is due. Yes, this is a card we can recommend however, it does not feel like a polished product just yet. Some of the polish will come from individual manufacturers getting away from the reference design and some will come in the form of driver improvements letting us squeeze a bit more out of this card. A nice card but not the lunge and parry back at NVidia that we expected. Pros
Cons
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