ATI Radeon HD 2900 XT Review

I have to admit I was a bit disappointed after seeing the benchmark results of the Radeon HD 2900 XT. Even though the card is fast it can not beat the NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GTX, it should have no problems beating the GeForce 8800 GTS 320 MB though. Having a product like this AMD did the only right thing - make it affordable. With a price point of $399 USD this card is taking the price/performance crown without breaking a sweat.

Even though ATI has employed a number of power-saving techniques and heat reducing features, the heat output is still fairly high, especially when you are overclocking at a higher voltage. This also means that the fan has to run faster and louder than competing products. On the other hand watercooling will provide seriously improved overclocking potential, companies like Danger Den and Thermaltake already have the first coolers ready.

The new features like integrated Tesselator and CFAA offer new ways to improve image quality while not hurting performance too much. Full HDCP with audio support and H.264 decode acceleration make this card an excellent choice for media PC systems where image quality matters. I really hope that AMD can improve their drivers to offer increased performance, because at this price point the card has the potential to be a card that everybody can afford. 8.9/10

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