ATI Radeon HD 2900 XT test

Introduction

In November 2006 nVidia introduced the world's first DirectX10 compatible graphics card; the GeForce 8800GTX. We have had to wait for 6 months, but now there is an answer from ATI in the form of the Radeon HD 2000 series. Surprisingly the top model in the series is not faster than the top model from nVidia, something you would expect when it has taken this long to develop the card. However the new range of ATI cards does have a lot of new technologies on board which do make this card a very interesting counterpart to nVidia's flagship.

There will be a total of five HD 2000 cards with prices between 100 to 400 US dollars. The only model that is available immediately is the HD 2900 XT, the most expensive card in the series. The cheaper cards will arrive somewhere in Juli. The most important aspect of the new series obviously is the DirectX 10 compatibility, so the card is ready for the new Vista 3D games. The new ATI cards support all new parts of DirectX10, like the Geometry Shader that was described in our GeForce 8800 article.

The new high-end model, ATI's Radeon HD 2900 XT

DirectX 10 's most important feature is the ability to work with Unified Shaders, multi-functional calculation units that can handle all kinds of 3D calculations. As with the nVidia 8xxx range the architecture of ATI's HD 2000 cards is based on these unified shaders, and the HD 2900 XT sports no less than 320 shaders.

Modern graphics cards are not solely used to play 3D games anymore, so ATI has invested a lot of time and money in updating the video capabilities of the HD 2 series. This has resulted in a complete decoder in the graphics chip, that can handle H.264 and VC-1 video without any stres on the CPU in a system. This is mainly thereason why the name has been changed to HD in stead of the earlier rumored X2900 XT.