ATI's Ambitious Radeon HD 2900 XT
Вставка
- Опубліковано 3 чер 2024
- In this video we have a look at the legendary Radeon HD 2900 XT, a zealous card that sought to strike down NVIDIA's mighty G80.
A huge thanks goes out to Budget-Builds Official for making his segment in the video, check out his awesome stuff here: / budgetbuildsofficial
F2F Tech's fantastic 2900 XTX review can be found here, if you're very invested in the HD 2000 series I recommend you check it out: • ATI's Forsaken Flagshi...
Consider joining my discord server: / discord
Timestamps:
0:00 - Intro
1:20 - Specs
1:58 - History & Details of R600
4:19 - Legacy of the 2900 XT
4:48 - Budget-Builds Official's Thoughts on the Card
5:59 - Test System Specs & 8800 GTS Details
7:17 - Benchmarks
12:33 - Power Draw Figures
13:02 - Conclusion
13:45 - Why does R600 struggle so much against G80?
14:57 - Was the 2900 XT competitive against NVIDIA's offerings?
15:54 - Where was the HD 2000 series flagship?
16:22 - Closing Remarks & Special Thanks - Наука та технологія
![[柴犬ASMR]曼玉Manyu&小白Bai 毛发护理Spa asmr](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/0TsXQ7z2Dh4/mqdefault.jpg)
Really enjoyed the video, glad I could chime in with some of my thoughts
Glad you enjoyed man! Really appreciate you making the segment, it's absolutely wonderful to have some of your thoughts on this thing 👍
@@SPNGI would like you to do the 8800 GTS 512.
R600 through the entire TeraScale family (prior GCN) used a far simpler scheduling system, compared to Nvidia's offerings. The JIT compiler arranged the instructions in groups (clauses) which were guaranteed to be independent, i.e. control flow or memory instructions opened up separate clauses. Each CU/SIMD engine had a dual thread sequencer, which simply alternated in supplying the instructions for two wavefronts (a block of 64 threads). Each instruction issued over 4 cycles (a wavefront on vec16 ALUs), this fits exactly the pipeline length of 8 cycles (2 vectors). That means no checking whatsoever had to be done within a clause. For the next instruction 8 cycles later, all dependencies were guaranteed to be resolved. Dependencies were only checked on clause granularity by the global "dispatch processor", making fine grained control flow slow (changing clauses took about 40 cycles, i.e. clauses with less than 10 instructions lower the performance).
ATi choose the VLIW approach with TeraScale in order to pack as much shader/compute processing capacity, at expense of run-time flexibility and efficiency, hoping that over time compiler optimizations would make up for the slack. TeraScale was rather well suited for baseline graphics workloads, but it faltered in anything more complicated. The market demand for more variety of GPU applications, like general purpose compute integration, pushed for the development of the more conventional GCN architecture family.
Looking through all these results, I'm impressed at how similar these cards performs today compared to todays "modern" entry level cards.
It's a pretty close battle, if I tested a regular 96SP 8800 GTS it would have been even closer!
Hell, I couldn't do it any better justice. Extremely well done!
Thanks so much, I'm really glad you enjoyed! Means a lot, I'm quite a big fan of your video card retrospectives. They gave me a lot of inspiration to do these kinds of videos!
my friend had one of these with with 1GB of GDDR4 back in 2008.
He always bragged about it.
I remember the 2900XT but it never was a card I considered. I had been an ATI fan for years but the 8800 was simply the better choice. Personally got the 8800 GTS 512MB at the time.
Amazing work man! Glad to see love for the 2900 XT 👍
Wow, really awesome to see you here! To be honest your videos on the 2900 series were my main inspiration for making this one, I really loved those. These days the 2900 XT still doesn't get much love so I wanted to share my take on this legend. I'm so glad you enjoyed, means a lot man.
Good video. I remember looking at a 2900XT at a computer store when it was released. The ddr4 caught my eye. The price was $600, as soon as I saw that "sticker shock", I put the 2900XT down and bought a Nvidia card instead.
now it costs amost nothing. i got mine for 10 bucks in a box of old pc scrap
Great video, I had 2900XT in 2008 but it died... It's one of my favorite series, perfect for retro Crossfire build, hot and power hungry🤣 Now I have 4x2900XT in my collection, 3 works and one is dead 🙂
Thanks, glad you enjoyed! Same here, I love these cards! I'm jelly of that 2900 XT collection, how did you manage to track down so many of them? 😆
@@SPNGI just had luck, start collecting 3 years ago and paid for each 10-20€. Now I have over 100 NV and ATI/AMD in collection.
@@whilsyPL Nice for u... I just got my hands on HD 2900GT, sadly is not XT but ehh what to do... I did found in some really old computer store listed in their price list new NOS Radeon HD 2900XT, and it did cost even 25 euros, but sadly when i did go to purchase it, they opened the box, and inside was some small crappy low profile card, i was so disappointed .... But aside from that i also have good collection many ATi, Ngreedia, 3Dfx cards... I also have cards such as Number Nine, Rendition Verite, PowerVR Kyro II and others...
But from the missing high end ATi cards i lack HD 2900XT, Radeon 9800XT (have Pro), ATi Rage Fury MAXX, Radeon 8500, the rest i have...
ATI wasn't even on my radar around this era. it only came back with the 4850/4870, and then definitely with the 5850/5870
I have one of these back in a day it was hot laud and power hungry and it died just after few months of work I remember when I asked for replacement they didn't have another card and they give it to me 8800GT instead and that was the really awesome card.....
I run my 2900-XT alongside my Pentium D 960 in what I jokingly call my 2006 disappointment build. I love that thing.
Thanks Steve
Nice 😆The power consumption must be crazy!
@@thereddog223 Is this commenter Gamers Nexus in disguise? 😂
@@SPNG I can assure you that I’m not 😅
I actually got one of these for free recently from an abandoned building.
It is somehow still working.
Nice find! Hang on to it, they've really been rising in value the past few years. Is it a 512MB GDDR3 or 1GB GDDR4 card?
@@SPNG Only 512 MB sadly, but I hope to find more in my exploration.
My first graphics card in 2008 😁 Back in the day i was saving up a lot just to buy this gpu, now i have RTX3070 and this HD2900XT is so nostalgic and i always remember the struggles back in the day to buy this card 😁
now it costs amost nothing. got mine for 10 bucks in a box of old pc scrap
interesting your video, always good job 😉
Much appreciated man 👍Glad you enjoyed!
@@SPNG 👌😉
I've been hunting for this gpu for a color themed retro build for a reasonable price for years.
It took me a long time to find one for a decent price, they've gotten a lot more uncommon in recent years. Wish you the best of luck finding one!
I actually have the Power Color 2900 XT 512 MB GDDR 3 version (reference model of the generation) in prime condition. no box though.
My favorite Radeon was R9 290X
I love the 2900 cards, have a 2900pro 1gb. These cards much like the x1900xt/x have open voltage control and can offer quite the performance jump. You'll need ati tool 0.27 beta 4 for that if I remember correctly, it may only work with windows xp. Tho I would not mess with it unless you are running watercooling, power consumption and heat gets ridiculous.
If I can track down some aftermarket cooling I might give that a shot! Hang on to that 2900 PRO by the way, 1GB versions of those are very rare.
I've got one of these. You can fry eggs on it once it's at load.
On the backplate or the main heatsink itself xD I figured that was more of a GTX 480 thing. 🍳
these cards got a big boost in linux too just recently .
I have 2 of these boys in a cupboard. Unfortunately I don’t have a X-Fire motherboard and 9000W power supply to test them.
Test em out one by one! They're totally worth checking out today in my opinion, this card was very fun to test.
why i only discover this chanel now ???
life is unfair
that was a big release i really wanted one for HL2
i got a 3970hd the fallowing year and i kept using it tell i fried the fan and had to upgrade to a gts 250
but majority of my cards have been ATI/AMD
That's pretty much my story also.
Call Of Pripyat!!! MAN!!! FINALLY....
Gotta include the classics 😎
Crazy that AA kneecaps the 2900x, R300 was all about AA at usable framerates.
Ironic, isn't it? xD
@@SPNG Bit late, but makes me wonder if perhaps the AA was intended to run on the ROPs but during initial testing flaws were found and it was hacked to run on SPs instead as a workaround.
hi SPNG!
you got the GDDR3 version? why not the GDDR4 version?
They're really hard to find on the used market. Hell, the GDDR3 version is hard enough to find for cheap as it is.
Question, and I hope you'll respond. Why are these so expensive? These are selling for hundreds of dollars. I got so many old pc parts today for free, including lots of old GPU's like this one and some x850s. I'd even be willing to ship some out to you if you don't already have them to do a video on, I got many duplicates. Still have to clean and test them though. Anyway, great video! I'm loving learning about these older parts as I'm building out arcade emulation machines!
Much appreciated man, glad you enjoyed 🙏As for why they're expensive, I'm guessing its down to a few reasons. The 2900 XT wasn't very popular at all back in the day so they aren't that common in the wild, and a lot of the price inflation is artificial by collectors as well lol. For example, stuff like the NVIDIA 6800 cards are not really rare but still sell for top dollar depending on the variant! What's interesting is, a lot of the more expensive retro cards could have been had back in 2016-2019 for pretty reasonable money, after 2020 though these parts just started exploding in value (I started collecting in 2022, definitely had to have some luck on my side to get what I have now 😅). Nice haul though, sounds like you got a load of cards! I'm definitely interested, still missing some from from this era. If you want to send me something just contact me through the business email on my about page.
Being built on an 80nm process really didn't help this card. Regrettably I got an HD 2900 Pro 1GB GDDR4, but slapping a water block on it allowed you to get some pretty mean overclocks, so long as you were able to remove the heat. over 50% overclocks were possible on the GPU. Even then, an 8800 GT 512mb still gave in better FPS in Crysis.
I owned it back than.. It was hot and it had big driver issues.. I sold my XFX 8800gts 320 to buy it and it was last AMD until 5870 i owned..After that all Nvidia until rx6800..
Yikes... I bet it was barely faster than the GTS 320, power consumption would have gone up a bit too. How was the 5870 when you got it?
@@SPNG The 5870 was pretty epic back in the day. It was even spicier for it's time than the 1080ti was.
Big chip against the little chip. And still the little one destroyed the big one. Imagine now the 8800 GTX.
Will we ever get all red cards with red boards😢
I had 2600 xt and boy it couldn't run AA in any game, no matter how old it would just choke, when I got laptop with newer nvidia gpu I was scared to use AA and boy was it a game changer
Yeah, AA was especially terrible on the lower end cards. It took ATI a while to sort out Terascale's issues with AA, the HD 4000 cards saw a lot of improvement in that regard
They also released a slightly faster GDDR4 model just two months later.
True, seems like it was a very quiet release though. Those cards are really hard to find.
ATi Best Graphics on Low Cost
Yeap!!!!
🙌
I had one of these. It was a very disappointing card for me. Can't say I remember it fondly. Upgraded to 2x3850's in crossfire a bit later, and it felt like a massive upgrade at the time.
That sounds like an interesting setup! The 3850 was a nice card back then, seems like they were really cheap and gave great performance per dollar at the time.
Nvidia 8800 came out the same day as me 😭
I think the GTAV results might have been influenced by the Xbox 360 optimisations
it has XT so it good 😊
🙌🔥
Comment for the Algorithm
Luckily, they bounced back with the 3000 series quickly.
2000 series were doomed from the beginning. (Nvidia having the superior architecture that time, AMD-ATI merger that may have affected the release cycle).
Yeah, luckily they came back pretty strong with HD 3000, the price cuts and die shrink were very much needed. The HD 3850 was a particularly good card seeing as it offered relatively close performance to the 2900 XT while launching at just 179 USD, it really redeemed the mid-range sector as well by obsoleting the incredibly slow 2600 XT and 8600 GTS.
And them NvIdia released 8800 GTS 512. It was no longer the yhe second most powerful GPU but the 3rd.
top of the line gpu? Yep, 399 us dollars
Good video for once.
🥲
Never got why people test old cards with newer games at resolutions that old cards did not normally operate at.
It may not reflect exactly what it was like back then, but I find that using new games can often tell you a lot more about how a card actually performs. For example, if I just used games of 2006 to test my 7900 GTX and X1900 XTX I wouldn't have found out how incredibly shader bound the 7900 GTX is. Along with that, not using newer games is doing a bit of a disservice to the driver development these cards would have seen throughout their lifespan, as they would have been receiving patches and optimizations for many of those newer games, so why not test them? And not everyone has a high resolution 4:3 monitor lol, they're getting a lot less common these days. Reviewers were already testing these cards at 16:10 resolutions at the time so I don't think it's unreasonable to do some 16:9 testing, as long as I'm not exceeding the VRAM limit (which I wasn't as stated in the video).
@@SPNG Testing any old card out with games of a cards' era and at resolutions commonly used in that era is realistic. You don't possess old hardware using old software, you do what too many others do today. It's nothing new. It's your opinion that it's not unreasonable, not a fact.
@@chrispappas3750 using old software at old resolutions wouldn't give you any new or differing information at all compared to using it with modern software and modern resolutions, it would scale effectively either way, what you're suggesting is extra effort for trivial reasons. There is literally zero point other than novelty of committing to in-era games/software/resolutions specifically.
@@chrispappas3750as much as you can argue that SPNG's opinion is unreasonable and unfactual, your opinion is suggesting nothing other than a waste of time unless you care extensively about aesthetics.
ATI's card was late and underpowered against the opposition and Nvidia rereleasing the 8800 GT 512MB (with the insane G92 chip) half a year later for around a $250 price just destroyed the cards chances completely being outperformed by a card half it's price. Even without the 8800 GT this card and it's sadly buggy ATI drivers was near impossible to justify, you basically had to be a team red fanboy.
The 8800 GT definitely laid waste to this card, but very shortly after ATI would have released the HD 3870 and 3850. The 3870 wasn't too competitive with the 8800 GT given how close they were in price and the 3870 not being able to make up for it in performance, but the 3850 would have been quite a bit cheaper than both cards while not losing a great deal of performance over the 3870. Sure they're in a different price and performance class, but I think the 3850 tends to fall under the radar even though it was a really strong value at the time, it just wasn't competitive in the high end like the 8800 GT was.
The Waffle House Has Found Its New Host
The waffle house has found it's new host.
14:45 AMD was never really good at AA prior to RDNA
Even the latest GCN cards (rx4/500) struggle with it
Nah. The 2900 XT was the only truly awful AMD card for AA, given it had no hardware blocks for AA. Every other AMD card has been fine.
it was a flop during making its was a flop when it released and its pure garbage now
3:00 tessellation has been a thing since the 80's. its just that there was no reason to use ATI's new proprietary tessellation. really wish things had stayed that way, because the shitty tessellation of modern games is the reason why things "fade into triangles" when you get too close or the resolution is lower than your display resolution.