Cana-Balistic
New member
I dont know if this has been posted here or not. Its not in this section so i thought i drop in my $0.02.
I've come to hate Nvidia boy's who mock the new ATI series. They think FPS is the end all end of benchmarks. Who's got more and who's got less.
Now i want everyone to realize that HD video comes in at 25 FPS. You dont need any more than that. You cant actually see thoes extra frames anyway. You might want to rethink the way you talk about your FPS. You should now say, "my 8800 does 130fps in BF2, 105 of which are useless to my eyes."
The reason that the new ATI cards have lesser frames is because there is more image processing occuring per frame.
Lets compare the specs of the 2900xt 512mb vs GTS 640mb & Ultra 768mb.
Stream Processors:
The GTS has a pathetic 96 while the ultra version has a mere 128. In comparason, ATI beats them both like an unwanted stepchild with a whopping 320 SP's. ATI takes it one step further by adding the abbillity for thoes stream processors to do physics processing aswell. Better put your physX card on ebay, you wont need it with ATI under your hood.
Core Clock:
The GTS has a core clock of 500 Mhz. The Ultra bumps it up to 660 Mhz. ATI stomps them both with an unbelieveable 750Mhz. What this relates to is more instructions per clock resulting in better performance.
Memory:
This is a tad tricky and confuses me a bit. Please dont be harsh if im incorrect with this. While both 8800's have more memory, they only have a mere 384bit bus. The 2900 has a modest 512mb of ram, the big thing to take note of is the 512bit memory ring bus. This new bus is superscaler, meaning it can be expanded very easily. Expect the new nvidia line to copy this technology as the memory controler they use is at its limit. I think of the 2900 at about equal to the 640mb 8800. With the Ultra in the lead for the moment. I expect this to change once the 1Gb 2900's arive.
Thoes are the basis of the comparison. I'll list some of the advancments of the new 2900 series.
24x AA (cfaa) anyone? The 2900 performs this without a performance drop.
Built-in HDMI and 5.1 surround audio. You can now run sound through your video card to your HDMI monitor. No need for extra audio cables. It doesnt replace your sound card, it copies the signal and exports it through your VGA.
No more Master/Slave cards, no more Y cables fro CrossFire. Pop a second GPU in your rig, add the bridge and your ready to go.
There is another technology which isnt new but will become a standard. Tesslation? (spelling?)
To summarize, the new line from ATI is more gear'd towards htpc's but still has some serious pull in the gaming world.
I've come to hate Nvidia boy's who mock the new ATI series. They think FPS is the end all end of benchmarks. Who's got more and who's got less.
Now i want everyone to realize that HD video comes in at 25 FPS. You dont need any more than that. You cant actually see thoes extra frames anyway. You might want to rethink the way you talk about your FPS. You should now say, "my 8800 does 130fps in BF2, 105 of which are useless to my eyes."
The reason that the new ATI cards have lesser frames is because there is more image processing occuring per frame.
Lets compare the specs of the 2900xt 512mb vs GTS 640mb & Ultra 768mb.
Stream Processors:
The GTS has a pathetic 96 while the ultra version has a mere 128. In comparason, ATI beats them both like an unwanted stepchild with a whopping 320 SP's. ATI takes it one step further by adding the abbillity for thoes stream processors to do physics processing aswell. Better put your physX card on ebay, you wont need it with ATI under your hood.
Core Clock:
The GTS has a core clock of 500 Mhz. The Ultra bumps it up to 660 Mhz. ATI stomps them both with an unbelieveable 750Mhz. What this relates to is more instructions per clock resulting in better performance.
Memory:
This is a tad tricky and confuses me a bit. Please dont be harsh if im incorrect with this. While both 8800's have more memory, they only have a mere 384bit bus. The 2900 has a modest 512mb of ram, the big thing to take note of is the 512bit memory ring bus. This new bus is superscaler, meaning it can be expanded very easily. Expect the new nvidia line to copy this technology as the memory controler they use is at its limit. I think of the 2900 at about equal to the 640mb 8800. With the Ultra in the lead for the moment. I expect this to change once the 1Gb 2900's arive.
Thoes are the basis of the comparison. I'll list some of the advancments of the new 2900 series.
24x AA (cfaa) anyone? The 2900 performs this without a performance drop.
Built-in HDMI and 5.1 surround audio. You can now run sound through your video card to your HDMI monitor. No need for extra audio cables. It doesnt replace your sound card, it copies the signal and exports it through your VGA.
No more Master/Slave cards, no more Y cables fro CrossFire. Pop a second GPU in your rig, add the bridge and your ready to go.
There is another technology which isnt new but will become a standard. Tesslation? (spelling?)
To summarize, the new line from ATI is more gear'd towards htpc's but still has some serious pull in the gaming world.
