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7:53am October 05, 2007
Upgraded the 1900XT's to a 2900XT
Being a huge ATI fanboy, I recently sold my 1 year old ATI x1900XT's that I was running in Crossfire mode. Unfortuntately, I was less than impressed with Crossfire. I had numerous issue with switching in and out of it, getting games to load, and many graphics defects once I did get it loaded up. I decided that It was a waste of power, heat, and noise to have both of the 1900's running in my gaming machine.
I did a lot of research to determine if I would be breaking my buying habits this time around by going with an Nvidia card. With the 8800 GTX cards going for around $575 and the 8800 Ultra cards going for around $400, I decided to compare both of these cards with the newer ATI HD 2900XT card. Even though I am an admitted fanboy, I try to do an even comparison between ATI and Nvidia. I found that most reviews around the new do not take an unbiased stance when reviewing video cards.
I resorted to making an Excel spreadsheet of all the benchmark scores that I could find around the net. Once it came down to the time to decide, the scores were all within a very good range of each other. With a little overclocking, the 2900 can be driven to compete with the best Nvidia card, and even some of the newer SLI configurations, as far as I could tell.
The final deciding factor was the fact that I own a motherboard that supports Crossfire, not SLI, and if in the future I wanted to migrate back to a dual GPU setup, it would need to be Crossfire.
I ordered the ASUS EAH2900XT from Newegg on Sunday. It arrived on Thursday and I immediately removed the old cards and installed the new 2900. Installation was painless for the most part since I didn't need to uninstall any drivers or software. The main issue I have so far is that I use the Lian-Li V1200Bplus II, which is an inverted/reverse ATX design. This places the expansion cards upside down.
The ASUS EAH2900XT has a huge cooling fan and heatsink/heatpipe design. With the card being upside down, I am worried that the heatpipe design will not be working properly and the card will fail. Only time will tell I guess.
Filed under:
ATI
I did a lot of research to determine if I would be breaking my buying habits this time around by going with an Nvidia card. With the 8800 GTX cards going for around $575 and the 8800 Ultra cards going for around $400, I decided to compare both of these cards with the newer ATI HD 2900XT card. Even though I am an admitted fanboy, I try to do an even comparison between ATI and Nvidia. I found that most reviews around the new do not take an unbiased stance when reviewing video cards.
I resorted to making an Excel spreadsheet of all the benchmark scores that I could find around the net. Once it came down to the time to decide, the scores were all within a very good range of each other. With a little overclocking, the 2900 can be driven to compete with the best Nvidia card, and even some of the newer SLI configurations, as far as I could tell.
The final deciding factor was the fact that I own a motherboard that supports Crossfire, not SLI, and if in the future I wanted to migrate back to a dual GPU setup, it would need to be Crossfire.
I ordered the ASUS EAH2900XT from Newegg on Sunday. It arrived on Thursday and I immediately removed the old cards and installed the new 2900. Installation was painless for the most part since I didn't need to uninstall any drivers or software. The main issue I have so far is that I use the Lian-Li V1200Bplus II, which is an inverted/reverse ATX design. This places the expansion cards upside down.
The ASUS EAH2900XT has a huge cooling fan and heatsink/heatpipe design. With the card being upside down, I am worried that the heatpipe design will not be working properly and the card will fail. Only time will tell I guess.
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Filed under:
ATI
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