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ATI HD2900XT 1GB Graphics Card or the NVIDIA 8800 Ultra Graphics Card?

By: Daniel Chubb | August 20, 2007 | 17 Comments

HD2900XT 1GB Graphics Card or the 8800 Ultra Graphics Card? 1

One thing I have noticed from the hardware battle of nvidia and ATI is that greater clock speeds do not mean greater boot times or higher benchmark results. For example, nvidias new 8800 ultra has around twice the clock speed of ATI’s hd2900xt 1gb, but it does no better in benchmarks, or overclocking.
There is a $230 price difference, with the hd2900xt 1gb as the cheaper at $500 from newegg, where as the ultra costs $730, what does the extra $230 buy? And so we look to see which does better in benchmarks and game performance.
The the processing power of the ATI hd2900xt 1gb is 512-bit, and the 8800 ultra only does 384-bit. Then the stream processing units, the hd2900xt 1gb has 320, more than double the 8800 ultra which has a measly 128. It also wins out on clock speeds, the 2900xt has a 743mhz clock, and the 8800 ultra has 655mhz, which just give the 2900xt one more reason to be on the shopping list. That’s still better than most of the graphics cards on the planet, but it is not as good as the hd2900xt.

Then there is video memory, the 8800 ultra has a good 768mb of GDDR3, but come on, that’s not much to be proud of we have had that for at least 2 years now, the hd2900xt has a gigabyte of GDDR4 memory, now that’s more like it. This is probably the only feature that gives the 8800 ultra a slight edge, its memory clock speed is 2.25ghz, compared with 2ghz for the 2900xt. Not enough to make anyone pay the extra $230.

What do you think?

Do you prefer the ATI HD2900XT 1GB Graphics Card or the NVIDIA 8800 Ultra Graphics Card?

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  • Shadowmaster625

    What is this, satire? Is this spoof.com? The HD2900XT doesnt even compete with the ultra. The HD2900XT is more in line with the 8800GTS. You can easily see that on tom’s hardware, dailytech, xbit, and many other independent sites that do benchmarking. (And actually show the data, not just talk about it!)

    The 8800 ultra has “a measely 128″ stream processors. Do you even know what a stream processor is?

    “the processing power of the ATI hd2900xt 1gb is 512-bit” No it is not. That is memory bus width, not processing power. All this means is that the nvidia can only drive 3 2560×1920 displays, whereas the ati could probably drive four. But who is going to do that? The card doesnt even have 4 outputs on it anyways. Anyone with a monitor setup that doesnt cost more than 5 grand is not going to use 1 gig of memory. And besides, anyone who spends that much on monitors is probably going to be running two of these cards…

    Try showing some real benchmarks.

  • Icarusmk2

    This is obviously a blatant post by individual(s) paid off by AMD’s marketing department. Rather than waste your money on writing crap about Nvidia, why don’t you guys put it towards your R&D and make something that can actually win? By having more stream processors, more bits, more blah blah blah isn’t going to help in the end if the performance is crap.

    All this article shows is a sheer comparison between the “specs” of the top of the line cards of Nvidia and AMD, and in the end AMD loses, simply because its cards aren’t even geared towards the general population. As Shadowmaster625 has stated, who cares if the Ultra can drive 3 – 2560×1920 and AMD can drive 4. What matters is the mainstream resolutions such as 1600 and 1920, of which the Ultra literally blows the HD2900XT away.

    In fact the regular 8800GTX blows the HD2900XT away:
    http://hardware.gotfrag.com/portal/story/38332/?spage=6

    And for a comparable price?
    http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814122017
    ==> $519.99 regular and with rebate: $484.99

    Needless to say AMD screwed up with their design and are now trying to lie to the general public in order to get them to buy their inferior product. Talk about lack of ethics.

  • Drew Danielson

    Ok, the ATI part has more memory, more memory pins, more memory bandwidth, more than twice as many stream processors, and is clocked faster. Yet it’s not faster than the nVidia part. And so that makes the ATI part better? I would call that inefficient.

  • Jambo Juice

    A little bit funny … :-) No idea why 2900XT is better and it is even not the same level stuff.

  • atom519

    Worst. Review. Ever.

  • abelmoskjcl

    this article is totally favored in or biased at amd’s video card. whoever is reading this, please go to tomshardware.com to look at the benchmarks that is available.

  • JokeonWho

    I had to check the calendar…. thought it was April 1st again.

  • Marco

    This is just “#¤% lol. This was obviously written by someone that has less knowledge about graphics cards than a goat.

  • http://eggxpert.com Chronofox

    To: Icarusmk2

    You’re a fool if you actually think AMD pays people to write biased reviews on third rate websites. This article is the result of fan-boy-ism, which you seem to be a peddler of yourself, being that you have this idea that AMD runs a propaganda campaign.

    Tooth for tooth, nVidia won the DX10 race, but AMD is supposed to come out with something ground breaking for next gen. Well, at least we all better hope so, unless we want to see a monopoly and 1000$ graphics cards.

  • Joe Reviewer

    Hey Joe, what’s your last name? How come your review is so anonymous? You’re proud of yourself right?

  • Icarusmk2

    To: Chronofox

    Please review what kind of site this is. This is a commercial site that earns money via ads and “subscriptions”, the author “Joe” is a “stakeholder” on this site, as he is one of the primary contributers to it. Unless there is vested interest in “false” dissemination of information, which I highly doubt fan-boy-ism would do:

    http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=fanboyism

    “The collective outlook and behavior of a group of people concerning a subject (movies, games, hardware, comic book characters, etc.) which when challenged results in an antagonistic, passionate, and unreasoned response.”

    Rather according to the definition what I am doing can be considered fan-boy-ism towards NVIDIA (even though I own AMD comp and X800XL video card and have been using them for the past 3 computers I’ve had) [my main change of view is because they have been providing lies to cover their own asses recently] and what you are doing is pro-AMD.

    AMD isn’t new to its had in deceptive tactics (which they have been using ever since they’re drop in shame due to the Core 2 Duo and Nvidia’s 8800 series)

    AMD posts blatantly deceptive benchmarks on Barcelona
    http://blogs.zdnet.com/Ou/?p=567
    http://blogs.zdnet.com/Ou/?p=570
    http://blogs.zdnet.com/Ou/wp-mobile.php?p=567

    Back to the article at hand. Your suggestion that AMD “doesn’t run” a propaganda campaign is a false assumption (if you read the last article from George Ou, the incident with the “Barcelona” is one definite instance of this occurring. There are various other “sites” that I can claim “fanboyism” but this is “supposedly” a site that has a far larger reach than just a mere segment of predominantly AMD/ATI fans (*as this is a general reviews site), and hence leading to my earlier hypothesis.

    I can understand the ramifications of what an AMD/ATI market drop out can have on the overall scheme of the technology and I am in full agreement that a monopolistic nature of both Intel and Nvidia would undoubtedly be bad for the market. But that is not what we are discussing here is it? I am just stating a blatant lie has been issued on this website, which could very well be tied to the AMD propangada machine, which you can take with a grain of salt (if you will, as it is a personal opinion).

    Now with that said, I highly recommend you reword your “accusation” and “personal attack” you did on me as that is totally out of place and down right derogatory of you.

  • Icarusmk2

    BTW I have contacted Google to remove this particular page (not site) from their RSS feed on their finance.google.com domain (which is how I got to read this particular article), as it is a deceptive piece of article. I was drawn to this particular article while I was contemplating whether or not to buy some AMD stocks, as they are preparing to launch their Barcelona processor. It would appear however that I should definitely double check the previews and the other sources, as the articles on AMD can be undoubtedly propped up by hardcore fans.

  • http://www.encyclopediadramatica.com VoltageCat

    Dear Icarusmk2,
    They will not pull down this website from their domain because this is an article about opinion, not fact. If the author of this article was mis-stating facts then Google would have already pulled this down. You fan-boys are all retarded.

  • asdfg

    Back to the cards, I’d just like to say that tom’s hardware benched the 2900 when it’s drivers were junk. since then the driver updates moved the card from competetion with the 320 gts, to the 640, to the gtx, and now, when benchmarking a DX10 game, Bioshock, the 2900 beats the gtx. check it out at gamespot. all for about 100 dollars less than the gtx. Oh, and all that done by the 512 version.

  • http://eggxpert.com VoltageCat

    Icarusmk2,

    That one website that use got all your sources for this “deliberate” AMD deception was clearly taking sides. To post their speculations as fact when it comes to how much AMD’s native quad core design will do clock for clock, when they haven’t gotten a hold of the actual benchmarks is deception in itself. Plus, Tom’s Hardware DID bench the R600 when it’s drivers were crap. I’d would like to another set of benches now that the drivers are somewhat decent.

    You might want to take another look at that “fan-boy” definition too.

  • mrbuildit

    I can not believe for one second someone try to say the ATi card is better now because of new updated drivers “ROFL”

    He should of added… AMD sent me new shoe laces that are whiter than the ones I had before, so now I can run faster and jump higher weeeeeeeeeeeeee!

    Mentos errr AMD the fresh maker! Doo doo doo doo, doo-doo, do-Wah!

  • http://vgcats.com swiftfox7

    Mr. Buildit, maybe you should get one. My cousin has an 2900 and I told him he was a fool for getting it, twice the power and it didn’t perform as well as the 640MB GTS. Now, for some reason, he can get higher frame rates on all his games and I have a GTX. We both have similar systems, he’s an AMD/ATI guy I’m an Intel/Nvidia guy so we’re always talking about who’s got better hardware. Now, I know hardware other than the VGA card isn’t to attribute for his performance spike, we both have 4GB ram, he has a 6000+ I have an E6700 and we’re both running XP Professional 64bit.