They built a pretty good product. The 2900 xt beats the 7 month old 8800 gts in most games especially at lower settings. THe 2900 xt has hdmi which is nice; a really good memory controller, and good video playback. All this for $400 bucks. Honestly if I was in the market for a mid-high range card this would probably be it (beating out the 8800 gts... which is a very good card).
I have just a couple of problems with this card and can breath a big sigh of relief, being a 8800 GTX ownerI waited for this card for some time, but after the feburary delay I couldn't wait anymore. And I didn't really miss anything. First this is no uber card. It is way late, and only bests the competiion by a little. Second the power required will hurt some potenial buyers, but more so the 8 pin connector which almost nobody has. Thirdy the heat is extremely high, thus heating up the rest of your system. Fourth the fan is supposedly really loud.
My last reason gets its own paragraph. Many reviewers complained about the XT not performing well with texture intensive games. The reason is simple, while it has really fast bandwith for memory, it has horrible texture filtering. Look if you don't believe me. THe GTX is almost twice as fast in this very important catagory.
http://www.beyond3d.com/content/reviews/16/13
The GTX is still a faster card in almost every application and now only costs about $530-540. It is still the best buy for the high end crowd (the ultra is a joke). The 2900 has some pros and cons, but would have been a really competive card in 2006. Too bad we are halfway through 2007. I wonder what the future will hold with the 2900xtx. This will be delayed until they can bring the heat down I am sure. WHo knows if ATI (or should I say AMD) might pull it off. THe XTX could be a high res monster... I don't know about you, but I am not waiting to find out. Back to playing SupCom maxed...
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