R600 looks like they've gone for the middle ground!!

[waterproofbob]

It would appear that AMD since taking over ATI have decided to shoot for the safe middle ground. The best of the x2000s hit squarely at the 8800 GTS level. Its no doubt an awesome card and for the money it is nice. However as ppl were expecting them to run at nvidia like crazy. Time will tell if this hit at the middle range gamer will pay off. However as the best mobos imo have intel chipsets i can't see them wanting to keep making crossfire boards as it is aiding the competition. The have nothing that even sniffs at the 8800GTX let alone the 8800 Ultra. Any how enough yapping from me. Some benchmarks for you all another better more in depth review

For your mental picture; performance wise I'd say GeForce 8800 GTS 640 MB is a good comparative product (performance wise). Then the opinion will change as you'll receive absolutely a lot of bang for your bucks here. At 350 EUR you'll have a good performing DirectX 10 compatible product, new programmable tessellation unit. It comes with 512 megs of memory. It comes with a state of the art memory controller, offers HDCP straight out of the box, all cards have HDMI connectivity with support for sound and if that alone is not enough, you receive a Valve game-bundle with some very hip titles in there for free. So yeah, you really can't go wrong there.

The negatives then; only two really. First off is power consumption. I know that power is a cheap commodity, yet the card is rated at a peak of give or take 215 Watts, and that's just a lot. In a high-end system our power-draw was 400 Watts for the entire PC. So chances are that with the HD 2000 XT also comes a PSU upgrade. To make it slightly worse, if you want to overclock you'll need a PSU with the new 8-pin power connector as well. And at this time these are still rare (review here).

Basically you want a DX10 card thats got some healthy bang for your buck its pretty solid choice, but if you want the best then the 8800 is still the nuts.

 

[Iron_fist]

yes but if you look at the difference in 3d mark scores from 8800GTX release drivers -> 8800GTX current drivers then you'll find in a lot of cases there is a 1500-2000 point difference, The same is true with the new ATI cardsbecause the architecture of the core is really different to previos DX9 cards the drivers are basically being written from the ground up meaning that there is a lot of optimisation to come. i'd say wait another couple of months and then take a look at how well it fairs. also ATI have always had power hungry first editions of cards they'll improve with the 2nd revision if you can wait that long

 

[Ronin Storm]

[mod]Moved to The Chat Box. This is more than just a link.[/mod]

 

[thatbloke]

I've been keeping an eye on this for a while and now it's out I will be getting one to put in my new computer in a couple of months. Why?

1) I don't pay the power bill here. Plus my computer hogs alot of power anyway... boohoo. And before you say anything, I actively recycle stuff so

2) You get alot more for your money as opposed to the equivalent nVidia card. You get the games package that includes Steam codes for the new Half-life games due out later this year, you get HDCP/HDMI out of the box (with audio) and for your pound you get more performance.

3) I'm not going to be using the insanely high resolutions that these things are tested at in usual benchmarks. Yes there are some driver bugs in there at the moment according to the reviews I have read but they get ironed out over time and when they do you will see a much improved card, getting much closer to the GTX in terms of performance.

4) I admit to being a bit of an ATi fanboy.

5) It supports DX10, and though there are no real tests out there yet, ATi claims to have better DX10 performance. Looking at reason number 4, you will see why I think that's at least a little believeable.

6) The monitor I am going to be buying soon supports an optimal resolution of 1680x1050, lower than the resolution used in those benchmarks AND has HDMI input too. (Which the card supports). Once I have this card and I am using it at that resolution the difference between that and the GTX/Ultra will be hardly noticable.

I'm sure these reasons will get picked apart in some way, but still, there they are...

 

[waterproofbob]

It does indeed have its positives and if you are a middle of the range not quite hardcore ( tech wise ) gamer then its perfect and remember two of these will more than likely out perform a 8800 GTX for less money. I was a ATI fan boy for years and then sort of became a convert to nvidia and am now in a confused middle ground. however i still think when i build by next rig unless the new drivers for this are ridiculous in their optimisation then its going to be a 8800.