ATI PowerColor HD 2900 XT 512MB

ATI PowerColor HD 2900 XT

Features & Specifications

The ATI PowerColor HD 2900 XT has a core clock of 740MHz and a memory clock of 1650MHz. One feature that ATI offers on the HD 2900 XT that NVIDIA doesn’t offer on any of their graphics cards is an onboard sound card. The sound card is placed on the ATI PowerColor HD 2900 XT so that you can use the DVI to HDMI adapter that is included with the card to carry both video and audio. This means you only need one connection to your HDTV or PC display and does away with the need for a sound card. The ATI PowerColor HD 2900 XT is HDCP complaint so you could use the ATI PowerColor HD 2900 XT in a seriously powerful media center computer that can play any movie or video game for PC on the current market.

Test System

Before we jump into the performance of the PowerColor HD 2900 XT, lets have a look at the test system that I am using for this review:

• CPU- Intel QX6700
• Mainboard- XFX 680i
• RAM- PNY XLR8 PC2-9384 2GB
• Display- Dell 30” 3007WFP-HC LCD
• OS- Windows XP Pro SP2

Benchmarks & Performance

For benchmarking the ATI PowerColor HD 2900 XT I am using 3DMark06, FEAR, Battlefield 2142 and Quake 4. The first test up for the ATI PowerColor HD 2900 XT is 3DMark06.

3DMark06

I ran 3DMark06 at default settings in the application and default settings in the ATI drivers. The 3DMark06 test results were as follows:

• Total 3DMarks- 11544
• SM2.0- 4443
• HDR/SM3.0- 5001
• CPU- 4105
• Return to Proxycon- 35.091
• Firefly Forest- 38.938
• Canyon Flight- 44.887
• Deep Freeze- 55.130
• CPU1- 1.359
• CPU2- 1.984

To get an idea of how well the performance of the ATI PowerColor HD 2900 XT stands up against cards from NVIDIA the PNY 8800 Ultra Overclocked graphics card I tested scored 13100 3DMarks and the XFX 8800 GTX XXX I reviewed scored 11138. That puts the 3DMark06 performance of the ATI PowerColor HD 2900 XT a bit up on the overclocked 8800 GTX XXX from XFX and down significantly to the overclocked 8800 Ultra from PNY.

FEAR

The next test up was FEAR which I ran at a screen resolution of 2560 x 1600 with all settings on max and with soft shadows, 16X AF, and 4X AA. Using the FEAR in game test loop I recorded the following numbers:

• Min- 12fps
• Avg- 33 fps
• Max- 72 fps

The percentages showed that frame rates were under 25 fps 16% of the time, 56% of the time frame rates were between 25 and 40 fps and 28% of the time frame rates were greater than 40 fps.

Battlefield 2142

Next up is one of my favorite games, Battlefield 2142. I ran BF2142 at a screen resolution of 2048 x 1536 with 4x AA and all settings on high. Using Fraps to record frame rate data on a single player map called “Fall of Berlin” yielded the following frame rate data:

• Min- 20 fps
• Avg- 44.73 fps
• Max- 72 fps

Quake 4

The final test for the ATI PowerColor HD 2900 XT was with Quake 4, which is still a graphically demanding video game. I ran Quake 4 at 1920 x 1200 with ultra detail and 16x AA. I also had multi-core turned on as well. Again I used Fraps to record frame rate data on a single player game starting from the first scenes of the game until you are asked to go back for the medic. Fraps recorded the following frame rate data:

• Min- 5 fps
• Avg- 44.021
• Max- 66 fps

Overall the game was very playable at these levels of detail, don’t be fooled by the low of 5 fps, that only happened when the game had to load more data entering new areas and only lasted for a few seconds max. The ATI PowerColor HD 2900 XT is a good performing graphics card that ATI fans will love to put into their gaming machines.