HD 2900XT Sapphire from ZZF (As well)

[dudleycpa]

Awh it is amazing what the inclusion of an "rs" at the end of a word can do for understanding lol. Me Now Gets!

Viper

I apologize. I type drive instead of drivers. Me bad.

 

[omniskillz]

im still on the fence, almost pushing the button to buy this sucker. ill give it a few days .. maybe ahahaha
thanks anyways guys.

wondering if i should crap my pc and get a new one too while im at it.
opteron is at 2.6ghz cant push it any higher even with tec cooling. lame.

 

[ViperJohn]

holy crap, ewiz has the sapphire x2900xt retail for 379 plus free ground shipping, thats
prob the best deal around..

now the question still is should i buy now or wait for the cooler 65nm?
come on fellas

Yes the 80nm runs warm but nothing that can not be dealt with. The 65nm will dissipate about 20-25% less
heat but that is only if the clocks are held the same.

The 65nm 2950's will be clocked higher and that will take some of the heat dissipation reduction right back in
a direct ratio to the change in clock speed. The die surface area of the 65nm part will also be smaller resulting
in a small thermal interface between the die and the GPU cooler base which will increase the temp as well.

The latter die surface area is the same situation we saw with the old G70 (7800 256/512) and the G71 (7900)
cards. The die shrunk G71 dissipated about 20% or so less heat but ended up running hotter as the G71 die
only had 51% of the die surface area a G70 had to create the thermal interface between the die and the GPU
cooler base to transfer that heat through.

It all depend on how long you want to wait to get a 65nm card. With ATI's release history it could be a long
wait lol.

Viper

 

[dudleycpa]

im still on the fence, almost pushing the button to buy this sucker. ill give it a few days .. maybe ahahaha
thanks anyways guys.

wondering if i should crap my pc and get a new one too while im at it.
opteron is at 2.6ghz cant push it any higher even with tec cooling. lame.

That depends on what you do with it and how well it does it.

I have a P4 [email protected]. It was great in the day but a little long in the teeth now. Acts slow at times and doesn't run games that well anymore. Still does the net and email ok. AGP so I have to upgrade soon.

Damn You - At 379 I'm starting to think that I should buy one. Must be logical.

 

[ViperJohn]

im still on the fence, almost pushing the button to buy this sucker. ill give it a few days .. maybe ahahaha
thanks anyways guys.

wondering if i should crap my pc and get a new one too while im at it.
opteron is at 2.6ghz cant push it any higher even with tec cooling. lame.

Get a new PC. That 2.6Ghz Opteron, even if a dual core, would be a big bottleneck!

Viper

 

[dudleycpa]

Get a new PC. That 2.6Ghz Opteron, even if a dual core, would be a big bottleneck!

Viper

You really do get to the point. I will try to learn from that.

Viper do you think that it would be possible to do a good mod on this card with air? I'm too chicken for water but, after seeing the temps of the quads I think I'll have to jump in at some point. But before I do would air be "doable"?

 

[ViperJohn]

You really do get to the point. I will try to learn from that.

Viper do you think that it would be possible to do a good mod on this card with air? I'm too chicken for water but, after seeing the temps of the quads I think I'll have to jump in at some point. But before I do would air be "doable"?

AMD's dual core CPU's, as we found out when the C2D's popped out of the oven, have been a bottleneck
ever since the 7800-512's cards.

My old test rig was a 3.15Ghz FX60 than I changed to a 3.9Ghz C2D. I got bored one day and wanted to
do a compare and the only card I had around that I had tested in the FX60 rig was a ViperFanged 7900GTX
so I threw it into the C2D rig and retested using the same drivers as when tested in the FX60 rig.

I just about died when I saw the benchmark numbers coming out of the 7900 with the C2D compared to the
FX60. They were anywhere from 25% to 75% higher with the same card, drivers and card clock speeds. Oh
and 3DM06 was not the biggest gainer either.

No air mods on the 2900's. You are not going to get better than the stock cooler temperature wise if you
get the stock cooler off thermal control and manually set the fan speed. You may get quieter though but
then you have to think about all the other components the stock cooler is taking care of that a new air cooler
wouldn't.

Viper

 

[dudleycpa]

Thanks

I have been meaning to ask you that for a while. If it wasn't for the heat I might be tempted. Heck, I'm tempted with the heat!

 

[toddm27]

You can OC in a CF config using OverDrive in the CCC can't you??? Need to know cause if not I will
have to fire up the bios editor and change the clocks lol.

Viper

nope, catalyst control just locks up if you try to bench it

 

[ViperJohn]

nope, catalyst control just locks up if you try to bench it

Damn you would think after almost two years ATI would get overclocking a Crossfire setup correct lol!!!

Viper

 

[Audioaficionado]

Whoops, ATI Radeon HD 2900 XT Lacks UVD

http://www.dailytech.com/Whoops+ATI+Radeon+HD+2900+XT+Lacks+UVD/article7447.htm

ATI board partners potentially face the same false advertising claims. Today, no less than four AIB partners claim UVD support on their Radeon HD 2900 XT boxart. Surprisingly absent from that list: Built-by-ATI boards.

Doesn't matter for gaming but I thought this was an interesting development.

Looks like the 65nm dies will have the UVD decoder built on the die

 

[omniskillz]

Get a new PC. That 2.6Ghz Opteron, even if a dual core, would be a big bottleneck!

Viper

please answer my private message thank u!

im going to try to upgrade and maybe sell off my current parts on ebay or sell pc to a friend.

 

[ViperJohn]

nope, catalyst control just locks up if you try to bench it

Did you try AMDGPUClockTool_v0.7 for OC'ing in a CF setup.

It doesn't look like OC'ing in bios is going to work either. For starters everytime you make a clock
change in bios you have to submit the bios to get it digitally signed first or you will BSOD when the
drivers detect an unsigned bios.

The card/drivers do not like high clocks going into windows either. I just tried a signed bios with
905/1125 clocks on a 1024Mb OEM card that will run all day long at 986/1197 and was greeted
with a corrupt windows desktop (BTW the 1024Mb oem's do not use split 2D/3D clocks and Vcore).

That was most likely due to (a) strap change(s) that occur(s) when you software OC the card higher
after getting into Windows which doesn't happen when you up the clocks in bios then enter Windows
and load the drivers.

Viper

 

[vixro]

I'm loading up the 8.38 RC7 drivers that are in the guru3d forums. I'll let you know how they work out. Didn't really notice any change, still have the annoying blinking large black box whenever I open up things that have a cursor and pointer mouse image (if it's in the perfect spot) and DX10 lost planet is still bugged out. My 3dmark06 scores were also pretty much identical (10 point difference). I'd be surprised if anything even changed, although I'd have to play more games to figure it out. CCC loads super fast though....

 

[dudleycpa]

http://www.ewiz.com/detail.php?name=AT-2900XT

doesnt say its a daily deal, seems like their regular price limit 1 per customer. im looking online for ewiz promotion code to make this deal hotter haha
anyone have one?

This deal is gone.

 

[skoreanime]

Not sure if this is significant to many of you or not, but here it is anyways.

http://www.techreport.com/onearticle.x/12552

Seems the current x2900XT lacks UVD acceleration.

 

[toddm27]

Did you try AMDGPUClockTool_v0.7 for OC'ing in a CF setup.

It doesn't look like OC'ing in bios is going to work either. For starters everytime you make a clock
change in bios you have to submit the bios to get it digitally signed first or you will BSOD when the
drivers detect an unsigned bios.

The card/drivers do not like high clocks going into windows either. I just tried a signed bios with
905/1125 clocks on a 1024Mb OEM card that will run all day long at 986/1197 and was greeted
with a corrupt windows desktop (BTW the 1024Mb oem's do not use split 2D/3D clocks and Vcore).

That was most likely due to (a) strap change(s) that occur(s) when you software OC the card higher
after getting into Windows which doesn't happen when you up the clocks in bios then enter Windows
and load the drivers.

Viper

yeah running the amd tool basically disables one card and overclocks one , so we've gotta wait on wizzard to fix atitool

 

[Hazaro]

Just asking... Can't you put one card in OC it, then put the other one in and OC it, and ta-da? Or does the OC reset after you pull it out/go into crossfire?

 

[omniskillz]

This deal is gone.

we missed out it seems, they totally pulled sapphire 2900xt from their site. dont see a listing.

http://www.ewiz.com/detail.php?name=AS-2900XT

but the asus 2900xt is 409.05 free shipping and comes with stalker shadow of cherynoble or whatever...

zipzoomfly has it for 419.99 free shipping sapphire version so u get 2 yr warranty.

http://www.zipzoomfly.com/jsp/ProductDetail.jsp?ProductCode=10005202

bummer.

amazon has the Diamon 2900xt for 399.99 free shipping
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B000PWITW4...e=380333&creativeASIN=B000PWITW4&linkCode=asn

 

[dudleycpa]

Omniskillz

Your original ewiz link now points to a Asus 2900XT.

http://www.ewiz.com/detail.php?name=AS-2900XT