r600 aka radion 2900 xt

lol

sorry 1st post was just a ati fan boy wind up

quite a complicated picture with this card but it costs twice as much as it need to to be worth buying.

here are the reliable site – there are a few clearly ATI biased sites as well but they are showing some outrageous finding which are not born out by the respectable sites

hardocp

http://enthusiast.hardocp.com/article.html?art=MTM0MSwxNywsaGVudGh1c2lhc3Q=

“A day late and a dollar short.” Cliché but accurate. The Radeon HD 2900 XT is late to the party and unfortunately is bringing with it performance that cannot compete. The GeForce 8800 GTS 640 MB is $50 cheaper, performs better, and draws a lot less power than the 2900 XT.

This is as good as it is going to get for a while from ATI. The GeForce 8800 GTX will still dominate at the high end of the video card market. Of course we do not know about DX10 games yet, and there is no way to make any predictions how that comparison will turn out. As it stands right now the Radeon HD 2900 XT, in our opinion, is a flop. ATI needs to get its act together quickly. It needs to push out the mainstream cards soon and it needs to deliver a high end card that can actually compete at the high end of the market.

hothardware
http://www.hothardware.com/articles/ATI_Radeon_HD_2900_XT__R600_Has_Arrived/?page=14

Performance Summary: Throughout our entire battery of gaming related benchmarks, the new Radeon HD 2900 XT performed at roughly the same level as a standard GeForce 8800 GTS. Depending on the test configuration, the Radeon HD 2900 XT and standard GeForce 8800 GTS traded victories, but more often than not the GTS pulled ahead. In comparison to a factory-overclocked GTS, the Radeon HD 2900 XT obviously fares a bit worse and it simply cannot hold a candle to the more powerful, and of course more expensive GeForce 8800 GTX or Ultra.

tweaktown
http://www.tweaktown.com/articles/1100/15/page_15_final_thoughts/index.html

AMD’s new series of R600 DX10 graphics cards are finally here and we have had plenty of time to examine them but we are left with a tough decision if we should recommend the HD 2900 XT or not. It impressed us considering the price tag and the extras such as sound output through DVI to HDMI adapters and the Valve software bundle but it leaves us wondering if AMD could have done a little better…

tomshardware
http://tomshardware.co.uk/2007/05/14/r600_finally_dx10_hardware_from_ati_uk/page26.html#final_thoughts

“It’s about time,” is my first reaction. Six months of dragging this out has lost a lot of face with your consumers and with guys like myself. While we can only hope that ATI would come up with an alternative to GeForce 8800 and now 8600, the reality is that some markets get lopsided. Nvidia was first to market and now has a strong head start. Even some ATI fanboys have changed their tune with such a long dry spell.

anandtech
http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=2988&p=31

In the meantime, we are just happy that R600 is finally here after such a long wait. Let’s hope for AMD’s sake that the next revision of their hardware doesn’t take quite so long to surface and manages to compete better with six month old competing products. We certainly hope we won’t see a repeat of the R600 launch when Barcelona and Agena take on Core 2 Duo/Quad in a few months….

so the general advice seems to be go for the 320 8800 or 640 8800 if you can stretch to that – it is cheaper and generally faster than the new ati card

sob sob – my last 3 gfx cards have been ati but they need to pull their fingers out !!