MaximumPC 2007 07

A

MD has decided it will compete with

Nvidia in the fi rst-generation DirectX 10

GPU market only at the mainstream level:

Depending on how you look at it, and whom

you ask, it’s either a brilliant strategy or an

admission of utter failure.

The top videocard AMD will bring to

market this quarter is the ATI Radeon HD

2900 XT, a $400 card that will be positioned

against Nvidia’s similarly priced GeForce

8800 GTS. ATI will not only leave the high

end of the market to Nvidia’s GeForce 8800

GTX but also have no answer for Nvidia’s

even faster 8800 Ultra.

Optimists will say that $400 is the max

that most people will spend for a videocard

anyway, so AMD is smart for pursuing that

sweet spot. Pessimists will declare that AMD

is admitting defeat—that its engineers just

can’t compete with Nvidia at the high end.

The truth lies somewhere in between.

There’s no question Nvidia now rules

the roost when judged solely on videogame

frame rates, but AMD’s entire line of new

GPUs offers several compelling features that

Nvidia’s midrange—and even its best—can-

not match. First and foremost: support for

HDCP on dual-link DVI in order to support

the native resolution of 30-inch displays.

ATI’s new cards should also offl oad

more HD video-decoding work from the

CPU than Nvidia’s best because Nvidia’s

second-generation PureVideo HD engine

is available only on its otherwise lower-end

GeForce 8500- and 8600-series parts.

AMD’s best part will have a full 512-

bit ring-bus memory interface to 512MB

of GDDR3 memory. Compare this to the

GeForce 8800 GTS, which has just a 320-

bit interface to either 320MB or 640MB of

GDDR3, and the GeForce 8800 GTX and

8800 Ultra, which have 384-bit interfaces

to 768MB of memory. AMD is betting that

developers will target a maximum memory

footprint of 512MB, and it claims the reason

Nvidia uses larger frame buffers on its cards

is merely to compensate for the relatively

odd sizes of its memory buses: In order to

achieve the desired memory bandwidth,

AMD says, Nvidia has to put more memory

on the card.

AMD will clock the 2900 XT’s core at

740MHz and its memory at 825MHz, but

the company says it will encourage third-

party vendors and end users to overclock

both components. AMD will also bundle

a coupon with the high-end SKU for free

copies of Half-Life 2: Episode 2, Team

Fortress 2, and Portal. AMD is launching a

complete line of other desktop and mobile

parts almost simultaneously, with desktop

products covering price ranges from well

below $100 to $400 for its best part. Check

out the table for the specs on the desktop

products and see MaximumPC.com for

benchmark numbers.

quick start THE BEGINNING OF THE MAGAZINE, WHERE ARTICLES ARE SMALL

08 MAXIMUMPC july 2007

Can AMD win the GPU

war by ceding the battle

for best high-end

videocard to Nvidia?

AMD

Surrenders!

The best videocard AMD will offer this season is designed to compete only with

Nvidia’s midrange part, the GeForce 8800 GTS 640MB.

PRICE RANGE Sub $100 $100 to $200 $

PROCESS

TECHNOLOGY

65nm 65nm 80nm

STREAM

PROCESSING

UNITS

40 128 320

CORE CLOCK

SPEED *

525 to 700MHz 600 to 800MHz 740MHz

MEMORY * 128MB DDR

256MB DDR

256MB GDDR

256MB GDDR

256MB GDDR

256MB GDDR

512MB GDDR

MEMORY CLOCK

SPEED *

400 to 800MHz 400MHz to 1.1GHz 825MHz

RING BUS

MEMORY

INTERFACE

64-bit 128-bit 512-bit

OUTPUTS SVGA, DVI, VO Dual DVI, VO Dual DVI, VIVO

AMD ATI RADEON HD 200 SERIES

ATI RADEON ATI RADEON ATI RADEON

HD 2400 HD 2600 HD 2900

* Varies according to SKU