MaximumPC 2007 11

A

MD’s decision not to compete with Nvidia’s best GPU left us puzzled, but the

decision its manufacturing partners have made—to pair AMD’s second-tier

GPU with a full gigabyte of GDDR4 memory—has us totally stumped.

We concluded in our August issue that PowerColor’s 512MB Radeon

HD 2900XT is faster than Nvidia’s 8800 GTS, so we weren’t surprised to

discover that Diamond’s card is faster too. But our benchmark testing indi-

cates that doubling the size of the frame buffer—even if it uses fast GDDR4

memory—doesn’t improve performance by much, if anything at all. Frame

rates certainly didn’t increase enough to justify the $100 price bump over

2900XT cards with 512MB frame buffers.

The GPU on Diamond’s card is clocked at the same speed as

PowerColor’s entry (743MHz), but its

memory is set to a cool 1GHz. With the

exception of Quake 4, however, we saw an average increase of just one

frame per second in our benchmark numbers compared to the aforemen-

tioned 512MB card.

We suspect the significant boost in Quake 4 performance—which

jumped from 75.7fps on the PowerColor card to 86.2fps on Diamond’s—has

more to do with driver improvements than frame buffer size. Performance

increased along the same scale in CrossFire mode, with Quake 4’s frame

rate benefiting the most (increasing from 127.8fps on the PowerColor card

to 146.8fps on the Diamond).

If you use your PC for other high-end applications—such as CAD or 3D

modeling—the massive frame buffer might do you some good, but

those aren’t applications we

focus on.

—MICHAEL BROWN

Diamond Viper Radeon

HD 2900XT

Is a gig putting lipstick on a pig?

84 MAXIMUMPC november 2007

reviews Tes Ted. Reviewed. veRdic Tized

7

diamond viper

$500, http://www.diamondmm.com

Diamond’s HD 2900XT with 1GB of GDDR4 memory is faster than

cards based on Nvidia’s 8800 GTS, but you can say the same

about much-cheaper X2900XT cards with 512MB of GDDR3.

Best single-card scores are bolded. AMD-based cards tested with an Intel D975XBX2 motherboard; Nvidia-based cards tested with an

EVGA 680i SLI motherboard. Intel 2.93GHz Core 2 Extreme X6800 CPUs and 2GB of Corsair DDR2 RAM used in both scenarios.

RADEON RADEON RADEON GEFORCE

2900XT, 1GB 2900XT 1GB, 2900XT, 8800 GTS,

GDDR4 GDDR4 512MB 640MB

CROSSFIRE GDDR3 GDDR3

3DMARK06 GAME 1 (FPS) 22.7 44.1  21.5    19.4

3DMARK06 GAME 2 (FPS) 21.0 46.6  20.6    17.8

QUAKE 4 (FPS) 86.2 146.8     75.7    65.5

FEAR (FPS) 64.0 105.0    63.0    52.0

SUPREME COMMANDER 28.2 38.7  28.0    26.2

benchMARkS

W

e’ll get the bad news out of the way first. You aren’t going to win any

speed competitions with Toshiba’s Portable External Hard Drive; we

tested a 200GB version (the device itself comes in capacities ranging from

100GB to 200GB), and the resulting benchmark numbers are nothing for

Toshiba to be proud of.

The drive on the inside is Toshiba’s 2.5-inch MK2035GSS. Its rotational

speed is a decent 4,200rpm, although that gives way to some glaring deficits in

our benchmarks. The drive’s average read speed of 29MB/s puts it well below

what other all-in-one external units we’ve tested are capable of. We weren’t

expecting to see Raptor-quality performance in these miniature external units,

but Toshiba’s device was simply unable to outperform OWC Mercury’s On-the-

Go (reviewed in August) in any of our HD Tach tests.

Granted, the Toshiba unit provides 40 more gigabytes of storage than the

OWC device, but there’s something to be said for functionality. With Toshiba’s

external drive, you get a USB connection.

That’s it. In fact, that’s about all there is on the unit at all: no power button, no

other connections. We suppose you could always unplug the device when you

don’t want to use it, but what about those who want to keep the device perma-

nently connected to their rig? A power switch would be ideal.

We do, however, love that the Toshiba drive doesn’t come with a power

brick. All you need to run it are two free USB slots, a great benefit if you’re on

your laptop and not near a plug.

Loads of external drives offer FireWire support, an on/off button, one-

touch backup—features the Toshiba doesn’t have. We sure can’t think of a

compelling reason to pick up this device, as the Toshiba is as slow

as it is featureless.

—DAvID MuRpHy

Toshiba Portable External

Hard Drive

We love the shiny blue button, but we need more

5

Toshiba exTernal hd

$180, http://www.toshiba.com

Best scores are bolded. Both drives were tested using their USB 2.0 connections.

benchMARkS

OWC MerCury-On-the-GO    tOshiba    POrtable    Drive

HD TACH BURST SPEED (MB/S) 38    35.1

HD TACH RANDOM ACCESS (MS) 15 19.2

HD TACH AvERAGE READ (MB/S) 35.7     29

On the plus side, this external drive is one of the slimmest you’re

going to find.