Diamond Viper HD 2900 XT 1GB DDR4 Version

Mazuko

I just ordered two of these the other day and they should be here on Tuesday! Does anyone else have one of these? If so what kind of performance have you gotten out of it thus far?

Dark Lord

if thats your current specs for your system in your sig, youve got a massive cpu bottleneck.

ive got a 1950xt at xtx speeds in my system, and an A64 3200+ and im getting hit hard with a cpu bottleneck. i couldnt imagine ever trying to put 4x the graphical power into a system like that.

ombas

howdy,

to reinforce what dark lord said - upgrade that cpu.

i've had my diamond for a month and a half and have been quite pleased with the physical card. i got a nice boost from my x1900xt. in ArmA i went from 25fps 1280x1024 res in the heavy forested areas to 50fps at 1600x1200. i hadn't expected that in dx9 and it sure is nice. (i bought my 2900 for dx10 games.) my single card idles at around 52c and rarely gets up over 65c on stock cooler. i imagine the temps will go up when i start playing dx10 games.

the drivers are another story - especially in vista. the vista 64 drivers leave Much to be desired, although they are gradually getting better. as you'll read elsewhere, catalyst AA needs a lot of work.

i can't imagine what kind of increase you'll see upgrading from a single x1600. :-) dont judge them till you get a cpu that can support your cards though.

right now ati tray tools doesn't support 2900 cards (neither does folding@home). rivatuner does, but there's an issue with punkbuster causing system crashes.

good luck!

ChaosMinionX

Should have gotten the HD2900XT 1GB from ExtremePC ---- it smokes any other 1GB card out there. Retails for $574 canadian, was like 600$ after shipping to get it to the USA, and it overclocks like a mofo.

Mazuko

I do plan on upgrading my CPU in the near future however I am rather broke now so it is going to wait for a few months. Although to be honest I am not a huge overclocker so I am not all that worried about overclock ability either.

The reason I went with the diamond version of the card was a cost issue (got them for $517 a piece). Oh and my upgrade is from dual x1600 pro's.

Now I just wait for deliver tomorrow.

ChaosMinionX

Ahh. gotcha, it was just the cards from ExtremePC are default OCd to 825/1075 which is a hefty boost over those Diamonds

Mazuko

The diamond cards are already at 743/1100 which is really not that big of a difference unless you are trying to eck that last couple of fps from the system

ChaosMinionX

Youd be suprised the diff with the HD2900 Esp the 1GB it likes higher cores alot...not to mention specifically the one I have does 900/1200 on stock cooler.... its being fitted with an HR03 R600 and new Enzotech forged copper ramsinks

Id suggest doing the same for yours and give it some loving

Mazuko

Score they just got here and I will be puttijng them into my system shortly!

On a plus note they came well packaged and I now have two vouchers for free copies of the HL2 black box with TF2 and portal!!

Man talk about a sweet bonus!

Mazuko

Well I got the cards installed and up and running only to lo and behold I had misplaced my 8pin pcie power cord cables. So I am currently running them with just one six pin pcie cord per card. I still think it's very odd that a card requires both an 8pin and a 6pin pcie power cord per card but what can you do? While the cords on enroute to my house at this time I still proceeded to fire up the system as you are able to use the cards with just a single 6pin pcie cord per card.

The interesting thing is is that they cards were AUTOMATICALLY down clocked so as to limit the amount of power consumption. There is even a pop up window that tells you what they did, why they did it, and what you need to do to get everything working the way the cards are meant to be.

Sucks to be me as with the under powering the core speed is dropped down from 743mhz stock to 507mhz, and the memory speeds dropped from 1100mhz stock to 514mhz, PER CARD.

The one thing crossing my mind at this point is WTF!?!? My x1600 Pro's ran at 575mhz core at stock (Oced at factory), and 1200mhz memory at stock (Oced at factory). This is not making me happy. Using LESS power the x1600 get's more speed but with less goodies. We will see what happens when my cables arrive and I can actually give these cards the power they are asking for.

Now honestly I did go and run Lost Planet through the first level with everything maxed and it worked great, till I enabled antistropic x16 and everything ground to a sluggish halt. I couldn't even run this game on the lowest settings w/ my x1600's once I got into the cave with the glowing thingies so I had never gotten the chance to play it.

On a side note I learned that in addition to the HL2 black box the cards free game package also comes with DOD:Source and HL2:EP2!

ChaosMinionX

Thats 2D clocks, when you goto a 3d app it will go back to the 3D clocks...its called throttling

Mazuko

I certainly feel the shrew. Thanks for the info.