A quick poll that may or may not be related in any direct or indirect way to my new computer, that may or may not affect the purchase of one or two graphics processing units in either SLI or Crossfire.

In regards to the high end, nVidia are currently the best. The new ATi does look good... but it's only words right now. Also, SLi appears to me much better than CrossFire.

In just a few hours, the HD 2900XT will be released. It's a 512MiB card with 742/1650MHz clocks. The HD 2900XTX will follow shortly after, a 1GiB card with 800/2200MHz clocks.....

I think that's rather fast, but I don't understand these things. . .

And you posted at 2:10 am???

Yeah, I couldn't get to sleep very well last night. I got to bed at 3:30.

That card has the specs... I want to see the stats...

Well, the HD2900XT was released today, and the verdict is: It sucks.

Performance is better than a 8800GTS 640MB, but it costs less than the 8800GTS 640MB. So anybody thinking of buying that Nvidia card should reconsider. Of course, I'm not interested in that. I'm just interested in the flagship card.

The 8800 Ultra pushes about 30 to 40 percent more pixels in all the benchmarks I've seen so far. Of course, that comes at a cost (of ?550 ish)

So it's the best value card but can't claim the best card?

Indeed. 8800 Ultra reigns supreme.

nVida are pwning yet again! *waits for 2950...*

The 2900XTX might be able to give the 8800U a run for it's money though!

Although the 2900XT is priced less than or equal to the 8800GTS 640MB, it consumes about 60W more! That's totally crazy... Those Nvidia GPU's are very efficient, unless there is something in the R600 GPU that we don't know about... *waits*

I think nVidia have always had efficiency sorted...

I think I'm for ATI/AMD.

Any particular reason? Or just going on the basis that it's what you're using right now and it just works? That was my original motto. I'm open to change all the time.. I usually choose (100% of the time) the highest performing card. At the moment, that is the Geforce 8800 Ultra by a long long way!

I would choose teh best value high end card. Or nVidia cos I have a SLi mobo.

Well currently, amd are the only people making GOOD gaming processors (as far as I know) and Nvidia go for open gl instead of direct 3d. I had loads of woe with open gl back on the 95 pc.

[quote="Species"]
Well currently, amd are the only people making GOOD gaming processors
[/quote]

Apart from the fact that every processor above the Intel Core 2 Duo E6400 thrashes every single AMD Athlon processor ever made in every single benchmark to such a level that it gives AMD Athlon a [i]very, very bad name[/i] amongst gaming processors. Intel are currently the gaming processor masters by an [i]insane[/i] margin. The X6800, for example, is more than 1.5x more powerful than AMD's best FX series processor.

I wasn't aware of that.

I'm just relying on what PCG said, that Intel were not focussing on gaming processors anymore.

Never rely on a game mag for hardware information...

Yar. Well, they did say that like months and months ago.

Still, if they're good processors, yay!

They are good processors. However, this thread is actually about video processors.