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The Radeon HD 2900 XT
As they say, red things go faster. That could explain ATI's obsession with the colour red. The Radeon HD 2900 XT is a classic ATI card. Most of the card is red in colour, from the red PCB to the red-tinged clear shroud and the red blower fan.
The gray flames on the shroud provides a great contrast to all that red, although I think it's a pretty ironic choice. I'm sure ATI wanted them to convey the perception of a very fast card; but frankly, the flames gave me the impression that this is one hot card! That may not be too far from the truth though...
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The back of the Radeon HD 2900 XT is occupied by a large black heatspreader and a stainless steel backplate. The top view of the card shows you how the heatspreader wraps a little over the top of the card. Overall, the card looks good. Always a plus point if you are into case-modding.
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Like all other high-end graphics cards, the Radeon HD 2900 XT uses a large cooler that takes up two slots. The large cooler is necessary to keep the VPU cool. Remember, there are 720 million transistors in there, running at 742 MHz. The Radeon HD 2900 XT uses a tremendous amount of power and that produces a large amout of heat.
Thanks to its two-slot design though, it is now possible to vent the hot exhaust from the cooler out a row of vents on the card bracket. This reduces the amount of hot air circulating within the case and improves the cooler's performance, as well as reduces the thermal load on the other components inside the case.
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The lower half of the bracket is home to two dual-linked DVI ports flanking a video-out port. This allows you to support up to two 30" LCD monitor without wasting any on a CrossFire dongle. All new ATI graphics cards, from the Radeon X1950 Pro onwards, no longer requires the CrossFire dongle.
Specifications
Here are the specifications of the ATI Radeon HD 2900 XT.
Architecture |
• R600 |
Manufacturing Process |
• 0.08 Micron |
Transistor Count |
• 720 Million |
DirectX Support |
• DirectX 10 |
Interface |
• PCI Express X16 |
Stream Processors |
• 320 |
Vertex Shader Version |
• 4.0 |
Pixel Shader Version |
• 4.0 |
Textures Per Clock |
• Average 16 |
ROPs |
• 16 |
Core Clock Speed |
• 742 MHz |
Fill Rate |
• 11872 MTexels/s |
Memory Bus Width |
• 512 -bits |
Memory Size |
• 512 MB |
Memory Type |
• GDDR3 |
Memory Speed |
• 825 MHz (1.65 GHz DDR) |
Memory Bandwidth |
• 105.60 GB/s |
DVI Support |
• Two dual-linked DVI, both integrated into the GPU |
Now, let's take the card apart!
