Dismantling The Card

The Radeon HD 2900 XT's cooler is a little trickier to remove. First, you have to unscrew and remove the black heatspreader and the stainless steel backplate. This loosens the main cooler body as well as the smaller heatsink for the GPU. Note the thermal tape on the heatspreader. They are used to cool the memory chips on the back of the card.

The cooler will still be fixed in place by two screws on the card bracket. Remove them and you can slide off the entire cooler assembly off the PCB. The actual card looks like a malnourished waif next to the big, fat cooler.

The Radeon HD 2900 XT's PCB is quite densely populated. Right above the PCI Express connector is the large R600 VPU with a metal shim around it. It's flanked on both sides and to the top by eight GDDR3 chips.

The other eight GDDR3 chips are located on the reverse side of the card. You can see the two power connectors on the upper right corner of the card, yet another hint of its power consumption (and thermal output)!

The R600 VPU (right) is covered in gray thermal paste. There's adequate coverage, but if you are gungho about overclocking it, you can replace it with your favourite thermal paste.

It is a really big chip. However, the actual die is smaller than it looks. The die is just the gray-smudged portion. The rest is the package, with a metal shim surrounding it. The shim protects the delicate flip-chip die during installation of the cooler.