Sapphire HD 2900XT
Sapphire's HD 2900XT comes under the DX10 microscope
AMD/ATI's first DX10-supporting card is with us. Its pricing, plus our DX9 benchmark tests, place it as a competitor to the 680MB version of the 8800GTS. This is an underwhelming entrance for a card that's well over six months behind the launch of Nvidia's first unified-shader DX10-ready cards.
And, what's more, ATI/AMD doesn't even have its mid-range cards ready for launch yet, so there's no current competition for the 8600 and 8500 series of GeForce parts. In the timeless battle for graphics card superiority, this round definitely goes to Nvidia.
If you've read the review of the Asus 8800 Ultra , you'll know that DX10, like so many other elements of Vista, is still embryonic; even the top-shelf graphics cards struggle to put out reasonable performance figures under the new API.
MusicRadar Rating
Pros
Represents decent value for money. Does as well as any card in a DX10 environment
Cons
Ultimate performance not spectacular
Verdict
Given the current complications surrounding DX10, this actually represents a fairly decent bet
Review Policy
All MusicRadar's reviews are by independent product specialists, who are not aligned to any gear manufacturer or retailer. Our experts also write for renowned magazines such as Guitarist, Total Guitar, Computer Music, Future Music and Rhythm. All are part of Future PLC, the biggest publisher of music making magazines in the world.
Specification
Graphics memory
512
Video output
DVI HDTV
API support
DirectX 10 OpenGL 2.0
Graphics memory type
GDDR3
Features
PCI-E (x16) interface
