Item: Sapphire Radeon HD 2900 XT 512MiB
Author: Tarinder Sandhu

Final thoughts, HEXUS awards, HEXUS where2buy, HEXUS.right2reply, further reading

Summing it up, the underlying R600 SKU is good, but we're adamant that there's more performance to come once the drivers have been fully optimised. Still, the Radeon HD 2900 XT makes for a interesting case at around £230: it has plenty of potential but also a number of foibles, notably a wattage-eating GPU and annoying fan-pitch modulation under 3D load.

Sapphire has used the common-sense approach and released its Radeon HD 2900 XT with no alterations to the reference design, keeping the all-important price metric competitive. That said, a customised design that eradicated the reference's annoying fan-pitch modulation would have been a real bonus.

Being targeted towards the enthusiast on price above all else, the Sapphire bundle isn't quite as feature-rich as, say, the recently-reviewed ASUS's, although that package costs around £15 more. The warranty, too, is not quite as good, being two years instead of three.

Looking at the bigger picture, Sapphire gains over smaller AIBs - whose HD 2900 XTs cost the same - by having a larger reseller network; it's available through a wide range of e-tailers.

Our advice for users looking to upgrade their present PCIe-based graphics card and have around £230 to spend, then, would be to look at either this Sapphire card or a low-cost, big-name GeForce 8800 GTS 640; both are strong in different areas, and neither will be a bad buy. Users who reckon an extra year's warranty and full-game S.T.A.L.K.E.R is worth an extra £10-£15 should opt for the ASUS model. If your budget falls short by around £50 then the obvious and, frankly, only card you should consider is the GeForce 8800 GTS 320. In short, work out your budget and you won't go wrong with any of our recommendations. We'll reserve judgment on the limited-run Radeon HD 2900 XT 1GiB until it's been reviewed.

Bottom line: a tried-and-trusted formula from Sapphire - low cost and high availability - makes its Radeon HD 2900 XT 512MiB a decent enough choice. Can we please have a new BIOS to shut that cooler up, though?

HEXUS Awards

Sapphire Radeon HD 2900 XT 512MiB

HEXUS Where2Buy

The Sapphire Radeon HD 2900 XT can be purchased for around £233 here

HEXUS Right2Reply

At HEXUS.net, we invite the companies whose products we test to comment on our articles. If any of Sapphire's representatives choose to respond, we'll publish their commentary here verbatim.

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HEXUS Forums :: 2 Comments

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Posted by dfour - Thu 30 Aug 2007 11:35

Nice review :)

So if ATI could have gotten all the 2900 to run at 850 core they would have a more competative card on there hands. Now what would a .6 micron core be able to run at ????:mrgreen:

Posted by this_is_gav - Thu 30 Aug 2007 19:31

Review
We also note that the installation of said drivers makes the HD 2900 XT the default audio device, so novice users may wonder just why they can't export audio from their motherboard's ports after installation - it's something to be wary of, folks.

That's been fixed in the 7.8 drivers. :)