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AMD Finally Launches Low-Price DX10 Cards 99

Posted by Zonk from the now-you-just-have-to-get-vista dept.
Steve Kerrison writes "The Radeon 'R600' HD 2900 XT was late coming, and so by extension are the lower cost parts derived from it. The Radeon HD 2400 and 2600s are now available, just the same, with pricing aimed at knocking mid-range GeForce 8 series cards off people's shopping lists. There's more to a graphics card than price; performance and driver functionality are key too. HEXUS had some fun and games testing the new Radeons: 'The hardware designers may now be sitting back, content that their DX10-supporting midrange SKUs are at least as compelling as the competition's. But, and it's a big, big but, the current drivers aren't realizing the kind of performance we'd expect from a knowledge of the Radeon HD 2600 XT's setup.'" A very useful article ... unfortunately spread across a dozen pages with no 'print view' available.
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AMD Finally Launches Low-Price DX10 Cards More

AMD Finally Launches Low-Price DX10 Cards

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  • Jump right to the end... (Score:5, Informative)

    by chris098 ( 536090 ) on Thursday June 28, 2007 @02:14PM (#19679687) Homepage
    Usually when I read these reviews, the first page that I read is the conclusions. I typically don't have the attention span to read through the whole thing, so this lets me get the drift of the article without sucking up too much time.

    The link to the conclusion page: http://www.hexus.net/content/item.php?item=9187&pa ge=12 [hexus.net]

    I found it humorous that the first line on that page is "Congratulations on getting this far, folks.".
  • I know that their drivers are crap, however what ever came of AMD's commitment to open sourcing their drivers?
    I'm pretty sure there's at least a couple hundred enthusiasts that could get these cards up to their maximum potential in a few weeks.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Champ ( 91601 )
      Having been burned by ATI drivers in both Windows and Linux, I now buy *only* Nvidia, and will continue to do so until all their talk about drivers is backed by action. Hell, even Intel's crappy integrated graphics work better in xorg than ATI.

      This isn't an open-source rant either. I'd be happy with a free-as-in-beer proprietary driver that didn't suck.

      I want to see results. And then, and only then, will I let myself get suckered in again.

      • Re:So how bout that open source? (Score:5, Interesting)

        by TeknoHog ( 164938 ) on Thursday June 28, 2007 @02:40PM (#19680093) Homepage Journal

        Hell, even Intel's crappy integrated graphics work better in xorg than ATI.

        For very strange values of 'crappy'. Intel chips have opensource drivers, unlike those of ATI or NVidia, and most of them are already incorporated into official releases of Linux and Xorg. Intel's graphics chips may not be powerful enough for heavy gaming, but that should not be an issue for Linux users anyway. The Core 2 fiasco is a shame though.

        • Re:So how bout that open source? (Score:5, Insightful)

          by vux984 ( 928602 ) on Thursday June 28, 2007 @03:35PM (#19680933)
          Intel's graphics chips may not be powerful enough for heavy gaming, but that should not be an issue for Linux users anyway.

          Right. Because I have a completely separate computer that I use to boot windows games. Oh wait...

          I see your point, but this is slashdot... not "Microsoft office user formum and portal system framework v3.0" (At least that's what I'd imagine they'd call it.)

          Point is we are largely technology enthusiasts... and there is nothing in intel integrated graphics to be enthusiastic about. Their drivers yes... but the chips themselves... hell no.

          • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

            by TeknoHog ( 164938 )

            Point is we are largely technology enthusiasts... and there is nothing in intel integrated graphics to be enthusiastic about. Their drivers yes... but the chips themselves... hell no.

            I'm sure there is a wide spectrum of technology enthusiasm here. Sheer computational power is not always the most desirable thing. Many people also care about factors like power consumption, small size, low price and low noise, in addition to open specs and source.

            • Re: (Score:1)

              by dintech ( 998802 )
              Many people also care about factors like power consumption, small size, low price and low noise

              I'm not sure if you are buying a graphics card or a wife.

          • Re: (Score:1)

            by ClamIAm ( 926466 )
            Intel beat Nvidia/ATI to market with the new "unified shader architecture" hotness. Sure, the part itself isn't fast, but it sounds like some interesting things may be developing with Intel and their graphics parts.
          • I've no idea what Linux performance was like pre-GMA X3000, but I'm more than happy with my Intel onboard GFX (G965 chipset). Sure, like the parent says they're useless for games but they have more than enough grunt to run Beryl and XScreensaver/RSS-GLX at 1680x1050. Low power usage, less heat and no noisy fans, and incredibly stable with the newer revs of drivers (the initial releases hard-locked my machine a couple of times when running OGL).

            I can see why you'd say they were crappy if you don't have a sep

      • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

        by erroneus ( 253617 )
        I cannot say AMEN BROTHER! loud enough!

        I have been making postings on every forum in which I regularly participate regarding ATI's horrible customer satisfaction performance. I tell everyone I can about my replacing the video device in my Dell Laptop with an nVidia board. (Fortunately, many Dell laptops offer that kind of flexibility and there is no shortage of eBay sellers selling the parts I seek.) Chief complaints:

        * Linux drivers not keeping up with the rest in features and supported technologies (lik

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by node159 ( 636992 )
        Ha! Speak for yourself, the Windows ones are sheit. They are only marginally better than my memory which keeps forgetting no to by machines with intel graphics chip sets.

    • Re: (Score:1, Flamebait)

      by LWATCDR ( 28044 )
      "I'm pretty sure there's at least a couple hundred enthusiasts that could get these cards up to their maximum potential in a few weeks."
      Yea that is why GIMP is better than Photoshop and their are FOSS 3-D CAD software better then Soldworks and Autocad!
      Maybe but it is just possible that ATIs drivers where not written by idiots. Maybe it is that there hardware just isn't as good as nVidia or a heck of a lot harder to write for.
      I like FOSS as much as the next person but it really isn't magic.
      • There have been non ATI released Drivers for ATI card that were vastly superior to ATI's crap.

      • Re:So how bout that open source? (Score:4, Interesting)

        by drinkypoo ( 153816 ) <drink@hyperlogos.org> on Thursday June 28, 2007 @03:14PM (#19680623) Homepage Journal

        Maybe but it is just possible that ATIs drivers where not written by idiots.

        Obviously you don't have any [real] experience with any ATI drivers written any time during their lifetime because you would know that no, that is not possible. The people writing ATI's drivers are, in fact, idiots.

        There were problems with Windows drivers for the mach32 and mach64! I mean these aren't even 3d chips! and they don't have much 2d acceleration, either.

        The Free drivers for ati tend to be more stable than the commercial drivers, although they don't support as much hardware. but they DO support hardware ATI doesn't, because ATI doesn't support Rage video devices. That's right, if you have a rage chip, ATI has simply abandoned you. Keep in mind that this represents a HUGE number of laptops.

        If ATI would just give us the specs we (we the community, not we as in me and some other guy) wouldn't need them to open-source their drivers. Perhaps they're hoping to make themselves look less bad by releasing their drivers instead of specs and thus slowing down the OSS community :P

        • The Rage chip is in very few laptops any more- it's primarily seen in server motherboards today. Even then, the ES1000 is starting replacing the Rage in server boards. I have not seen any laptops in the past half-decade or more using the Rage chips. It's been Intel i810 IGP, 845/855 Extreme Graphics, or one of the GMA revisions; NVIDIA GeForce 6100/6150, or the ATi Xpress 200M/Radeon x12x0 if it wasn't a discrete card.

        • Re: (Score:1, Redundant)

          by LWATCDR ( 28044 )
          I have an ATI card in my notebook and it works fine with Linux using the FOSS drivers. A little slow but it works.
          I love how I get blasted for this when people don't even both to read my post. I said maybe the the FOSS community could write better drivers. But I doubt that they could in as the grandparent posted do it in just a few months with just the specs. Frankly I doubt that it would happen in year unless ATI/AMD helped. Notice that the Intel's FOSS video drives have a lot of code written by and paid

          • I said maybe the the FOSS community could write better drivers. But I doubt that they could in as the grandparent posted do it in just a few months with just the specs.

            They don't have to do it that way, because there's an existing OSS driver, which supports some [older] cards. It's not starting from scratch with specifications. Of course, there is a non-negligible time to actually understand the specifications, figure out where they are wrong, et cetera.

            It would be better if the full driver sources were r

  • Other opinions (Score:1, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward
    PC Perpsective

    http://www.pcper.com/article.php?type=expert&aid=4 26&pid=2 [pcper.com]

    Anyone find others?

  • AMD VS. ATI (Score:5, Interesting)

    by CastrTroy ( 595695 ) on Thursday June 28, 2007 @02:22PM (#19679823)
    I was a little confused when I first read the headline, and the I saw the word Radeon and I remembered that AMD bought ATI. However, aren't they still using the ATI name when selling these cards? Wouldn't it be a little less confusing to say "ATI Finally Launches Low-Price DX10 Cards"? Anyway, if they have dropped the ATI name, I think it's a bad move. ATI had a pretty good reputation. Changing to a different name seems like a bold move.

    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by MorpheousMarty ( 1094907 )
      ATI has a great reputation but AMD does too. However AMD has no negative reputation (ATI is thought to have poor production and overpriced)

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Qwavel ( 733416 )

      I can tell you this much...

      I work about a block away from the main ATI offices (Leslie and 407 in Toronto), and I was surprised at how quickly all (physical) signs of ATI disappeared. ATI became AMD overnight.
    • ATI has a good reputation at getting top-of-the-line ** review cards ** in working order.

      As for drivers and bundled software, it is ALL shite. Ask anybody who has bought an All-in-wonder (aka ViVo): I never had a fully-functioning software set (compared to what was advertised on the box) since the day I bought it in 2002. At some point in time, a feature works, then an update breaks it and makes another one work, rinse, repeat.

      And lately updates have started degrading the performance of my card during v

  • This HotHardware review goes into a bit more detail and other benchmarks as well - [hothardware.com] http://www.hothardware.com/Articles/ATI_Radeon_HD_ 2600_and_2400_Performance/ [hothardware.com]

    FTA - "Throughout all of our in-game and synthetic testing the fastest of the three new mainstream Radeon HD 2000 series cards we tested in this article, the Radeon HD 2600 XT, performed about on par with or sometimes well behind a GeForce 8600 GT. The more affordable Radeon 2600 Pro came in a few percentage points behind the 2600 XT, and as

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Wicko ( 977078 )
      Nice find. Looks like we finally have some good news from that one too. Power consumption is much, much lower than the rest of the competition. Like the article mentioned, will be nice to see some mobile versions of these cards (with good drivers).

    • Integrated HD audio controller with multi-channel (5.1) AC3 support, enabling a plug-and-play cable-less audio solution

      What happened to 7 channel audio? I thought that was one of the critera for HD audio. I guess my family didn't make too big of a mistake when we bought a receiver that can "only" do 6.1 audio and not 7.1, even though the thing doesn't have HDMI inputs/outputs (that might have been a mistake), but fortunately our TV has 2 HDMI inputs and digital optical out.

      • I have a 5.1 receiver, and a HDTV with HDMI in and optical out. Unfortunately, the incoming sound over HDMI does not get routed through to the optical output by my TV.

        If the ATI/AMD cards only do standard 5.1 audio (Dolby Digital or DTS I guess) over HDMI, then the audio controller doesn't really add much. As nearly all motherboards in the last 3 years have an optical/coax output all you're really doing is saving a cable. Maybe there's some additional benefit I'm missing?

  • Where is ATI? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by cerelib ( 903469 ) on Thursday June 28, 2007 @02:27PM (#19679901)
    Is AMD planning on absorbing ATI or keeping it as a separate brand? People keep using "AMD" in place of "ATI". The products are called "ATI Radeon HD 2xxx". The ATI website is now green and AMD branded, but the ATI name is still used on the products. Has there been any word from AMD about the future of the ATI brand? Are they just in transition to absorbing ATI completely?

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by ceeam ( 39911 )
      Why can't a company have several trademarks/brands? Oh, I see it in a shop: "I need a new PC. There are Intel CPUs and AMD CPUs. I'll take Intel please. Now there are video cards - nVidia and AMD. Since I bought Intel AMD won't work with it, right?".... Or something like that. Educating people is hard. Preventing confusion is easier.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by cerelib ( 903469 )
        If you read my post again, I wasn't saying they should absorb ATI. I was just asking because it seems people are using AMD quite a bit to refer to ATI. I personally think they should keep the ATI brand.

  • Guess I won't be buying one... (Score:5, Informative)

    by uarch ( 637449 ) on Thursday June 28, 2007 @02:30PM (#19679941)
    ... not after that review:

    Whatever the game requirements, it's clear that Radeon HD 2600 XT performance is, frankly, horrible. It's comfortably bested by a Radeon X1650 XT and wilfully thrashed by a Radeon X1950 Pro - a card that comes in at the same price.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Xelios ( 822510 )
      Not yet anyway. It's old news by now that ATI's drivers are always behind the curve as far as product launches go, I wouldn't be surprised if Catalyst hasn't been optimized at all for the newest line of Radeons. I suspect performance of all the 2xxx cards will magically climb in the next few months as better drivers are released. To ATI's credit the drivers do end up working well, it just takes them a little longer to get there...
    • History repeats itself. The release $250 MSRP x1600 XT (a MUCH more cut-down card compared to the x1650 XT) only offered slightly better performance than the $150 6600 GT, and got lost among the plethora of better-performing 6800 GS / x800 GTO cards already plunging below $200.

      I found the x1600 reviews especially funny because reviewers blamed the poor performance on the 128-bit memory bus, and not on the anemic number of ROPs/TMUs compared to shader units. Once the 7600 GT was released with the same memo
  • Looking at those results i'm still glad I went with the relatively cheap and cheerful 7900gs, it may only be DX9 but hey I don't have vista, and by there time there are any decent games requiring it, this generation will be completely obsolete.

    8800gts and above are the only worth while DX10 cards imho.

  • This is upsetting. (Score:2, Informative)

    by Wicko ( 977078 )
    AMD.ATI really needed to have some good news with these cards, but they blew it with the first impressions. I can only hope they can stay in the game be releasing some quality drivers to take advantage of these new cards. From the looks of it, 8600 hardware is peanuts compared to the 2600. With the expected prices, they should be killing the mid/low range DX10 market. This does not bode well. I look forward to reviews of retail cards, but my enthusiasm has dropped. Seems as if nVidia was almost counting on

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by PopeRatzo ( 965947 ) *
      I won't be needing a DX10 graphics card for some time. Microsoft has really let down their strategic partners by not building compelling reasons to upgrade into Windows Vista. If the main reason to buy one of these cards is DX10, and DX10 is Vista-only, and there's no good reason for me to upgrade to Vista, why would I want one of these cards?

      It wasn't that long ago that I really coveted the latest computer technology - software and hardware. But today, I look only for the best technology that fits my cu

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by Wicko ( 977078 )
        It's not limited to just DX10. There is a large performance boost (among the 8800 series) over the last generation of cards, that might be necessary for the new games coming out, not limited to DX10 rendering. It's understandable that you aren't as interested in the new things coming around, I also have a lack of interest in the PS3, the iPhone, and Vista. Lucky for me, I was able to obtain a free copy of Vista Business through my school. I just feel that AMD.ATI really needs to kick it up a notch to keep
        • I understand, Wicko. I want AMD.ATI to succeed, too. It was the Athlon after all that forced Intel to come out with the Core2Duo, the best computer product of last year. I had high hopes when I heard that AMD bought ATI, and I want to see powerful, efficient graphics processors (and other kinds of "media" processors, including some breakthroughs in consumer sound circuitry for computers). My only point was that Vista and DX10 wasn't going to be driving my interest.

  • Karma to Burn (Score:3, Interesting)

    by jshriverWVU ( 810740 ) on Thursday June 28, 2007 @02:45PM (#19680197)
    While the hardware does sound like a good bang for your buck. Personally I don't care what card is supported via any version of DirectX. Especially since DX10 is Vista only.

    Let me know when there are good Linux drivers out closed or not, and MesaGL plays happily with it.

  • I might be off, but didnt ATI make Radeons? Thought AMD was strictly CPU.
    • AMD bought ATI a short time back. The products are still called "ATI Radeon blah blah", but if you go to www.ati.com, you'll notice that they're in the process of changing the company name on things from ATI to AMD.
  • ",,,the current drivers aren't realizing the kind of performance we'd expect from a knowledge of the Radeon HD 2600 XT's"

    So there good then? Because I expected them to be like all the other ATI produced drivers....crappy.
  • How fast are these cards? I know that Apple recently updated the MBPs and will probably follow up with imac updates also. Other than dx10 support, how does the 8600 compare with say the 7600s??
    • Apple updated the MacBook Pro by switching to nVidia. ATI's Mac drivers are almost as horrible as their Linux drivers.

  • SKU You! (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Joe Snipe ( 224958 ) on Thursday June 28, 2007 @03:13PM (#19680609) Homepage Journal
    Seriously, we are going to keep using SKU? This is an acronym worthy of being added to the everyday lexicon? It's not even a techie acronym, it's for marketing and accounting!

    • Re: (Score:2, Funny)

      by Ant P. ( 974313 )
      I say let them use it. It's easier to spot an idiot when they're using their native tongue.
    • It should be sentenced to Death by SKU-SKU. BTW, kudos for using 'acronym' in its correct meaning.

  • OSS drivers ? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by BESTouff ( 531293 ) on Thursday June 28, 2007 @03:13PM (#19680615)
    OSS drivers for Xorg ? No ? Not interested.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by ceeam ( 39911 )
      Little choice then if you want AMD CPU. And before Intel open-sourced their drivers I bet you did not use GUI at all, right?

      Not that I don't share your sentiment.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by enos ( 627034 )
      I don't understand this setup at all. Why the heck have Xorg drivers instead of straight Linux drivers? It seems that having a framebuffer-type layer that any GUI system could take advantage of would make a whole lot more sense than having the X server control everything. Does no one remember the XFree86 to Xorg switch and how everyone was whining to nVidia because they didn't have Xorg drivers ready right away? Besides, having video drivers depend on X cripples competing systems by forcing them to duplicat
      • DISCLAIMER: I am not a kernel/xorg/any_kind_of coder, so if I'm wrong, don't be suprised...

        But on the other hand, it should make it easier to put them on other OS's using XOrg - from Solaris, the BSD's, or just about anything else on XOrg, correct? Or at least I thought thats what part of the point of having something fairly modular like XOrg was...
      • There is a framebuffer layer.
        Xorg supports the framebuffer driver (under Linux and other OSs)

        OTH X does cool stuff like accelerated scaling and blitting and 3d acceleration only because it has permission to map memory arbitrarily and interface with the video card at a low level.

        It would be very difficult to formally codify all such interfaces through a set of block and characeter devices with IOCTLs and shared memory areas -- these interfaces might even be variable between cards or change over time -- and

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by anethema ( 99553 )

      OSS drivers for Xorg ? No ? Not interested.
      Yeah you and the other guy who cares about that will have a hell of a boycott goin!

  • A very useful article ... unfortunately spread across a dozen pages with no 'print view' available.


    This situation is exactly what the "Repagination" extension for Firefox was created to thwart: it collapses multiple linked pages into one. It's not perfect (page headers and such are replicated, too), but with Aardvark or RIP or similar extensions the result could be cleaned up for printing or archiving.
  • Any AGP version? I couldn't tell.
    • The word was that ATI/AMD was going to release AGP cards for the HD 2000 line, but I haven't heard any word of it in a couple of months.
    • From TFA:

      AGP? AMD's realised that whilst PCIe makes the most implicit sense as the conduit of choice, there's still a huge AGP market that wants to leverage the benefits of a DX10 architecture that's also strong with respect to multimedia. That's why, the firm states, AGP-equipped models will be released by partners a short while after today's announcement. The cost may go up a touch, thanks to the need for a bridging chip, but it's a wise move designed for mass-market appeal.

  • This looks like a complete architectural misfire. I mean ATI's own X1650XT (to say nothing of the 1950pro destroying it) is kicking the crap out of it. Is that an early 2006 midrange card?

    http://www.hexus.net/content/item.php?item=9187&pa ge=7 [hexus.net]

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by ocbwilg ( 259828 )
      This looks like a complete architectural misfire. I mean ATI's own X1650XT (to say nothing of the 1950pro destroying it) is kicking the crap out of it. Is that an early 2006 midrange card?

      More like a marketing misfire. I don't believe that there's anything wrong with the X2xxx architecture. If you look at the X2900XT, it's performance is much better, and comparable to nVidia cards in the same price range. If you look at the X2400 and X2600 series cards, their performance sucks, but aren't that far beh
  • The DX10 out now are crap and a year from now won't be able to play any of the demanding DX10 games coming out. If your looking for a cheap but very fast card I recommend the X1950Pro http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N 8 2E16814102061 [newegg.com] $112 after rebate including shipping. This will last you while without putting a huge hole in your pocket, plus if you end up running Vista at least the performance won't totally suck like it does if you try to use an Nvidia cards under Vista.
  • It's great that these cards are out, but here's one thing that pisses me off. ATI's Cablecard-ready TV Tuner card is only Windows Vista compat. At that, only two of the six flavors of Vista work with it. That means that if you have XP, Linux, or any 4 of the other 6 flavors of Vista, you're SOL if you want to watch digital cable on your computer. Wake me up when we can make use of the hardware video decompressing on either XP or Linux. What I mean is, once we can use either Bluray or ATSC tv tuners.
  • The first ATI card I had was an original all-in-wonder. Nice specs at the time but when it came to drivers, they wouldn't work if you installed them to a folder different from the default. I had more patience in those days so I reported the problem to ATI, they fixed it in the following driver release and then a couple of months later the latest drivers broke again for the same reason. I realized how bad were the software engineering practices at ATI (no regression testing?, come on, it doesn't take a geniu
    • ATI have crap drivers? So do nVidia!

      I've an ex-nVidia who came over to ATI. Why? Crap Drivers. There's one called the "nv4_disp Infinite Loop Bug" that's been around for years. It's across generations of nVidia hardware. The really bad thing is you can't talk to nVidia about it (and yeah, there have been petitions and web pages galore, all to no avail). nVidia don't accept user feedback, period.

      Anyway, got sick of the lockups so kissed nVidia goodbye and couldn't be happier. Now using a new ATI x1950 card n
  • Today sees the official launch of AMD's latest mid-range graphics cards. The Radeon HD 2600 and 2400 family aim to dethrone NVIDIA's GeForce 8600/8500/8400 by offering a greater feature-set, better performance and a lower comparative street price. It all seems too good to be true from a company that has made late introductions something of a mission statement of late. After all, its exceedingly late to market Radeon HD 2900 XT could only compete against NVIDIA's G80 by having a hacksaw taken to its origina
  • Did not RTFFA (read the full f'n article), but I'm curious as to the size of these cards.

    It's hard to fathom until you actually hold it in your hands, much less install it in you case.

    I did not fully appreciate it until trying to install a 1900pro in my case to replace the X800pro.

    The 800 is a big card and has about 1/2" clearance from the hd's and cables in my case (Antec solution
    series full tower. 5 drive cage parallel to the case).
    Tried the 1900, and holy fsck this thing is huge! 9.5" and the last 2+"

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