AMD-ATI Ships Radeon 2900 XT With 1GB Memory 132
MojoKid writes "Prior to AMD-ATI's Radeon HD 2000 series introduction, rumors circulated regarding an ultra-high clocked ATI R600-based card, that featured a large 1GB frame buffer. Some even went so far as to say the GPU would be clocked near 1GHz. When the R600 arrived in the form of the Radeon HD 2900 XT, it was outfitted with 'only' 512MB of frame buffer memory and its GPU and memory clock speeds didn't come close to the numbers in those early rumors. Some of AMD's partners, however, have since decided to introduce R600-based products that do feature 1GB frame buffers, like the Diamond Viper HD 2900 XT 1GB in both single-card and CrossFire configurations. At 2GHz DDR, the memory on the card is also clocked higher than AMD's reference designs but the GPU remains clocked at 742MHz"
Useful for 3D animation work. (Score:5, Informative)
Sounds useful for 3D animation work, where you need all that memory for textures. Remember, by the time players see a game, the textures have been "optimized"; stored at the minimum resolution that will do the job, and possibly with level of detail processing in the game engine. Developers and artists need to work with that data in its original, high-resolution form.
Re:Useless! (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Useless! (Score:2, Informative)
Comment removed (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Useful for 3D animation work. (Score:3, Informative)
Frame buffer? You mean video ram? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Useless! (Score:3, Informative)
Basically, other than the framebuffer for what's actually displayed on screen none of the graphics card memory is depended on screen resolution.
Anyway, this card isn't useful *now*. That's because video game producers target the cards that are widely available. 2 years from now you're going to need *at least* 1GB to run games at their max settings.
That could be viewed as a serious question (Score:3, Informative)
Quad 32" screens at 1600x1200 fits in 32Mb (Score:3, Informative)
What you *do* need it for is texture and vertex data, but even then games aren't really going to use it - they're designed for current hardware.
Nope, the only people who'll buy this are ignorants with too much money*.
- Not that there's any shortage of those.
[*]
How this is newsworthy now (Score:1, Informative)
Re:also, more vespene gas (Score:2, Informative)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/StarCraft#Gameplay [wikipedia.org]
Re:But... (Score:4, Informative)
I know you're kidding, but as a matter of fact, it is supported under Linux by a couple different drivers.
A good review of the 2900 XT under Linux [phoronix.com]In fact, you have options.
Using the proprietary driver [phoronix.com]
Using the open source driver [phoronix.com]
Re:Useless! (Score:3, Informative)
Memory doesn't make a card faster, except on REALLY insane resolutions (way higher than 4MP I suspect) when you really need all those textures close at hand, and what with PCIe bus being nowhere near saturated, putting said textures closer, latency-wise, to the plate is really more than its made out to be. Ton-of-memory-cards are just a tax on people who don't understand what the fuck really matters in their system. Sorta like uber-expensive-RAM which gives an entire 2% improvement over what el-cheapo brandless stuff does.
What *does* a fast card make, at least as of 8th generation GF's which have many parallel stream processors, is a LOT of processors. The jump from 32 in the mid-range cards, to 96 or 128 in the high-end ones, is what makes these cards kick royal ass.
Re:UEI++ (Score:3, Informative)
More info on the 4GB limit (Score:2, Informative)
A good article on it is here: http://www.dansdata.com/askdan00015.htm [dansdata.com]