Date:
Monday , July 09, 2007
Author:
Brent Justice
Editor:
Kyle Bennett
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Sapphire Radeon HD 2900 XT CrossFire

Two retail Sapphire Radeon HD 2900 XT video cards, one Intel Bad Axe 2, and two CrossFire bridge connectors equals ATI’s most powerful graphics combination at this time for gaming. We find out if two Radeon HD 2900 XT video cards in CrossFire is worthy or a waste.

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System Test Setup

For evaluation we are using an EVGA NVIDIA nForce 680i SLI motherboard and an Intel Bad Axe 2 for CrossFire. We are using an Intel Core 2 Duo X6800 2.93 GHz processor and 2GB of Corsair XMS2 Dominator CM2X1024-8888C4D at 4-4-4-12 1T. We are using the latest chipset drivers available and the latest BIOS at time of evaluation.

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Video Card Comparison Setup

We are using the absolute latest driver available from ATI at the time of testing, which is Catalyst 7.6. Catalyst 7.6 is two versions ahead of the initial driver release we first tested with. Catalyst 7.6 is the June release. Catalyst 7.7 will be released in July but is not yet available for the public, 7.6 is the latest version at time of testing.

We are going to compare the single Sapphire Radeon HD 2900 XT to a single BFGTech GeForce 8800 GTS OC2 640MB video card. The BFG card is currently available at Newegg, with no rebates, for a low $409.99. The Sapphire Radeon HD 2900 XT is currently available for fifteen dollars cheaper at $394.99. This is one of the cheaper Radeon HD 2900 XT’s that exist, others go up from there up to $450. The BFGTech 8800 GTS OC2 640MB is the closest competition to the Radeon HD 2900 XT right now. We will compare these two single cards, and look at performance. We will also CrossFire two Radeon HD 2900 XT’s and see how CrossFire improves the gameplay experience compared to the single Radeon HD 2900 XT at lower resolution.

We will then take the CrossFire configuration and compare it directly to two BFGTech GeForce 8800 GTS OC2 640MB video cards in SLI at the high widescreen resolution of 2560x1600. We are also going to throw in a single NVIDIA GeForce 8800 Ultra at 2560x1600 testing. Prices on the GeForce 8800 Ultra have fallen recently and they can now be found for around $650 online, which is cheaper than two Radeon HD 2900 XT’s in CrossFire or two 8800 GTS’s in SLI. It will be interesting to see how this powerful single video card compares.

Evaluation Setup

Please be aware we test our video cards a bit differently from what is the norm. We concentrate on examining the real-world gameplay that each video card provides. The Highest Playable section shows the best Image Quality delivered at a playable frame rate. We use a high performance system, with a very fast CPU in order to remove CPU bottlenecking. We will have apples-to-apples testing following the highest gameplay testing.

In our graphs we use some abbreviations to indicate the method of AA or AF being used.

P ADAA = Performance Adaptive AA – This indicates the use of Performance mode Adaptive AA on X1000 series ATI cards.

Q ADAA = Quality Adaptive AA – This indicates the use of Quality mode Adaptive AA on X1000 series ATI cards.

TR MSAA = Transparency Multisampling Antialiasing – Indicates the use of NVIDIA’s Transparency Multisampling quality setting on GeForce 7 and 8 series video cards.

TR SSAA = Transparency Supersampling Antialiasing – Indicates the use of NVIDIA’s Transparency Supersampling quality setting on GeForce 7 and 8 series video cards.