The R600 is finally here. I'm sure the overall performance is not what AMD was hoping for. Nobody ever shoots to have their newest product be the 2nd best. But pricing it at $399 and including a very nice game bundle will make the HD 2900 XT a VERY worthwhile purchase. I also have the feeling that there is a significant amount of performance increase to be realized through future driver releases ala X1800XT.

It is not 2nd best (after 8800ULTRA), not 3rd best (after 8800GTX), not 4th best (after 8800GTX-640), but 5th best (after 8800GTS-320), or even worse ;)

Bad performance with AA turned on (everybody turns on AA), huge power consumption, late to the market.

A definitive failure.

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Bad performance with AA turned on (everybody turns on AA), huge power consumption, late to the market.

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Says who? Most people I know don't care to turn on AA since they visually can't see a difference. Only people who are picky about everything they see do normally, the majority of people don't notice "jaggies" since the brain fixes it for you when you play.

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the majority of people don't notice "jaggies" since the brain fixes it for you when you play.

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Says who? No one spent $400 on a video card would turn off AA.

Depends on the game or player tbh.

I play within ladders without AA turned on, but for games like oblivion I would use AA. Depends on your needs at the time.

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Says who? No one spent $400 on a video card would turn off AA.

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Sure they do, because its a small "tweak" with a performance hit. I say who spends $400 on a video card to remove "jaggies" when they are not noticeable in the first place to most people. Same reason most people don't go for SLI or Crossfire, because it really in the end offers nothing substantial for most people who play games.

Some might like it, but they would not miss it if they stopped using it for some time. Its not like its make or break feature of a video card.

Says who? Most people I know don't care to turn on AA since they visually can't see a difference.
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Wow, I never turn it of once I am used to have AA. I cannot play games anymore without AA.

$400 is a lot of money. Not terribly long ago the highest end GPU available didn't cost more than $400. Now they hit $750 so you start to think $400 sounds cheap. It's really not. It's a heck of a lot of money for one piece of hardware. You can put together a 650i SLI rig with 2GB of DDR2 6400 and an E4400 for that much money. I know because I just did that. I kept my 7900GT from my old rig because I wanted to see how R600 did before purchasing an 8800GTS 640MB. Now that we've seen initial results I will wait to see how R600 does with more mature drivers and also wait to see the 640MB GTS price come down even more in the meantime.

http://www.randomhouse.com/wotd/index.pperl?date=19970115

"the expression to call a spade a spade is thousands of years old and etymologically has nothing whatsoever to do with any racial sentiment."

whoops...replied to the wrong one.