[UPDATE: Added new release information and benchmark results for the Radeon HD 2600 and HD 2400 series cards.]
AMD may have released its new DirectX 10-compatible ATI Radeon months after the Windows Vista launch, but the delay hasn't affected PC enthusiasts because most of the highly anticipated DirectX 10 games, such as Crysis and BioShock, aren't going to arrive until the second half of the year. Yes, we've seen DirectX 10 versions of Lost Planet and Company of Heroes, but we can't expect modified DirectX 9 games to compete against new games developed for DirectX 10. Subtle shadowing changes and extra rocks on the ground aren't going to help Microsoft sell more copies of Vista.
Those holding off on DirectX 10 Windows Vista upgrades in anticipation of upcoming DirectX 10 games can choose from two brands of video cards. Nvidia's DX10-compatible GeForce 8 series has been available since the end of last year. AMD released the first member of its ATI Radeon HD 2000 GPU lineup, the ATI Radeon HD 2900 XT, this past May. The midrange Radeon HD 2600 and the entry-level Radeon HD 2400 cards arrive in early July. All the Radeon HD 2000 series cards feature full DirectX 10 compatibility, image quality enhancements, and hardware-accelerated high-definition video support.
| Radeon HD 2900 XT | Radeon HD 2600 XT | Radeon HD 2600 Pro | Radeon HD 2400 XT | Radeon HD 2400 Pro | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Price: | $399 | $149 (GDDR4), $119 (GDDR3) | $89 – 99 | $75 – 85 | $50 – 55 |
| Stream Processing Units: | 320 | 120 | 120 | 40 | 40 |
| Clock Speed: | 740MHz | 800MHz | 600MHz | 700MHz | 525MHz |
| Memory: | 512MB (GDDR3) | 256MB (GDDR4, GDDR3) | 256MB (GDDR3, DDR2) | 256MB (GDDR3) | 128 – 256MB (DDR2) |
| Memory Interface: | 512-bit | 128-bit | 128-bit | 64-bit | 64-bit |
| Memory Speed: | 825MHz | 800MHz (GDDR3), 1100MHz (GDDR4) | 400 – 500MHz | 700 – 800MHz | 400 – 500MHz |
| Transistors: | 700 million | 390 million | 390 million | 180 million | 180 million |
The Radeon HD 2600 and Radeon HD 2400 cards will be available in the usual Pro and XT variants, but there will be only a single XT card at the HD 2900 level at launch. The XT cards generally have faster core and memory clock speeds than the Pro versions. The model numbers indicate relative GPU strength. For example, the Radeon HD 2900 has 320 stream processing units, while the Radeon HD 2600 and Radeon HD 2400 have 120 and 40 stream processing units, respectively. On-board memory will range from 256MB for the 2400, 256MB for the 2600, and up to 512MB for the 2900. Board manufacturers will likely offer more memory options as the GPU line matures. Several manufacturers are also working on special Radeon HD 2600 XT "Gemini" cards that will have two 2600 XT GPUs on a single card. ATI hasn't announced a launch date for the dual-GPU "Gemini" board yet, but the company has stated that the suggested pricing will be in the $189-249 range.
The Radeon HD 2000 GPU is ATI's first unified shader architecture for the desktop, but it's actually a second-generation design. ATI's first unified shader was the "Xenos" GPU built for the Xbox 360. Older, nonunified shader designs had separate hardware shaders dedicated to pixel or vertex processing. This made GPUs inefficient, because games never maintain the same pixel-to-vertex workload ratio to always match the pixel-to-vertex shader ratios on the hardware. The unified shader architecture gives the GPU more flexibility by allowing all the shaders to process pixel, vertex, and now, with DirectX 10, geometry work. Nvidia also switched over from traditional shaders to the unified shader approach in its current GeForce 8 GPU.
Tech Demo
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ATI created a new Ruby "Whiteout" tech demo to show off what the Radeon HD 2900 XT can do. In the new demo, the Ruby model has 200,000 triangles, and the entire video averages more than 1 million triangles per frame. In comparison, the Ruby from the Radeon X1000 series demo, "The Assassin," only has 80,000 triangles, and the demo averages just over 500,000 triangles per frame. The new Ruby also has 128 facial animation targets compared to four for the older models, which allows for more realistic facial expressions.
The Radeon HD 2900 XT will also feature the return of the voucher. Each card will come with a code for Valve's Half-Life 2: The Black Box, which includes Half-Life 2 Episode 2, Portal, and Team Fortress 2. It'll be a great value if the game ships on time. Several years ago, ATI partnered with Valve to include vouchers for the original Half-Life 2 with high-end Radeon 9000 series cards, but some consumers ended up waiting years to cash in because of development delays.
ATI Radeon HD 2000 Series Hands-On
Find out about ATI's DirectX 10 Radeon HD 2000 series video card lineup.
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