ATI HD 2900XT Is Awesome

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To get the best performance out of the HD 2900, the Test Center recommends adding 2 Gbytes of RAM to a system; like the Nvidia GeForce 8800 GTS SLI, the ATI card consumes a lot of power. Because the HD 2900 requires two PCIe power connectors, a system using 750 watts or higher is recommended before installing the graphics card. However, engineers tested it on a system with a 650-watt power supply, and it performed well.

The HD 2900 arrives with an S-Video and two DVI-I connections, including various adapters such as DVI to VGA, DVI to HDMI and DVI to HDTV. In addition, the card comes with a short HDTV output cable. For best performance, ATI recommends activating the CrossFire Technology. The card supports two DVI displays, each supported by two independent display controllers, both of which can process a display output up to 30 bits of color.

One of the coolest tools of the ATI Catalyst software suite is the Control Center. The advanced views are easy to follow even for beginners, and it supports skinning. The Control Center runs like a server and works on top of .Net. The vendor provides an SDK so developers can integrate or simply build applications that need to manage graphics on monitors. In addition, the tool supports OpenGL APIs for realtime 3-D rendering and graphics acceleration. The Hydravision multidesktop viewing tool is also easy to configure.