ATI 2900xt 1GB - any good?

cashville

Hi,

So I have a Radeon 2900xt 1GB DDR4 card (Dual-core 2.4Ghz E6600 along with 3GB of RAM). I have kept up to date with all the Catalyst drivers that ATI have released.

Now I know it's not exactly a new card,but I would have thought it was decent enough to run any new game pretty well, but recently with Far Cry 2, Dawn of War 2 and Empire:Total War I've been having terrible problems.
I've tried fiddling with the in-game settings but it doesn't make any difference, performance sucks and in the case of Far Cry2 it was unplayable. Should I invest in a new nVidia card or is there something really simple I'm missing out on here? Missing driver,Catalyst settings etc.

Any advice would be appreciated, I'm not great with the technical side of these things.

uberpixie

cashville wrote: »

Hi,
Now I know it's not exactly a new card,but I would have thought it was decent enough to run any new game pretty well, but recently with Far Cry 2, Dawn of War 2 and Empire:Total War I've been having terrible problems.
I've tried fiddling with the in-game settings but it doesn't make any difference, performance sucks and in the case of Far Cry2 it was unplayable. Should I invest in a new nVidia card or is there something really simple I'm missing out on here? Missing driver,Catalyst settings etc.

Any advice would be appreciated, I'm not great with the technical side of these things.

The 2900 series was not a fantastic series from ATI: they ran very hot and sucked up a lot of juice and were not great with Anti Aliasing enabled. The 8800 series at the time were better.

While not the best from ATI: it should be capable of playing modern games at ok settings.

What resolution and settings are you trying to play games at?
Are you using Anti Aliasing? (AA enabled cripples the 2900 series)

cashville

First off, I really appreciate you taking the time to reply to the thread.

You're dead right about it running very hot, I had a go at overclocking and could barely do anything without the temperature going wayyyyy up. I don't really know what I'm doing so I thought it was best I leave it alone.

I try and play any game I get on 'high' settings, this is generally what the default or auto-detect would be. I wouldn't bother setting it to 'very high' or 'ultra'. With Dawn of War 2 I have the game on high settings,it runs okay but there is a weird grid that appears on the map,it's like playing in an editor.
Far Cry 2 was a complete write-off,weird colours/textures/strange goings on in general made it literally unplayable.Changing settings did nothing.
Empire is fine in the campaign map, but during battles most of the screen flickers and the menus turn blue amongst other things,again I've fiddled with the settings and kind of worked around it. But it happens every time I enter a battle,so I'm constantly changing to and from different settings which is ridiculous and it doesn't pinpoint the problem.

The best thing to do might be invest in another card. Would you go nVidia instead? Any particular model you might recommend?

Thanks again.

PogMoThoin

What size monitor You got? What resolution do You game at?

cashville

Dell widescreen kind of a deal...it's around 22". 1920 x 1080

I only got this recently, I had a standard 17" Dell and experienced the same problems on Far Cry 2.
Is the resolution too much for the card or something?

Thanks also for replying.

PogMoThoin

cashville wrote: »

Dell widescreen kind of a deal...it's around 22". 1920 x 1080

Yeah You'd struggle with FarCry2 at that resolution with anything more then medium details. Set your settings to med/low, turn off antialiasing and vsync. You could also reduce your resolution ingame to something lower, windowed maybe.

Whats the rest of Your specs BTW?

Edit, which is it? 22" has resolution of 1680x1050, 24" has 1920x1200, i suspect your mixing the two. Check your display settings properties by right clicking your desktop, how high does it go?

cashville

2.4 E6600 Dual Core with 4 GB of RAM, which runs at 3 as its 32-bit.

Any suggestions on a beefy card out there at the moment? I need to upgrade as I wouldn't be happy playing anything on medium or low. Is it fair to say investing in an nVidia card would be a safer bet? All the games out now seem to have that video at the start 'runs better with nVidia'.

PogMoThoin

cashville wrote: »

Is it fair to say investing in an nVidia card would be a safer bet? All the games out now seem to have that video at the start 'runs better with nVidia'.

Nope, its just marketing spiel. Ati make some great cards too, I've got a HD4870, plays any game at high detail @ 1920x1200.

Whats Your budget?

cashville

I'd be willing to pay up to €300. After that it'd want to be future-proof for about 5 years! It's fairly annoying that better cards come out every 6 months.

Do you think I need a new processor? I heard games don't really utilise quad-core, that dual-core should do the trick....but you hear lots of things.

CakeJumperer

It sound as if your current card is artifacting. Try a different driver to see if it makes any difference.
Your processor should be fine for 90% of games; RTS' and GTA4 would benefit from a faster processor. You can overclock it anyway.
If you're gaming on a 22" 1680 x 1050 screen a ATI HD4850 would run most games on high comfortably, @ 1920 x 1200 a HD4870/GTX260 would be the minimum you'd want to go for for new and future games.
Pixmania.ie has some great deals on the HD4870 atm: http://www.pixmania.ie/ie/uk/772/xx/xx/103/9/criteresn.html

uberpixie

cashville wrote: »

I'd be willing to pay up to €300. After that it'd want to be future-proof for about 5 years! It's fairly annoying that better cards come out every 6 months.

Do you think I need a new processor? I heard games don't really utilise quad-core, that dual-core should do the trick....but you hear lots of things.

Quad cores has only really been of use in Supreme Commander. Most games benefit from a dual core greatly and not much extra from a quadcore.

Gfx card wise: if you get a year and a half to 2 years out of a gfx card you are going well.

Nothing will really give you future proofing over 5 years unless you are not too fussy about reducing gfx settings and running games at lower resolutions.

CPU wise: I wouldn't jump to a quad until prices come down greatly. You won't really notice a difference from going from a 2.4 ghz dualie to a 2.4ghz quad in the vast majority of games.

As pointed out a new gfx card would by far have a greater impact on game performance.

After having a think about some of the replies on the thread I would start by looking at heat in your case and your gfx card.

Clean out all dust on the gfx card cooler, run the pc with the side panel off and see if you still get artifacting. (might help, it is a very hot card and heat can cause a lot of daft issues, the card itself may be damaged, but cleaning it may reduce over heating which may resolve, so its worth trying)

Then test the pc with a spare gfx card if you have one/borrow one.

A 2900XT 1 gig should be able to run DOW2 on high no problem, its not a ver intensive game.

Also as mentione the ATI 4850s and 4870s are very good picks. I went from a 8800 GTS 320mb to an ATI 4870 and I runs like a dream for 1680x1050.

cashville

Guys, thanks so much for taking the time to reply to my thread. Really appreciate it, will have a look into any possible heat issue and will probably eye up getting a new one too.

Any recommendations up to around €300 quid will be gladly noted!

smyff

im an ati man myself

id either go for the 260gtx http://www.dabs.ie/ProductView.aspx?Quicklinx=5693&ret=compare&ql=54TY&ql=5BJ2&ql=54S0&ql=5693&ql=5974&NavigationKey=11137,422790000&CategorySelectedId=11137

or the hd 4870 http://www.dabs.ie/ProductView.aspx?Quicklinx=5F1C&ret=compare&ql=58JQ&ql=5G4K&ql=5F1C&ql=5F1B&NavigationKey=11137,426200000&CategorySelectedId=11137

theres gonna be a hd 4890 out pretty soon aswell though, so id wait a month or so just to see how much it costs and how it perfoms.

being from the north though, compared to the .com link of dabs, its a good 30quid cheaper.

Woden

In the 300 euro region I think you'd be looking at something along the lines of

http://www.komplett.ie/k/ki.aspx?sku=396368

with the usual caveat about crossfire drivers etc.

It came out well in a recent anandtech multigpu round up if memory serves.

Yeah here you go for farcry 2

http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=3517&p=10

"But the real stand out has to be the Sapphire Radeon HD 4850 X2 2GB. This unique card really shined and held it's own all the way up to 2560x1600. While a 1GB 4850 might not make much sense (the extra RAM only really helps at resolutions where the 4850 can't keep up in terms of processing power), the 1GB of RAM per GPU on the 4850 X2 2GB really helps make this single card multiGPU option high end."

I don't think the specific options linked above are good value compared to this card. However you can get a 1gb 4870 for cheaper shopping around e.g

http://www.komplett.ie/k/ki.aspx?sku=442787

something which I am considering myself for gaming at 1900x1200

cashville

PogMoThoin wrote: »

Yeah You'd struggle with FarCry2 at that resolution with anything more then medium details. Set your settings to med/low, turn off antialiasing and vsync. You could also reduce your resolution ingame to something lower, windowed maybe.

Whats the rest of Your specs BTW?

Edit, which is it? 22" has resolution of 1680x1050, 24" has 1920x1200, i suspect your mixing the two. Check your display settings properties by right clicking your desktop, how high does it go?

24" 1920x1200

cashville

Does anyone think getting a GTX 295 would be worth it?

CakeJumperer

It'd pobably be best(price/performance wise) to upgrade to a high-end single card solution and overclock the card and your processor. The GTX295 would certainly shine with new games @ 1920 x 1200 though if you want to blow some money;)

cashville

I ended up getting a GTX 285 recently for 300 squid, thanks to all who contributed to the thread.