You have to admit that it's quite strange when the most high-end graphics card from AMD comes in at around 40% cheaper than the top video card from NVIDIA, even after the recent price drop. As far as we can remember, this is the only time we have seen something like this happen. When we had a look at the Radeon HD 2900 XT the other week from MSI we were impressed with it as the new drivers gave it a big boost and it was capable of outperforming the GeForce 8800 GTX at times, so could the Radeon HD 2900 XT continue to perform and even pass the Ultra edition? And is it even worth really spending all that money on a GeForce 8800 Ultra in the end? - TweakTown

ASUS Extreme AH2900 XT 512MB Video Card Review

While we have the typical large box design from ASUS we can see they have gone down the Gigabyte path with front of the box being concentrated on the game that is included in the package. Apart from the game included, we see all the usual details on the front of the box, like model, amount of RAM, main features like HDCP along with a large sticker on the front to mention the inclusion of Black Box, which is actually now Orange Box, which comes with a few extra games, which are yet to be released. Turning the box over we have a pretty standard affair with some extended details on the card itself.

Looking at the front of the card, the only distinct difference between this Radeon HD 2900 XT over other brands is the sticker. If you look closely you can see the silver flames behind the sticker that are on all Radeon HD 2900 XT cards. The top of the card has two power connectors, the 6-pin connector along with the 8-pin connector. Unfortunately unless your power supply has an 8-pin connector, you will lose the ability to have Overdrive enabled, which is the automatic overclocking program. Across the top we have two connectors for CrossFire dual graphics operation.

When it comes to clock speeds the ASUS card follows the standard clocks which come in at 740MHz on the core and 1650MHz effective on the memory. It of course comes with the standard 512MB of GDDR3 memory thought we should see the 1GB model here in the next week or two, which is something to keep in mind. Looking at the overclocking, the Radeon HD 2900 XT went from 743MHz core to 850MHz core and the memory moved from 1658MHz to 1812MHz effective. Thanks to the overclocking power on offer from the Radeon HD 2900 XT we find ourselves coming into arms reach of the GeForce 8800 Ultra.

AMD's Radeon HD 2900 XT graphics card really does continue to show how it can be a dominant card in the market and that the next offering from AMD/ATI should be a strong competitor, we think. Sure, NVIDIA's GeForce 8800 Ultra continues to win but at pricing starting at around or sometimes over 40% of the Raddeon HD 2900 XT, you would expect it too as well. NVIDIA is charging their partners literally a robotic arm and leg from their manufacturing plants for the chips, even after the recent price drop which probably wasn't really even enough.

With the new Catalyst drivers from AMD due out very soon, no doubt the Radeon HD 2900 XT is at the top of the priority list when it comes to performance improvements and even if it doesn't end up beating the GeForce 8800 Ultra, at only half the price, it is very easy to see the value in the Radeon HD 2900 XT. It got some bad press at launch but every time we take a closer look at it, it just seems to get better and better. If anything the release of the Ultra and the high price take makes the Radeon HD 2900 XT look even better as it's not much slower but so much cheaper.