There is no R600 Linux driver yet, but as we have shared before it is coming later this year. When the Linux support does arrive, we will be delivering same day Linux benchmarks with a plethora of different graphics cards as well as seeing if the new AMD Linux driver can finally outperform NVIDIA's binary driver and hardware, which for years has been faster under Linux. Among the many graphics cards that we will be using to deliver these initial benchmarks is the Sapphire Radeon HD 2900 XT 512MB graphics accelerator. While being stuck with the old driver, we have a few words to say on Sapphire's fastest Radeon HD 2900 XT 512MB GPU offering. - Phonorix

Sapphire Radeon HD 2900 XT Graphics Linux Preview

We checked out Sapphire graphics cards in the past, but for those of you out of the loop, Sapphire is AMD's largest worldwide partner for distributing ATI graphics cards with production capabilities topping out at over 1.8 million units per month. Aside from producing both AGP and PCI Express graphics cards, Sapphire recently began producing Intel and AMD motherboards as well as a small number of multimedia products. The Sapphire Radeon HD 2900 XT had arrived in retail packaging with a cutout on the front of the box to show the actual graphics card. On all sides of the box was quite a bit of information visible.

The Sapphire Radeon HD 2900 XT closely follows AMD's Radeon HD 2900 XT reference design and with that said the GPU and memory cooler found on the R600 is made out of copper and uses dual heatpipes to effectively dissipate the heat. Covering the Radeon HD 2900 XT cooling solution is a red translucent Lexan cover, which covers nearly the entire PCB. At the back corner of the PCB is a 6-pin and 8-pin PCI Express power connector. With this power hungry graphics card two of the traditional 6-pin power connectors will allow the Radeon HD 2900 XT to function, but not in terms of overclocking.

Some of the other technical benefits for the Radeon HD 2900 XT include DirectX 10 if you use Microsoft Windows, Shader Model 4.0, 320 stream processors and 512MB of 512-bit GDDR3 video memory. Sapphire also produces a Radeon HD 2900 XT graphics card with 1GB of video memory that does perform even faster. When it comes to the hardware, Sapphire Technology has made a great package following the AMD Radeon HD 2900 XT reference design and they include a number of extra accessories though not all of them are relevant to Linux users.