ATI were well behind NVIDIA when it came to releasing their DirectX 10 hardware. Now about 6 months passed between the introduction of the GeForce 8800 range from the green guys before the boys in red brought their Radeon HD 2000 series of cards to the table. Even then, the king of GPU's at the time, the GeForce 8800 GTX, was still way out of the Radeon HD 2900 XT's league. Even then NVIDIA went one step further bringing their Ultra version onto the market to counter the Radeon HD 2900 XT a bit further and to demonstrate their superior product range. However, many have claimed the Radeon HD 2900 XT is a fantastic mid-high range solution, let's see if we concur. - XSReviews

Sapphire Radeon HD 2900 XT 512MB Version Review

The front of the box is dominated by a hooded, ghostly figure and a large window displaying the card within. There is also some assorted specifications and features of the card dotted around the window. The back is much the same this time with some details about the included bundle thrown in too. The Radeon HD 2900 XT from Sapphire is quite a cool looking card. True, it's a bit gimmicky, but its angry red PCB and cooler with the curling, silver, spiky things look pretty good. The front of the card starts with the red, coaxial fan that draws air from the bottom of the case and pushes it through the plastic shroud.

The air is then pushed over a large, centralised heatsink which as you can faintly see in the picture below is attached to the core using a single heatpipe. The air is then exhausted out of the back of the card where you can also see the twin DVI ports that accompany the exhaust grill. The top of the card has twin CrossFire bridge connectors which allows for this card to be used in CrossFire. It may also allow for future tri-CrossFire support, but this is not implemented yet. At the other end of the card, there are two power connectors, one 6-pin and one 8-pin power connection.

Cooling of the card wasn't too bad. Still, the reason for that was the powerful fan attached to this card; dear god it's noisy. At least twice as loud as all of the case fans put together, if not more. The Radeon HD 2900 XT comes in at anywhere between $400 and $450 depending where you buy it from. If we take the average price, it's a little bit less than a GeForce 8800 GTS 640MB. It's also got the best bundle we have ever seen with a card. Still, if you want good performance for a good price, then this card is a nice choice but prepare to have your ear drums assaulted.