The Radeon HD 2900 XT is a great card, don't let those haters tell you otherwise. At launch there was no denying that it lagged behind the competition, and sure anti-aliasing and anisotropic filtering performance isn't the best but thanks to AMD keeping on top with driver releases the card continues to improve every month. Originally there was supposed to be an XT and XTX combination of the Radeon HD 2900 series but for some reason it never really happened, instead there has been a new incarnation of the XT which not only comes with a jaw dropping 1GB of memory on it but also carries GDDR4, the latest graphics card high speed memory to hit the market. - TweakTown

HIS Radeon HD 2900 XT 1GB Card CrossFire Review

As impressive as 1GB of GDDR4 sounds it's really only numbers, what we really need to know is does this extra memory actually effect our game experience in a positive way or are we just throwing more money down the drain. When first looking at the 1GB version of the Radeon HD 2900 XT box from HIS one emotion that hit us was shock. Why you ask? The box is small, we don’t just mean small for a high-end card but for a full size flagship graphics card. The box is also very thin, it looks really good, sometimes boxes are just too big and annoying but HIS have managed to cram everything they need into this nice little box.

The HIS Radeon HD 2900 XT 1GB GDDR4 offers the same standard setup as the 512MB GDDR3 model, apart from the HIS sticker on the fan we wouldn’t be able to determine what brand it is. The biggest gripe with the look of the card is that there is no way to tell if it's a 1GB model. If you find yourself with a window in your case you want to show off your new card loudly and proudly. Since the cooler takes up the whole card there isn't a whole lot to see, just doing a quick sweep we see the standard 6-pin/8-pin PCI Express power connector along with the very important CrossFire connectors across the top of the card.

The big thing is what does the 1GB GDDR4 card offer over the standard 512MB GDDR3 model. This helps give us a memory bump from 1650MHz to 2000MHz effective. The core remains the same at 743MHz. AMD really have done some wonderful things with the Radeon HD 2900 XT, the card continues to impress us. We can see that overclocking is possible but not by a load, the bottom line is though that the performance of the cards are simply great, especially when you consider the price of them. The overall quality and features of the products are very high like all other Radeon HD 2900 XT cards.

If you're happy with what the Radeon HD 2900 XT 1GB cards are capable of the good news is that you shouldn't have any issue getting onto your favorite e-tailor and/or retailer and ordering one or two. The 1GB GDDR4 models while in the country don't seem to be held on hand as much though, so you might be hanging out for a day or two before it's shipped to you. The Radeon HD 2900 XT continues to be very good value for money, 1GB GDDR4 cards give us a nice little boost in a single card setup and when in CrossFire bring us our biggest 3DMak06 score to date thanks to the increased memory speed.

These aren't the kind of cards that you would upgrade to from a Radeon HD 2900 XT 512MB GDDR3 but if you have the dollars and you're in the market for a new video card the 1GB GDDR4 model is a great card, especially since AMD have done more than just slap twice the amount of memory on. With the P35 chipset currently being the one to own, performance junkies need to venture to CrossFire. The 1GB GDDR4 models are what they shold be eyeing off.