The Radeon HD 2900XT

[sub]

New ATI R600 based video cards are about to appear. For those interested, the first review I've seen is here: http://www.tweaktown.com/articles/1100/a...index.html

[sub]

Sounds like they've put a good quiet fan on it.

Ouch...they recommend a 750watt PSU.

[RTR]

Looks nice
I will probably wait for the budget versions Radeon HD 2400 and 2600
hopefully there will be pasive ones!
Only worry is that both this and the geforce 8600 serie seems to be Vista only if you want full benefit.

How is GB on Vista?

[nitrogen_widget]

One of those new ATI cards is 12 inches long?
I havn't seen a video card that long since the 386 days!

[pBS]

with heat like that coming out of just the graphics card, a good idea might be a hose to the outdoors, like a clothes dryer vent hose, to pump all that heat out of the house!
geez, when is someone going to make a good true hardware mpeg tv-out card?
[with dvi/hdmi and svideo,etc.]

almost HTPC users would eat it up, if decently cheap..
i mean come on, most dvdplayer's chips would be good enough, and they're only a couple of dollars each..add a tv out chip and you're done!
[ok, well dvi might require a bit more than that]

I just think it would be nice to have a separate card for mpeg decoding, tv outs instead of only packing the good acceleration into a hi-$$ video card that is mostly wasted..

the x-card and 350 out are so old and buggy...
surprised something like that doesn't exist anywhere..

[gEd]

the 2900XT draws too much power and is too noisy for be a viable HTPC card.

http://enthusiast.hardocp.com/article.ht...VzaWFzdA==

Roll on the ATI Radeon HD 2600 and 2400

The exciting feature about the Radeon HD 2600 and 2400 is their low power usage. At full load the quoted power consumption for the Radeon HD 2600 is 45W and with the Radeon HD 2400 it is 25W. In fact it was mentioned that at idle we could single digit wattage numbers on the Radeon HD 2400. Neither the Radeon HD 2400 nor Radeon 2600 require external auxiliary power.

The Radeon HD 2400 will be found for around $99; even less perhaps, it is a passive solution and will support HDMI and AVIVO. The Radeon HD 2600 will be found from $99-$199 and supports native CrossFire.