AMD equips the ATI Radeon HD 2900 XT with 320 stream processors to take on NVIDIA’s GeForce 8800 GTS, which features 96 stream processors. However, AMD and NVIDIA have taken different approaches towards their unified shader designs. AMD pairs the R600 GPU with 512MB of GDDR3 memory clocked at 1.65 GHz across an eight-channel, 512-bit memory interface. In comparison, the NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GTS features 640MB of 1.6 GHz GDDR3 memory on a 320-bit memory interface.


AMD equips the ATI Radeon HD 2900 XT with a dual-slot, blower-type heat sink. Unlike the OEM Radeon HD 2900-series previously pictured, which is an 11.5” long card, the ATI Radeon HD 2900 XT makes use of a smaller cooler so everything fits within the 9.5” PCB. Although the R600 GPU supports HDMI audio and video output, the our reference design only features dual dual-link DVI.

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