Conclusions
At the end of the day, the Radeon HD 2900 XT 1GB GDDR4 remains a really intriguing product. With a full gig of space, a 512-bit memory interface, screaming fast GDDR4 chips, and more bandwidth than Fruit of the Loom, this puppy is halfway to being the fastest—and most expensive—video card on earth. Yet the GPU onboard can't seem to capitalize on the opportunity. The 1GB GDDR4 version of the Radeon HD 2900 XT wasn't significantly faster than the original in any of the games we tested, including brand-new DX10 titles and new-ish DX9 titles running at very high resolutions and quality levels. That's bad news for this video card, because it costs as much as GeForce 8800 GTX and performs more like a GeForce 8800 GTS—not the best value proposition.

This weakness is underscored by the fact that the 2900 XT doesn't deliver lower CPU utilization than the GeForce 8800 series when playing back HD movies. AMD made it sound like the 2900 XT would benefit from UVD acceleration, but the GPU simply lacks that capability. In fact, the 2900 XT uses more CPU time during HD video playback than a competing GeForce 8800. AMD's noise reduction and post-processing routines for HD video are superior, however.

Too bad that noise reduction doesn't extend to the card's cooler, which is just plain loud.

The 2900 XT does have some things to recommend it, including AMD's nifty new tent filters for antialiasing. I remain convinced that the Radeon HD 2900 XT produces the highest quality images on the PC because of this feature. AMD just recently incorporated a new custom filter into its Catalyst 7.7 drivers that does an edge-detect pass and then selectively applies up to 24X antialiasing where needed. I played with that feature briefly while putting together this review, and I wasn't impressed. The image quality is superb, but the performance hit is devastating. I expect this is only the sort of feature one would use in really old games, where performance is never an issue. I'll have to play with the edge-detect filter more, but I think the tent filters are a better option overall.

Beyond that, most of what's left for the Radeon HD 2900 XT 1GB GDDR is hope for a better future. Perhaps AMD will someday deliver new video drivers that produce dramatically higher performance. Perhaps the first wave of true DirectX 10-only titles will alter the landscape radically. Perhaps the graphics usage model will change over time to where the 2900 XT's relatively weak edge AA and texture filtering capacity doesn't matter so much. Any or all of these things could happen. Or perhaps not.