- AMD produces the Radeon HD 2900XT, also known as the R600. It is a high-end graphics-processing unit introduced in 2007. It is a dual-core product, capable of multi-threading tasks. The R600 is available only as an aftermarket upgrade and does not come standard on any major-brand personal computer.
- Nvidia released its 8 Series GPUs in 2006, including the GeForce 8800. It was the first Nvidia card compliant with DirectX 10--it could take full advantage of "Made for Windows" games such as Shadowrun. It was the first series to take advantage of OpenGL natively--it didn't need a programming wrapper.
- An important consideration for video cards is the amount of accessible memory it has. Many newer cards, including the Nvidia 8 series, supplement its native memory with system memory. The Nvidia has 768 megabytes of memory on the card as well as access to virtual memory. The Radeon 2900 came standard with 512 megabytes but was expandable to 1,024.
- Besides the amount of memory available to the video card, clock speed is the most important comparison to similar-generation GPUs. The Nvidia GeForce 8800 has an average core clock speed of 575 megahertz. This is somewhat smaller than the high-end version of the AMD Radeon HD 2900XT, which has 800 MHz.
- While the AMD Radeon HD 2900XT and Nvidia GeForce 8800 are from a similar generation of video-card architecture, the 2900 is intended for high-end users to play video games at maximum available settings. The Radeon, which has substantially better video quality and speed, generally is priced $50 to $75 more than the 8800.
R600 Series GPU
Nvidia 8 Series GPU
Video Memory
Clock Speed
Conclusion
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