Page 14 - Photo Gallery #1
The Photo Gallery
On the next few pages we'll show you some photos. The images were taken at 2560x1920 pixels and then scaled down. The camera used was a Sony DCS-F707 5.1 MegaPixel.
In alphabetical order again.
Warning this page is extremely RED:
The Radeon HD 2900 XT and the whale riding it. That is one massive cooler isn't it ? The card is launching at a 399 USD/EUR suggested retail price, yet rest assured, it'll sell in e-tail for 350 EUR on launch. That's quite some horsepower for a card in this price-range. Very obvious it has a two slot cooling solution.
It's a pretty thing to look at, isn't it? Don't know why, but each time I leave out a photo of the backside of the card, people start email me and ask why I did not include it. Okay ... I listen to you guys. Obviously when you look at the PCB you can notice the reference design (duh). On the upper side of the card in the photo you can see the new CrossFire connectors.
IF you decide to go the guru path of righteousness (read: Crossfire) then please understand you'll need to connect both the CF bridges. The Crossfire connectors will be supplied with the graphics cards, by the way.
Here we can see the two DVI connectors, which both have dual-link support. You might think "hmm, is that needed?" Yes it is. High-Def screens and high-resolution monitors are the key issues here.
Dual link DVI pins effectively double the power of transmission and provide an increase of speed and signal quality; i.e. a DVI single link 60-Hz LCD can display a resolution of 1920 x 1080, while a DVI dual link can display a resolution up-to 2560x1200. All cards have two DVI connectors except the 1300 series which has a CRT/VGA connector.
With the help of the supplied DVI to HDMI adapter you can connect the card towards a HDMI HD Ready television or monitor for perfect picture quality and as explained, sound.
The reference cooling of the HS 2900 XT series is dual-slot and rather loud, there's no way denying that. We think the cooler alone consumes roughly 20 Watts. It almost has the force of an industrial design cooler which we see often in servers.
What's quite funny to see is that when you look at the lower right part of the card you can see the white connector for the fan, unit right ? There's two of them ... So for whatever reason this card can handle two fans. I doubt we'll see that in the retail version, though.
