EAGER TO AVOID being the only major graphics player not to have a successful card with 'GT' as its suffix, it seems that the folks at DAAMIT are preparing a two letter wonder-card of their own - the 2900 GT.

Yes, so the Radeon 2900 might have something of a bad name in enthusiast circles, but that hasn't stopped Sapphire attempting to revive its fortunes with a new variant. The memory is a 256bit bus, power is a mere single 8-pin connector, and the core and memory clocks come in at 600/800MHz. Basically, then, the GT is just a SKU made up of failed XTs - with 240 stream processors instead of 320.

Unfortunately for ATI fans, we're back to the bad old days of dual-slot coolers with the GT, which appears to use the standard ATI bondoogle.

The card appears to be heading squarely for the mid-range buyer with an estimated price tag of around $200. There are more pictures here, should you be so interested.

However, given that the 8800 GT will nail a 2900 XT for only $40-odd more than this GT, we can't hold out much hope of a sudden ATI fightback. Can you say 'stopgap'? µ