AMD silently launches R630 GPU - the HD2900Pro

WITH NO REVIEWS in place, ATI Radeon HD 2900 Pro boards appeared on the market. GeCube was the manufacturer to break the deadlock and send boards through the channel, and the 2900 Pro is available in Europe today.

On my favourite price search site, Geizhals.at, several retailers and e-tailers list GeCube GC-HD2900PRO-VIE3, a board based on R630 chip with full 320 superscalar shader units and 512MB of GDDR3 goes for 225-250 Euro, or probably around 225-250 Dollars (sadly for us Europeans, Americans have 7-10% VAT, while we have 15+ and far stronger currency… feel like everything is free here in Frisco… two 8800Ultra boards cost as one 8800Ultra in Croatia etc…).

As far as we can tell, memory interface on the board is now 256-bit, half of what R600 has. This board actually already exists on the marked as FireGL V7600, and we know that R600 chip with 256-bit memory controller unlinked is called ATI R630.

Clock has been decreased to 600 MHz for the GPU, but memory was decreased by only 26 MHz (or 52 MTransfers/sec) to exactly 800 MHz (1.6 GT/s). With this new spec, this board spots 51.2 GB/s of on-board bandwidth. We don't know the performance characteristics right now, but if you just got this board, we'd be more than glad to see the scores. This low key launch probably means there is no sampling for reviews, but the price is somewhat right.

Now, the only question remains here: if AMD is so silent about new SKUs from the R600 family, does this mean RV670 and R680 will turn the pages or is company preparing all they can for the R700 generation of products? Only time will tell, but somehow my hunch is that something big is cooking in AMD's kitchen...

L'INQ
Geizhals.at search for GeCube Radeon HD 2900Pro