I for once think of buying a HD 2900XT as my first ATi graphics card.

Of course it may not be an optimal solution, but I just can't bare the possible loss of a strong competitor to Nvidia…

Sure ATi may have screwed up with the R600, but as long as the price is right (equal or better lower than 8800 GTS) I'm sold.
Also there are still a lot of doubts about the R600 left. By the time it's available in stores (some sources indicate middle of June) Nvidia may slash the prices of the 320MB 8800 GTS to the level of 8600GTS, then ATi is in for some serious trouble, but as they say time will tell.

P.S. For all those thinking of buying a GPU any time soon, my advice would be:
wait for the availability of the ATi HD 2900XT, and if it turns out to be faster than the Nvidia 640MB 8800GTS with a similar price, I would encourage you to buy it. The same applies to the HD 2600 XT vs 8600 GTS.

I personally am willing to support ATi this time round, because sometimes it is better to pay a little bit more for less, so that you could pay less for a lot more in the future...

/4th generation Nvidia user

Well, I must say that Masterrers somment does make sense.

This coming from a hardcore Nvidia user

or "nice thoughts materrer", whoever posted the first comment.

nice thoughts Lolo, I think you have just changed my mind. anyway, you're right. it would seem a wise decision to support now ati. and the 2900xt card really is a good choice, because with it's shader performance (which is above the one from 8800gtx) it could prove a wiser solution for the future, for those who buy a card with a 3-4 years period in mind. although the 8800gts is more quiet and consumes less power, 2900xt sometimes proves to be as fast as the gtx version. hell yeah, 2900xt, here I come!

It's XT vs GT and XTX vs GTX.
Besides, I believe that the drivers haven't been optimized yet. Product feels rushed. Didn't NVIDIA have similar issues with the 8800 when it was new?
Wait and see if it's the driver or the hardware that's letting us down.

/NVIDIA user

You're totlay wrong about the XT vs GTS and XTX vs GTX thing..First of all there's not much of a peformance improvement from going from XT to XTX version in the HD 2900 series..the performance diffrence is meaningless between those two ATI high-end cards..XT will be clocked at 750MHz core while the XTX will be at 800MHz core making the peformance improvement ~7% over the XT version which is'nt enough to fight 8800GTX given that the 8800GTX is already about 30-50% faster in shader intensive titles..ATI has lost any chanse of stealing the performance crown back from NVIDIA in this generation of GPUs-at least with the R600..The ATI R600 GPU was in full development since late 2004 and it was meant to be ATI's first Unified DX10 GPU..Since ATI saw back in last November that their R600 GPU will NOT be able to compete with the 8800 GTX's performance they change their mind and said "No R600 XT was meant to compete with the 8800 GTS 640MB"....ATI just couldn't admit that it lost the battle since the HD 2900 XT was the REAL XTX..but simply couldn't compete with NVIDIA's superiour architecture...NOT only that ATI is late to the party but it also having a slower performing product..SHAME ON THEM..and please dont blame AMD in ATI's flaws since the merger was taken palce AFTER the R600 was done and ready..NVIDIA G80 is a simply superiour architecture to R600..G80 is better almost in every fashion...G80 has 100% efficient scalar design Vs R600's Vector and fake scalar design..G80 has a better implemintation of the unified shader architecture than R600..G80 has REAL stream processors and stream processing architecture unlike ATI's fake design. and it seems that 512-bit bus does NOT help the R600 at all when the buttleneck is shader and texturing performance.....NVIDIA owns ATi big time....VERY GOOD NVIDIA..WELL DONE ,CONTINURE SCREWING ATI TO DEATH..

You are one sick fanboy period

Wishing any companies death is beyond me…

Good luck paying 1000$ for a crappy GPU and another 1000$ for a crappy CPU after ATI/AMD death

Erik,

Wasn't it you who promised us the GeForce 8950 GX2 (two GeForce 8800 GTS at 575MHz, 1280MB of memory at 2.0GHz) for $649 and GeForce 8800 Ultra (650MHz/1.80GHz/2.2GHz) for $549 and in mid-April? Did you also promise that the GeForce 8600 GTS will be 50% faster than the Radeon X1950 XTX 512MB? :)
Looks like: http://www.xbitlabs.com/discussion/3800.html

What we have now is G80-450 revision A3 at over $650 price-point in mid-May, GeForce 8600 GTS slower than the Radeon X1950 Pro in the vast majority of cases for $229 and... and that's it.

Claiming that GeForce 8800 Ultra is so fast that it will leave the Radeon HD 2900 XT in the dust is strange too: you don't have reliable HD 2900 XT benchmarks at hand, you don't know its pricing... Imagine that the board may be speedy enough to leave the 8800 GTS behind and compete against the 8800 GTX in some cases and has recommended pricing similar to the 8800 GTS, which means that two of such products will cost like one 8800 Ultra. Which will be faster in that case? Two GeForce 8800 Ultra cards will cost over $1000 and I don't know a lot of people who are willing to pay that sum for a graphics sub-system.

DEAR ANTON...My cusin is an NVIDIA engineer..(and I'll be too in 3 months) and he provided me with the data regarding the 8950GX2 and 8800 Ultra..since then final specs have CHANGED!!
NVIDIA is now working at full speed to release additional members in the GeForce 8 family of products..It is not up to me..I'm just sharing what I'm given..sorry

Specs have changed?

Scrapped dual-chip GeForce 8950 GX2 board, slowed down GeForce 8800 Ultra with 33% higher price than expected is now called "changed"? :)

Additional members? They won't be released earlier than towards BTS season.