With nVidia releasing their GeForce 8800 series a full six months earlier, it's finally AMD's turn to launch their Dx10 graphics cards.  Just as when the GeForce 8800 was launched, currently there is still a dearth of Dx10 games and applications, so the initial reviews will center around Dx9 performance.

Has the wait been worth it? Here are some reviews below:

• AnandTech
• The Tech Report
• ExtremeTech
• FiringSquad
• Tom's Hardware
• HardOCP

Here are some quotes from the various articles:

"What a long, strange journey it has been to this point. We have a very delayed launch from AMD that features a part that consumes quite a bit of power and doesn't compete with the competition's high end offering. At face value, this sounds quite a bit like NVIDIA's NV30 launch, but thankfully we wouldn't go so far as to call this NV30 Part 2: the R600 Story.

Even though AMD has not built a high end part, they have built a part that runs very consistently at its performance target (which could not be said about NV30). AMD is also not trying to pass this card off as something it's not: rather than price this card out of its class, the R600 will find a good home at a reasonable price." - AnandTech

"Ultimately, though, we can't overlook the fact that AMD built a GPU with 700M transistors that has 320 stream processor ALUs and a 512-bit memory interface, yet it just matches or slightly exceeds the real-world performance of the GeForce 8800 GTS. The GTS is an Nvidia G80 with 25% of its shader core disabled and only 60% of the memory bandwidth of the Radeon HD 2900 XT. That's gotta be a little embarrassing. At the same time, the Radeon HD 2900 XT draws quite a bit more power under load than the full-on GeForce 8800 GTX, and it needs a relatively noisy cooler to keep it in check. If you ask folks at AMD why they didn't aim for the performance crown with a faster version of the R600, they won't say it outright, but they will hint that leakage with this GPU on TSMC's 80HS fab process was a problem. All of the telltale signs are certainly there." - The Tech Report

"Ultimately, the success or failure of the Radeon HD 2900 XT is going to be up to AMD’s driver team. Right now the card is hard to justify at $400, you can find GeForce 8800 GTS 640MB cards for less money at most online retailers. But if AMD’s driver team is able to squeeze more performance out of the Radeon HD 2900 XT, its $400 price tag becomes easier to live with. Especially once Half-Life 2: Episode Two and Team Fortress 2 are released…" - FiringSquad

"Unfortunately, we can't review untapped potential, just products we can test. As tested, this is still a great graphics card. It's extremely fast, with great image quality and tons of forward-looking features. But we can't overlook the high power draw and noise problem (which is hopefully temporary). If ATI can lick the noise issue, we would recommend this card over all others in its price range, even despite the power requirements. Nvidia still has the fastest cards on the market with the GeForce 8800 GTX and Ultra, but those are clearly in a different price range, and there's no telling how DX10 performance will shake out when the DX10 games start arriving. As for the future: We'd love to see a 65nm version of this card, perhaps with another texture unit block on the chip, that draws about 50 watts less power and runs a lot cooler." - ExtremeTech