ATI Radeon HD 2600 XT

[W1zzard]

The HD 2600 XT is AMD's new midrange flagship card which is based on the RV630 GPU. This is the first time that a midrange card comes equipped with GDDR4 memory - 256 MB in our case. AMD's new card comes with features such as DirectX 10 support and full HD video acceleration by dedicated hardware called UVD. But is this enough to beat NVIDIA's new products?

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[TXcharger]

thats odd how it is better than the 8600gts in almost every technical area, but cannot beat it out in game

very good review!

 

[Grings]

wtf?, its got 390mill transistors (more than an x1950, and it uses more power too), what DID amd do to ati?????????

 

[DrunkenMafia]

awesome review W1zz.... sounds like a good card, as long as its a little cheaper than the 8600gts.

It wierd, it gets the same 3dmark score as 2 x1800gtos in crossfire but in games it only does as well as one X1800gto...

 

[anticlutch]

More disappointment from the red camp... let's hope the R700 cards aren't a flop

 

[OnBoard]

Near useless card, can't use AA&AF, goes slower than a x1800gto and this is with SM2.0. Wonder what happens to performance when you enable AA&AF in SM3.0 or better yet SM4.0. 3dmark06 score looks quite perty, closes in near my card, but that is without antialiaising and anistropic of course. (and no, anyone should not play without those, if you buy a new GPU ) I'd bet that 128-bit memory bus width is to blame on the AA/AF performance, atleast my previous card (x800gto) and this don't have that problem, both with 256bit.

This is 149$ and x1950xt (no x1900xt available anymore) goes for:

SAPPHIRE 100186L Radeon X1950XT 256MB GDDR3 PCI Express x16 VIVO HDCP
$179.99 ($149.99 after $30.00 Mail-In Rebate)

in newegg. Yeah you don't get DX10, but you get a lot faster GPU with the same price.

Oh and voltage reculators (and those smaller ones)
http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/ATI/HD_2600_XT/images/vregarea.jpg
seems to be missing some stuff still, wonder if it's for the 512MB version or something faster (like HD2900gto).

Something positive too, do like the cooler and power consumption, but missing extra powerplug kinda gives that away and also the performance

------

Should this read 512MB? Isn't this car a 256MB model.

"Nothing important on the back of the card. You can see four empty spots for BGA memory, which would allow building an 1 GB version which is coming soon."

 

[hat]

Disappointing...
It doesn't run 60C load, or even idle, like previously speculated. It also looks very good on paper, but the $26 more expensive 8600GTS beats it out for give or take a little to/from about 2 hours of overtime. Also, I can't believe the 7300GT beats it out in some tests!!

Thank you for constantly enlightening us about these things, Wiz.

 

[tkpenalty]

Disappointing...
It doesn't run 60C load, or even idle, like previously speculated. It also looks very good on paper, but the $26 more expensive 8600GTS beats it out for give or take a little to/from about 2 hours of overtime. Also, I can't believe the 7300GT beats it out in some tests!!

Thank you for constantly enlightening us about these things, Wiz.

Blame it on drivers.... you could say that the X1950PRO now runs two times faster than before... 7.4, 7.5, 7.6 all had huge noticeable improvements. Now even though I'm happy AMD should really stop concentrating on making better drivers for the RV570... this makes a liable excuse that "Drivers suck". This thing has large potential but... AMD JUST SCREW THE R5xxx SERIES AND START MAKING QUALITY DRIVERS FOR THE R6xxx series....

 

[Pinchy]

It doesnt look that good on paper. Besides its clocks and massive shader count, it really isnt that great. Its only 128 bit, its shaders are clocked at around half the speed of the 8600GTS's shaders and from what ive seen elsewhere, it only has 4 ROP's. (Even though this review says it has 4x2). But even still, 8 ROP's isnt that great if you asked me. The 2900XT has 24; this should have at least 12 or 16.

Also, isnt the 2900XT 512-bit, not 384?

Anyways, nice review Wiz, was waiting for one of these .

 

[W1zzard]

fixed the specs table on the first page

 

[Xaser04]

It doesnt look that good on paper. Besides its clocks and massive shader count, it really isnt that great. Its only 128 bit, its shaders are clocked at around half the speed of the 8600GTS's shaders and from what ive seen elsewhere, it only has 4 ROP's. (Even though this review says it has 4x2). But even still, 8 ROP's isnt that great if you asked me. The 2900XT has 24; this should have at least 12 or 16.

Also, isnt the 2900XT 512-bit, not 384?

Anyways, nice review Wiz, was waiting for one of these .

HD2900XT has 16 rops according to the table in the review (although it states 16x2)

I must admit this card does appear to be a dissapointment (with current drivers in current games)

Judging by its performance in some games it won't even beat a 8600GT (shame that isn't in the review)

It like the HD2900XT also seems to be all over the place in terms of performance (in some games good in others poor (I mean in a couple tests a 7300GT beats it FFS))

Overall with its current drivers its a poor showing, now lets see if new drivers can improve anything.

Also on a side note what happened to the 8800GTX performance in Stalker?!

 

[Pinchy]

fixed the specs table on the first page

Cheers . Does the 8500GT have 4 or 8 ROP's though; according to GPU review (where I get most of my info from ) its got 8.

 

[rhythmeister]

When's the dual gpu version gonna be in the UK?!

 

[regan1985]

another dissapointment if you ask me, after waiting longer for ati to come out with a mid range card it still is below a nvidia card!!

 

[rhythmeister]

Wait for proper drivers, bloomin heck the thing's not even out yet!

 

[Deleted member 3]

Isn't the overclock limited by the power the PCIe bus can give it?

 

[zekrahminator]

Blame it on drivers.... you could say that the X1950PRO now runs two times faster than before... 7.4, 7.5, 7.6 all had huge noticeable improvements. Now even though I'm happy AMD should really stop concentrating on making better drivers for the RV570... this makes a liable excuse that "Drivers suck". This thing has large potential but... AMD JUST SCREW THE R5xxx SERIES AND START MAKING QUALITY DRIVERS FOR THE R6xxx series....

Well, see, if AMD focused all their driver attention on the HD series, they would definitely make more money from the HD 2x00 community...but they'd lose the fan-base of everyone who owns a Radeon 9550-X1950XTX .

 

[Tatty_Two]

I was amazed to see on a couple of tests that the 8600GTS beat the 2900XT at low res with no AA/AF!!

I think as some have said, as the drivers mature we will see improvements and I would think that it will become a serious competitior for the GTS that seems to me wins in most tests with higher res and AA/AF but it also seems that this will be a little cheaper so maybe more comparable to the 8600GT? Not quite sure at this price point why the 8600GT was not included maybe instead of the 8500GTwhich would more equate to the 2400. If thats the case I actually think it's competative and not to be sniffed at.

Also we must remember that there will be up to 5 models eventually and I am sure the 512MB GDDR4 version, whilst being more expensive will be more competative providing it's not vastly more costly than the 512MB version of the 8600GTS.

 

[trt740]

Wow Ati is really screwing up that card competes better with a gt not a gts.

 

[ryboto]

So, if the Inq is correct, and these will be selling for $149, that's pretty amazing. I'm confused about it's performance though. I can tell based on the bandwidth it would be slower at higher resolutions, but in some tests it's close to an x1900XT in others the X1800GTO is better. Wonder how it stacks up to my current X1950pro. Obviously there are still huge driver issues, seeing as in one benchmark at least the HD2900 performed worse than the 2600XT...

 

[TooFast]

give ati/amd a chance to get back on track! r700!!!

 

[TXcharger]

wait for new drivers and atitool wasnt designed to o/c this card, also the external power connector would boost overclockability. but thats really good performance for a card without one

 

[kwchang007]

wow....when i read the specs....i was like this should open a can of woopass on the 8600gts. totally the other way around. hopefully ati decides to release a version with a 6 pin connector and up the shader speed (are they seriously half of nvidia's speed on the 8600 gts?)

 

[Xaser04]

wow....when i read the specs....i was like this should open a can of woopass on the 8600gts. totally the other way around. hopefully ati decides to release a version with a 6 pin connector and up the shader speed (are they seriously half of nvidia's speed on the 8600 gts?)

Well the shader clock on the 2600xt is the core clock wheras the 8600's have a seperate shader domain clock running considerably quicker than the core clock (rops etc). It isn't quite twice as fast but its still alot quicker.

 

[kwchang007]

Well the shader clock on the 2600xt is the core clock wheras the 8600's have a seperate shader domain clock running considerably quicker than the core clock (rops etc). It isn't quite twice as fast but its still alot quicker.

got it now. i remember seeing that nvidia's shaders aren't synced with clock speed, but i thought that ati's did the same thing (maybe ati needs to take a page from nvidia ). and nvidia has what i consider a true unified architecture. it has all scalers, not vectors (which