ATi Radeon HD 2600XT Review

Posted at: 12:00am 28th June 2007 by Phil Hartup

Price £95 inc VAT
Manufacturer Sapphire
Supplier LambdaTek
SKU number 21110-00-20R

The budget range of graphics cards has traditionally been an area where few gamers would dare to tread, and with good reason. Over the years, many cards have emerged, from Radeon X1300s and X1600s to GeForce 7300s, and without fail, these cards have stunk. Just check out our graphics cards Labs from last issue. They're the kind of cards that, to a gaming PC, are about as much use as water wings in a tidal wave. We thought that the Sapphire Radeon HD 2600XT GDDR4 might steer clear of this range - after all, 120 stream processors running at 800MHz should make for a gaming monster. However, the price for the card is less than £100 - is this just good value or an indication that we shouldn't raise our hopes?

The HD 2600XT should be regarded as a budget card but, unlike most budget cards that are, at best, a novel way to prevent dust from collecting in your PCI-E slots, the HD 2600XT brings advanced technology to the table; it's the first 65nm GPU in production. While the uninitiated will probably ignore the implications of this when comparing the HD 2600XT with the 80nm GeForce 8800 and, in particular, the 90nm Radeon HD 2900XT, we know differently. Smaller transistors are more power-efficient, produce less heat and switch faster, so the chip can be pushed to a high 800MHz clock speed, while maintaining a single-height (if large) cooler. With the 65nm process proven to work, it's likely that the HD 2900XT will get a die shrink soon, along with the significant clock speed boost that this entails. Radeon HD 2900XTX, anyone?

The HD 2600XT has 256MB of GDDR4 RAM, 120 stream processors and four ROPs. None of this is, in itself, especially formidable - until you see the speeds at which these components run. The RAM is clocked to 2.2GHz (effective) and the core has a staggering 800MHz clock speed. The strategy of ATi is that even though the Radeon HD 2600XT might be lacking in quantities of RAM, ROPs and stream processors, it runs what it does have very fast to compensate.

The principle rival for the HD 2600XT is the GeForce 8600 GT, the 8600 GTS being around £35 more expensive. However, GeForce 8600 GT cards have dropped to around £80 and outperform the HD 2600XT. In F.E.A.R., the HD 2600XT couldn't match the 8600 GT for speed, falling short of the average 89fps that the Nvidia GPU delivers with an average of only 58fps in the 1,024 x 768 test, while it failed to provide a playable frame rate in the 1,280 x 960 test.

In S.T.A.L.K.E.R., both the 8600 GT and the HD 2600XT were equally dire; neither card was able to play the game at our standard test settings with anything like a playable minimum frame rate. It's worth remembering that we run all our tests at the maximum settings for the game, barring anti-aliasing and anisotropic filtering, so they present a tough challenge. You could, of course, drop the detail settings to obtain a playable frame rate, but the results would be similar to playing Doom II.