ATI Radeon HD 2600 XT review: ATI Radeon HD 2600 XT
At $150, ATI’s new Radeon HD 2600 XT graphics card comes $25 to $50 under Nvidia’s competing Nvidia GeForce 8600 GTS cards. But before we give out any good deal awards, we need to note that we find the 3D performance of both new cards disappointing, even considering their mainstream ambitions. The only thing ATI’s new card truly excels at is decoding HD video, but then so does Nvidia’s card (especially after a recent driver update). We’re certainly glad that HD video enthusiasts have a wide variety of options, but midrange gamers can get much more bang for the buck with an older 3D card while they wait for more next-gen games to come out, and more powerful midrange graphics cards to play them on.
Unlike Nvidia, ATI has a very fragmented lineup with its new Radeon HD 2000 series. After the Radeon HD 2600 XT, the next jump from ATI is the $400 «http:=»» reviews.cnet.com=»» graphics-cards=»» ati-radeon-hd-2900=»» 4505-8902_7-32445399. html»=»»>Radeon HD 2900 XT. That leaves GeForce 8800 GTS cards with no true competitor at the $250 to $300 price level. That also means that if you have a particular loyalty, ATI has left you fewer options with this new generation of Radeons. We suspect Nvidia may get a lot of business in that high midrange/low high-end market segment as a result.
For the Radeon HD 2600 XT, its basics compare favorably to Nvidia’s GeForce 8600 GT and GTS. Like its Nvidia competitors, most boxed versions of ATI’s new card will come with 256MB of DDR3 SDRAM. You may see DDR4, or even DDR2 versions as well as pricier models with 512MB of RAM. In addition to the memory type and amount, the various retail models of the card will vary by core and memory clock speeds as well. Our stock model came with an 800 MHz clock on the core, the memory, and the shader pipeline, so any boxed card with a higher clock speed on any one of those parts should benefit with faster 3D performance.
We’d encourage you to look for any performance boost, too, considering the Radeon HD 2600 XT’s stock 3D scores.
As usual, GameSpot’s Sarju Shah came through for us with the benchmark scores, both for us and for GameSpot’s own summer graphics card roundup, which we recommend you check out. For this card in particular, unless you’re a dedicated Company of Heroes fan, you can get better overall 3D performance from Nvidia’s GeForce 8600 GTS (which still isn’t great), or any of a number of cards from the previous generation, if you don’t mind losing out on DirectX 10 capability, and if can still find them in stock. And because those next-gen DirectX 10 games aren’t really that impressive yet, we don’t consider losing out on DirectX 10 a major loss today. And by the time more next-gen PC games come out that really use it well, you’ll likely have another generation of 3D cards to choose from.
3DMark 2006
(Longer bars indicate better performance)
| 1,280×1,024 |
Nvidia GeForce 8600 GTS
5,866
Nvidia GeForce 7950 GT
5,405
ATI Radeon X1950 Pro
5,155
ATI Radeon HD 2600 XT
4,963
Nvidia GeForce 7900 GS
4,775
‘Quake 4’
(Longer bars indicate better performance)
| 1,600×1,200, 2x antialiasing, 8x anisotropic filtering, high quality |
Nvidia GeForce 7950 GT
87
Nvidia GeForce 7900 GS
81
ATI Radeon X1950 Pro
70
Nvidia GeForce 8600 GTS
55
ATI Radeon HD 2600 XT
49
‘Company of Heroes’
(Longer bars indicate better performance)
| 1,280×1,024, 2x antialiasing, 8x anisotropic filtering, high quality |
ATI Radeon HD 2600 XT
59
ATI Radeon X1950 Pro
54
Nvidia GeForce 8600 GTS
42
Nvidia GeForce 7950 GT
41
Nvidia GeForce 7900 GS
35
‘Stalker: Shadow of Chernobyl’
(Longer bars indicate better performance)
| 1,280×1,024, 8x anisotropic filtering, medium quality |
Nvidia GeForce 7950 GT
38
Nvidia GeForce 7900 GS
34
Nvidia GeForce 8600 GTS
32
ATI Radeon X1950 Pro
31
ATI Radeon HD 2600 XT
23
‘The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion’
(Longer bars indicate better performance)
| 1,280×1,024 2x antialiasing, 8x anisotropic filtering, high quality |
Nvidia GeForce 8600 GTS
34
Nvidia GeForce 7950 GT
33
Nvidia GeForce 7900 GS
28
ATI Radeon X1950 Pro
26
ATI Radeon HD 2600 XT
23
With the ugly 3D performance truth out of the way, we can focus on HD video, where the Radeon HD 2600 XT really shines.
For raw image quality, ATI’s new chip fares just as well as Nvidia’s GeForce 8600 GTS, which is to say, it’s excellent. If you’re a complete videophile, you’ll still find a dedicated player to be your best bet, but for most of us, the video output from these cards is completely acceptable.
ATI also has a leg up as far as convenient installation in that it requires no internal cable connections to the other parts of your PC. Thanks to an onboard audio chip, if you use ATI’s included DVI-to-HDMI adapter to connect your PC to your television, you can also send the sound from your PC out through that same connection. Nvidia’s card can almost do the same thing, but because it lacks a built-in audio chip, it requires an additional internal connection to route the audio signal over the HDMI cable. The Radeon 2600 XT also doesn’t require a direct connection to your PC’s power supply. The GeForce 8600 GTS does.
As far as power requirements, the two cards are equal. Both vendors recommend a 400-watt power supply in your PC.
That means a lot of off-the-shelf, budget-class desktops won’t be able to handle them with their 300-watt stock PSUs. Then again, few of those systems have an HD optical drive, which leaves little justification for picking up one of these cards in the first place.
Finally, we have to acknowledge that while ATI’s Vista drivers handle TV connections very well, Nvidia has also gained ground in this area, thanks to a recent driver update. Nvidia’s cards used to overscan the Windows Vista desktop when you connected your PC to a wide-screen television. Now that Nvidia has solved that issue, ATI can no longer claim superiority in terms of its overall video compatibility. Still, the Radeon 2600 XT’s ease-of-installation superiority will likely win it some fans among home theater PC enthusiasts.
Find out more about how we test desktop systems.
Radeon HD 2600 XT [in 1 benchmark]
ATI
Radeon HD 2600 XT
Buy
- Interface PCIe 1.
0 x16 - Core clock speed 800 MHz
- Max video memory 256 MB
- Memory type GDDR3
- Memory clock speed 1400 MHz
- Maximum resolution
Summary
ATI started Radeon HD 2600 XT sales 28 June 2007 at a recommended price of $199. This is TeraScale architecture desktop card based on 65 nm manufacturing process and primarily aimed at office use. 256 MB of GDDR3 memory clocked at 1.4 GHz are supplied, and together with 128 Bit memory interface this creates a bandwidth of 22.4 GB/s.
Compatibility-wise, this is single-slot card attached via PCIe 1.0 x16 interface. No additional power connector is required, and power consumption is at 45 Watt.
It provides poor gaming and benchmark performance at
0.72%
of a leader’s which is NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4090.
Radeon HD
2600 XT
vs
GeForce RTX
4090
General info
Some basic facts about Radeon HD 2600 XT: architecture, market segment, release date etc.
| Place in performance rating | 1025 | |
| Architecture | TeraScale (2005−2013) | |
| GPU code name | RV630 | |
| Market segment | Desktop | |
| Release date | 28 June 2007 (15 years ago) | |
| Launch price (MSRP) | $199 | |
| Current price | $148 (0.7x MSRP) | of 49999 (A100 SXM4) |
Value for money
To calculate the index we compare the characteristics of graphics cards against their prices.
- 0
- 50
- 100
Technical specs
Radeon HD 2600 XT’s general performance parameters such as number of shaders, GPU base clock, manufacturing process, texturing and calculation speed.
These parameters indirectly speak of Radeon HD 2600 XT’s performance, but for precise assessment you have to consider its benchmark and gaming test results.
| Pipelines / CUDA cores | 120 | of 18432 (AD102) |
| Core clock speed | 800 MHz | of 2610 (Radeon RX 6500 XT) |
| Number of transistors | 390 million | of 14400 (GeForce GTX 1080 SLI Mobile) |
| Manufacturing process technology | 65 nm | of 4 (GeForce RTX 4080 Ti) |
| Thermal design power (TDP) | 45 Watt | of 900 (Tesla S2050) |
| Texture fill rate | 6.400 | of 969.9 (h200 SXM5 96 GB) |
| Floating-point performance | 192 gflops | of 16384 (Radeon Pro Duo) |
Compatibility, dimensions and requirements
Information on Radeon HD 2600 XT’s compatibility with other computer components.
Useful when choosing a future computer configuration or upgrading an existing one. For desktop graphics cards it’s interface and bus (motherboard compatibility), additional power connectors (power supply compatibility).
| Interface | PCIe 1.0 x16 | |
| Width | 1-slot | |
| Supplementary power connectors | None |
Memory
Parameters of memory installed on Radeon HD 2600 XT: its type, size, bus, clock and resulting bandwidth. Note that GPUs integrated into processors have no dedicated memory and use a shared part of system RAM instead.
| Memory type | GDDR3 | |
| Maximum RAM amount | 256 MB | of 128 (Radeon Instinct MI250X) |
| Memory bus width | 128 Bit | of 8192 (Radeon Instinct MI250X) |
| Memory clock speed | 1400 MHz | of 22400 (GeForce RTX 4080) |
| Memory bandwidth | 22. 4 GB/s |
of 14400 (Radeon R7 M260) |
Video outputs and ports
Types and number of video connectors present on Radeon HD 2600 XT. As a rule, this section is relevant only for desktop reference graphics cards, since for notebook ones the availability of certain video outputs depends on the laptop model, while non-reference desktop models can (though not necessarily will) bear a different set of video ports.
| Display Connectors | 2x DVI, 1x S-Video |
API support
APIs supported by Radeon HD 2600 XT, sometimes including their particular versions.
| DirectX | 10.0 (10_0) | |
| Shader Model | 4.0 | |
| OpenGL | 3.3 | of 4.6 (GeForce GTX 1080 Mobile) |
| OpenCL | N/A | |
| Vulkan | N/A |
Benchmark performance
Non-gaming benchmark performance of Radeon HD 2600 XT.
Note that overall benchmark performance is measured in points in 0-100 range.
Overall score
This is our combined benchmark performance rating. We are regularly improving our combining algorithms, but if you find some perceived inconsistencies, feel free to speak up in comments section, we usually fix problems quickly.
ATI HD 2600 XT
0.72
- Passmark
Passmark
This is probably the most ubiquitous benchmark, part of Passmark PerformanceTest suite. It gives the graphics card a thorough evaluation under various load, providing four separate benchmarks for Direct3D versions 9, 10, 11 and 12 (the last being done in 4K resolution if possible), and few more tests engaging DirectCompute capabilities.
Benchmark coverage: 26%
ATI HD 2600 XT
282
Game benchmarks
Let’s see how good Radeon HD 2600 XT is for gaming.
Particular gaming benchmark results are measured in frames per second. Comparisons with game system requirements are included, but remember that sometimes official requirements may reflect reality inaccurately.
Relative perfomance
Overall Radeon HD 2600 XT performance compared to nearest competitors among desktop video cards.
NVIDIA GeForce 7800 GTX
102.78
AMD Radeon HD 7450A
102.78
AMD Radeon HD 7480D
100
ATI Radeon HD 2600 XT
100
AMD Radeon HD 8400E
95.83
ATI Radeon HD 5470
95.83
AMD Radeon HD 6450A
93.06
NVIDIA equivalent
The nearest Radeon HD 2600 XT’s NVIDIA equivalent is GeForce 7800 GTX, which is faster by 3% and higher by 5 positions in our performance rating.
GeForce
7800 GTX
Compare
Here are some closest NVIDIA rivals to Radeon HD 2600 XT:
NVIDIA GeForce GT 520
106.94
NVIDIA GeForce GT 610
106.94
NVIDIA GeForce 7800 GTX
102.78
ATI Radeon HD 2600 XT
100
NVIDIA GeForce 7900 GT
91.67
NVIDIA GeForce 7900 GS
90.28
NVIDIA GeForce 7800 GT
87.5
Similar GPUs
Here is our recommendation of several graphics cards that are more or less close in performance to the one reviewed.
GeForce
7800 GTX
Compare
Radeon HD
2900 GT
Compare
GeForce
7900 GT
Compare
GeForce
7900 GS
Compare
GeForce
7800 GT
Compare
GeForce GT
230
Compare
Recommended processors
These processors are most commonly used with Radeon HD 2600 XT according to our statistics.
Athlon 64
X2 5200+
4.2%
Athlon II
X2 215
3.4%
Athlon 64
X2 5000+
3.4%
Core 2
Duo E8400
3.1%
Core 2
Duo E6550
3.1%
Core 2
Duo E7500
2.6%
Core 2
Quad Q6600
2.6%
Core 2
Duo E6750
2.
4%
Athlon 64
X2 6000+
2.1%
Core i3
3220
1.8%
User rating
Here you can see the user rating of the graphics card, as well as rate it yourself.
Questions and comments
Here you can ask a question about Radeon HD 2600 XT, agree or disagree with our judgements, or report an error or mismatch.
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Radeon HD 2600 XT video card [in 1 benchmark]
ATI
Radeon HD 2600XT
- PCIe 1.0 x16 interface
- Core frequency 800 MHz
- Video memory size 256 MB
- Memory type GDDR3
- Memory frequency 1400 MHz
- Maximum resolution
Description
ATI launched Radeon HD 2600 XT on June 28, 2007 at a suggested price of 199$.
This is a desktop video card based on the TeraScale architecture and 65 nm manufacturing process, primarily designed for office use. It has 256 MB of GDDR3 memory at 1.4 GHz, and coupled with a 128-bit interface, this creates a bandwidth of 22.40 Gb / s.
In terms of compatibility, this is a single-slot PCIe 1.0 x16 card. An additional power cable is not required for connection, and the power consumption is 45 W.
It provides poor benchmark and game performance at level
0.72%
from the leader, which is NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4090.
Radeon HD
2600XT
vs
GeForce RTX
4090
General information
Information about the type (desktop or laptop) and architecture of the Radeon HD 2600 XT, as well as when sales started and cost at the time.
Features
Radeon HD 2600 XT’s general performance parameters such as number of shaders, GPU core clock, manufacturing process, texturing and calculation speed. They indirectly speak of Radeon HD 2600 XT’s performance, but for precise assessment you have to consider its benchmark and gaming test results.
| Number of Stream Processors | ||
| memory capacity | 22.40 GB/s | of 14400 (Radeon R7 M260) |
Types and number of video connectors present on Radeon HD 2600 XT. As a rule, this section is relevant only for desktop reference video cards, since for laptop ones the availability of certain video outputs depends on the laptop model.
| Video connectors | ||
| OpenCL | N/A | |
| VULKAN | N/A |
The overall score is set from 0 to 100, where 100 corresponds to the fastest video card at the moment. 
Remember that the official requirements of the developers do not always match the data of real tests. 
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