DH Review: HD2600-NV8600 Roundup

Zardon

Read The Review Here
______________________

Last week we covered cards that are aimed at the masses, to people who don’t care much about gaming and use their PCs primarily for work and video playback. The cards, while excellent at what they were meant to do, would obviously fail to deliver a quality gaming experience.

On the other hand, we know from experience that the 8600GT and 8600GTS are more than capable of powering most if not all the new games at reasonable resolutions, usually without having to sacrifice the graphical quality of the titles. Now it is time to see how the newly released HD2600XT can compete against manufacturer improved versions of the GT and GTS 8600 cards. Judging from what we saw in the HD2400/8400 roundup this could end up to be a bloody battle with no survivors left behind.

Erroneus

the 2600 card is a great media card, but i dont thin the great DX10 support is enough for it to become popular among the gamers.

Looking forward to next revision of r600, this series looks to be over.

IvanV

Page 4 says that GDDR4 equipped 2600XT's have memory clocked at 1100/2200MHz, while page 13 states 550/1100 for the card tested. If the latter figure is correct, that might explain why the card suffers such a performance drop when applying AA and AF.

WhO_KnOwS

The values on page 13 are a typo. The card was tested at the speeds specified on the HD2600XT page, namely 1100/2200MHz. The low performance when AA is used can probably be laid at the feet of the slow memory bus (128-bit), which makes using the extremely fast memory a bit stupid.
Speaking of which, the HD2600 cards vary in memory speed a great deal. The slowest card has a 500/1000MHz memory while the fastest (gddr4) runs at 1100/2200. Why they made the cards that should be fairly close in performance this different in terms of memory speed is beyond me.

ChaosMinionX

Both companies should be ashamed for even releasing these cards.... the performance is not what it should be, year old cards are beating these for less money.

I really dont see where these even have a spot in the market at all.....wasted marketing, and silicon....they should have improved their midrange and flagship products more instead of pumping out these things.

Things that beat the current 2600Xt and 8600GTS

ATI:
1900XT, 1900XTX, 1950 Pro, 1950XT, 1950XTX...probably so low as to say a X1800XTX or XT would beat them

Nvidia:
7800 series probably, 7900GT/GTS/GTX and the 7950s....

Very poor showing of technology, they dont even surpass what they are supposed to be replacing, or what one thinks they should be replacing.

The_Neon_Cowboy

there is more under the hood then seen right now, some relating to
direct X others to ppu functions etc....

keep in mind drivers, software, hardware etc continue to change. Both
lead the way both guess where the other is going and try to plain into it..

when there are games optimized for these new cards stories might change
especially when DX10 is in the picture...

why would you buy a DX9 part? is the question... for new card the wise
choice is DX10 capable. So what if they can't do high resolutions, or tons
of aa/af. they can at lest play the games which is far off from a dx9 part.
that can only give you an error as its total output ....

of corse the next gernation will be much better, it useally is...
tech wise this generation is much better, as for performance? thats yet
to be seen when DX10 makes it mainstream

I mean you can buy a DX9 part just expect to use it as a paperweight late
this when the magor refresh happens and the "value" of you product has
droped like a rock... where a dX10 will featch more dough and hold its value longer

ChaosMinionX

I agree completely, but from the standpoint of current DX10 showings and a 8800ultra and X2900XT 1GB version pulling sub 30fps? With that being said these cards are going to eat dirt when the first DX10 game hits, minimum fps at best with low quality.

See what im saying?

Erroneus

First when the HD2xxx cards were released, I was pretty sure AMD would fix the low performance with drivers and the cards would kick ass in DX 10. Now they really havn't fixed a lot with the drivers and the great great DX 10 performance is yet to be seen. Yep the hd2600 seems to do better in DX10 then NV8600, but as chaos points out, it's just not fast enough anyway to run dx10 games properly, so whats the use.

HD2600 was the last chance for AMD to prove their HD2xxx series would be able to compete with Nvidia and it failed.

Waiting for the next rev in a half year and hopefully AMD is able to compete again or else you have to wonder how long they can keep it up.

ChaosMinionX

I think the only chance (and I will be seeing either tomorrow or friday) is handpicked stuff from ATI/AMD from Extreme PC with crazy clocks..... But we shall see

The_Neon_Cowboy

No, 30 fps is plenty (30 fps is VERY playable) and in fact you can play
a game even faster at 1024x768, 600x800, what ever it takes but the
point is you can play and at playable frame rates.... which is better
then the phrase can not play, can never play. people are IGNORING
a few Major things like the drivers are young.AA/AF or high reses and new
stuff usually slaughters cards anyways. as vista has only like 3-5% market
share then so does dx10. So for the next year DX9 is still king anyways.

the Major thing forgotten is CROSSFIRE and SLI, both now offer dual and triple
and even more as well as PPU functions.

you can buy one card for now, later pick up another or 2 more at dirt cheap
prices and have you self a good 2 to 3 x the performance so that 30fps
becomes say 60 and 90 fps...

also keep in mind game makers are there to sell, games! they aren't going to
go lets make this totally unplayable! everyone will buy it
they will look at the market hardware to take advantage of it. program for it
and make sure it's playable.

brutusmaximus

Maybe it is best forgetting about crossfire right now

[COLOR=#0066cc]http://enthusiast.hardocp.com/article.html?art=MTM1OSw5LCxoZW50aHVzaWFzdA[/COLOR]