Radeon HD 2600 XT

Visiontek package their card in a very compact box, far smaller than most. Inside we find the bundled extras which include instructions on how to configure HDMI audio, display cables (including HDMI) and various brackets for use in low profile systems. This is an ideal bundle for the product as it ensures that almost every need is catered for. Our only concern is that the brackets were loose in the box during shipping and could have caused damage to the card, a small box or compartment within the main packaging would easily solve this. 

As shown above a low profile PCB design is used for this particular 2600 XT. This ensures that the card can be used in standard desktops as well as low profile office or media PCs. There is a small cooler attached to the core and front memory chips but the memory on the back of the card is not cooled.

There are three display outputs available on the product in its shipping configuration, the first two are the standard DVI and VGA outputs and the third is HDMI. The HDMI output can be used with the bundled HDMI cable or converted to DVI, again using one of the bundled cables. As we mentioned earlier in the review the bracket can be changed to install on a low profile system but if you still plan on using the VGA output the card would use a two slot design. The first slot would include the DVI and HDMI output with the second using VGA.

The core used on the 2600 XT is ATI’s RV630 a 65nm chip which has 120 shader units and supports DirectX10. The core runs at 800MHz with the 256Mb of DDR3 clocked at 700MHz on a 128Bit bus. The memory used is Hynix HY5RS123235B FP-14, which is rated up to 700MHz and therefore is running exactly to specification. In addition to the 2D/3D features this card also supports the now standard video features such as HDCP and HD-DVD/Blu-Ray acceleration.