VisionTek HD2400Pro

Having tested a few VisionTek products in the past we came to expect a certain level of quality from them. Because of that we were literally surprised when the box of the HD2400Pro wasn’t quite what we expected it to be. We are not exaggerating when we say that you could easily fit two HD2900 cards in there. Not sure what to expect from the contents we carefully opened the thing, finding only the driver CD, a short manual and a very handy notice sheet, pointing out that the HD2400Pro might take over your sound-card settings because of HDMI Audio (A godsend if you are not a computer pro). As we were opening the box we couldn’t help but notice how light it was, which immediately turned our internal alarms on. Light box means lots of empty space, and lots of empty space more often than not means a card that isn’t held in place. Our concerns turned out to be unfounded, as VisionTek wrapped the card in a few layers of cardboard, so the card should be protected from everything save a raving postman with a knife.

The card itself is a reference HD2400Pro, without any features to differentiate it from the reference samples by AMD we previously have tested. The core is running at a solid 525MHz, which makes it considerably slower than a HD2400XT, but also means the price tag is noticeably lower. The 256Mb of memory, set to 400/800MHz is running at the reference speeds for the hyb18t512161bf-25 modules.

The cooler installed on the card, while not the most technologically advanced model, does a good job at keeping the GPU cool, even after longer stretches of time. The memory modules are not cooled directly, but some of the airflow from the fan is bound to be helping them as well.

We were at first a bit disappointed when we didn’t find a DVI-to-HDMI dongle in the package, but once we took a good look at the card that problem was immediately redundant. As with the rest of the entry level video cards the VisionTek HD2400Pro comes equipped with a single DVI and a VGA port. However, instead of finding the standard TV-Out connector there is a HDMI port installed on the card, quite a nice surprise.