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Gigabyte HD 2600 Pro 512MB
Page 1 of 10 I've said before that the HD 2600 Pro should be passed over in favor of the XT for anyone who wants to play video games, or the HD 2400 XT for people just interested in having a discrete graphics card without all that gaming malarkey. But then, Gigabyte has put together a compelling package with the HD 2600 Pro. A memory bump to 512MB, a clockspeed bump of 5%, passive cooling, component and S-Video out, and Neverwinter Nights 2-a popular sequel by a big developer. But it's still an HD 2600 Pro, right? Is a pretty package enough for the card to surpass its shortcomings? Sure, there's double the RAM, but it's DDR2 and not DDR3. Can the quantity make up for the quality, and then some? The Card & Bundle It is a pretty card. Luminous blue PCB crowned with a golden aluminum heatsink-if not stately, playful to say the least. There's almost no exposed PCB on the front, though if you looked under the heatsink, you'd see the smaller, more stress-tolerant all-aluminum capacitors from Gigabyte's "Ultra Durable" line. Even the video-out connections have little blue caps. On the back you can see the additional memory chips.          Besides the TV dongle, the game, and the rest, the card is missing something: it doesn't include an HDMI adapter. Hopefully, component and S-Video is enough for Gigabyte's potential customers. The HD 2600 Pro does, however, include a DVI-to-VGA adapter. The heatsink is considerably longer than the card itself, which is a normal size; just barely longer than the PCI-Express connector. It doesn't have CrossFire connections, and, though it's CrossFire-capable, it just uses the PCI-Express bus' bandwidth to communicate with another card. The inclusion of Neverwinter Nights 2 seems pretty good, and I've got a soft spot in my heart for Obsidian. That makes it completely unfortunate that, in my box, the game was missing. Gone. Non-existent. I have a regular retail box, and I hope this oversight doesn't plague Gigabyte.
Page 1: Introduction, The Card & Bundle
Page 2: Testing Methodology Page 3: Testing - HL2 Episode 1 Page 4: Testing - F.E.A.R. Page 5: Testing - Company of Heroes Page 6: Testing - Prey Page 7: Testing - Need for Speed Most Wanted Page 8: Testing - 3Dmark 06 & HQV Page 9: Performance Summary, Power & Noise, and Overclocking Page 10: Conclusion
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