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ATI HD 2600 Pro 256MB
Page 1 of 10 ATI's HD 2600 XT is a pretty nice card. It plays games acceptably well, consumes a negligible amount of power, and has flawless video acceleration. It's my first choice for the mainstream. So where does that leave the HD 2600 Pro? Being a cut-down, budget version of a cool card, what, then, is missing? The HD 2600 Pro is targeted to anyone who wants a discreet video card, the casual gaming ilk, but doesn't really want either the lowest-end model or to spend over a hundred dollars. All that seems reasonable, but it's just not true. I think the GDDR3, 256MB HD 2600 Pro should be skipped altogether. It does a couple things right, but misses the mark too often. The Card & Bundle We have an engineering sample from AMD that includes an HDMI adapter, which is about as much bundle as you'll get from other vendors, except maybe you'll get some TV-out hardware as well. The standard HDMI adapter supports sound, like the other HD 2000-series cards, which means that early HTPC/HDTV adopters will find that a computer equipped with this card will slip into their home theaters effortlessly.     The look of the hardware really does take me back. There's almost nothing on the PCB, the memory is exposed, and there are a couple of big, conspicuous capacitors and coils toward the edges. The heatsink is small and lonely, though conditioned by a sharp-edged fan.   The card's light, it's square (just barely longer than the PCI-Express connector), and it doesn't need auxiliary power. It doesn't even have CrossFire connections; should that ever be utilized, this budget video card manages just fine with only the PCI-Express bus.
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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