Radeon HD 2600 XT system setup and notes
Hardware
| Graphics cards | AMD Radeon HD 2600 XT GDDR4 256MiB | XFX GeForce 8600 GT XXX 256MiB | ASUS EN8600GTS 256MiB | AMD Radeon HD 2400 XT GDDR3 256MiB | HIS X1650XT iSilenceII 256MiB | ASUS EAX1950 PRO 256MiB | Inno3D iChiLL 7900GS Arctic Cooling Silencer 6 256MiB | Price (expected) | £87 | £115 | £120 | £46 | £75 | £100 | £105 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Shader Model | 4.0 | 3.0 | |||||
| GPU Clock Speed (MHz) | 796.4 | 620 | 675 | 695 | 574 | 580.5 | 550 |
| Shader Clock Speed (MHz) | 796.4 | 1355 | 1450 | 695 | 574 | 580.5 | 550 |
| Memory Clock Speed (MHz) | 2196 | 1600 | 2016 | 1584 | 1350 | 1404 | 1500 |
| Memory Bus Width (Bits) | 128 | 64 | 128 | 256 | |||
| CPU | Intel Core 2 Duo E6600 (2.40GHz, 4MiB L2 cache, 1066MHz FSB, LGA775) | ||||||
| Motherboard | ASUS PW5-DH Deluxe (Intel i975X) | EVGA NF68 (NVIDIA nForce 680i SLI) | ASUS PW5-DH Deluxe (Intel i975X) | EVGA NF68 (NVIDIA nForce 680i SLI) | |||
| Memory | 1GByte (2 x 512MByte) OCZ26671024ELDCGE-K PC5400 | ||||||
| Memory timings and speed | 4-4-4-8 @ DDR2-667 | ||||||
| Disk drive(s) | 160GB Seagate Barracuda 7200.9 (3Gb/s mode) | ||||||
| Mainboard software | Intel Inf Update 8.0.1.1002 | NVIDIA platform driver 9.53 | |||||
| Graphics driver | 8.38.9.1-070613a-048915E-ATI (Cat 7.7 BETA) | ForceWare 158.22 | 8.38.9.1-070613a-048915E-ATI (Cat 7.7 BETA) | CATALYST 7.1 | ForceWare 93.71 | ||
| Operating System | Windows XP Professional 32-bit, with SP2 | ||||||
Software
[advert]| 3D Benchmarks |
Far Cry v1.33 Quake 4 v1.30 Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory v1.05 |
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Notes
We're comparing the performance of the Radeon HD 2600 XT against that of a pre-overclocked XFX GeForce 8600 GT XXX card and a stock-clocked ASUS GeForce 8600 GTS. We appreciate that the XFX will outperform a standard 8600 GT but with many NVIDIA partners choosing to release overclocked models, it was an appropriate card for us to choose.We've also included the DX9 Radeon X1650 XT, priced around £75, and a couple of decent £100 DX9-performers - the Radeon X1950 Pro and GeForce 7900 GS GPUs.
Just for kicks - and to make it beg for mercy - we've added it into this line-up the Radeon HD 2400 XT. That way you can see how it compares with higher-priced cards. Formal 2400 XT benchmarking was conducted on our low-end testing suite and a direct comparison made with a GeForce 8500 GT. Those results are over on page nine.
Benchmarks were conducted at 1280x1024 4xAA 8xAF and 1600x1200 0xAA 8xAF. These are the most likely settings for resolution and image-quality on mid-range cards, especially given that they're the native resolutions of many reasonably-priced LCD monitors.
We recognise that our testing suite isn't designed to showcase the talents of DX10 hardware but suitable games remain few and far between. The majority of users, we reckon, will play older titles and transition to DX10 (and Vista) once a decent number of triple-A titles arrives. We'll do the same, obviously. However, if you're in need of a short-term DX10-fix, head on over to Beyond3D for a sneak peek.
As always, we ran each benchmark three times and then calculated the arithmetic mean. If any of the three results looked erroneous, we threw them all away until we could collect three within a margin of statistical error. Naturally, we report any major attempts needed to get three reliable results. Apart from that, things are as noted on the graphs and in the graph commentary. Want to know more? Head for the HEXUS.community
