Radeon HD 2600 XT appearance and thoughts
HEXUS was sampled with reference Radeon HD 2600 XT GDDR4 and Radeon HD 2400 XT boards. You cannot buy these cards and both serve as nothing more than a working proof of technology.
Here's the Radeon HD 2600 XT GDDR4. We'd imagine that the initial batch of retail cards from AMD's AICs will consist of nothing more than rebadging the reference model and adding their own distinctive bundles.
Having spoken at length to firms at COMPUTEX, custom-designed models will arrive a month or so afterwards, and passive cooling seems to be the differentiation of choice.
Being based on a 65nm process technology - albeit with 390M transistors to cater for - the XT SKU uses a quiet-ish fan based within a single-slot cooler.
Moving swiftly on...
The side-on shot highlights the X1950 Pro-like appearance of the HD 2600 XT. It runs at 800MHz for the core (and shaders) and hooks up to 256MiB of GDDR4, running at an effective 2200MHz, via a 128-bit memory bus.
One of the inherent advantages of moving to a smaller manufacturing process lies with reduced heat output. That's why AMD's been able to design a transistor-rich GPU without the need for external power; there's no 6-pin PCIe connector present.
Twin dual-link DVI is standard fare on all Radeon HD 2600-series cards. As per our tech analysis, both ports also feature dual-link HDCP support, with the necessary hardware built right into the GPU itself.
Partners should be bundling in AMD's HDMI-enabling adapter, too. Simply route your PC audio through the card and the adapter will carry both audio and video through the DVI port to your display. Note, however, that the spec is limited to v1.2.
No surprises in the physical manifestation of Radeon HD 2600 XT. Expect this range-topping model to retail for under £100.
