System setup and notes
| Graphics cards | HIS HD 2600XT IceQ Turbo 256MB GDDR3 | HIS HD 2600XT Zalman Fan 256MB GDDR3 | Foxconn 8600 GT-256 | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| GPU clock speed (MHz) | 823.5 | 796.5 | 560 | ||
| Shader clock speed (MHz) | 823.5 | 796.5 | 1232 | ||
| Memory clock speed (MHz) | 1908 | 1386 | 1620 | ||
| Memory bus width (bits) | 128 | 128 | 128 | ||
| CPU | Intel Core 2 Duo E6600 (2.40GHz, 4MiB L2 cache, 1066MHz FSB, LGA775) | ||||
| Motherboard | Asus P5K Premium WiFi AP Edition (P35 + ICH9R) | EVGA NF68 (NVIDIA nForce 680i SLI) | |||
| BIOS revision | 0204 | 691N0P20 | |||
| 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 8.3.0.1013 | NVIDIA platform driver 9.53 | |||
| Graphics driver | CATALYST 7.7 FINAL | CATALYST 7.7 FINAL | CATALYST 7.7 BETA | ForceWare 158.16 | |
| Operating system | Windows XP Professional, w/ SP2, 32-bit | ||||
Tests
| 3D Benchmarks | Far Cry v1.33 Quake 4 v1.30 Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory v1.05 |
|---|
Testing notes
The test platform used for our original AMD Radeon HD 2600 XT review suffered a hardware failure, so we had to run tests on the HIS Radeon HD 2600 XT Zalman Fan 256MB GDDR3 card with two sets of drivers. First, we ran it with the CATALYST 7.7 BETA drivers, as used in our original article, and then the CATALYST 7.7 FINAL drivers, which were the latest available at the time of testing.
This also allowed us to see any performance improvements AMD had been able to make in the last month.
