Should be interesting to see how well this competes with the 8600 GTS. It has a very large shading horsepower advantage, perhaps even enough to overcome its architectural inefficiences.

nice, it is useful for video :)

I think I know why GeCube used a two slot cooler. The reference pic makes it look like all the hot air is thrown against the TV out port and the DVI port next to it. That angle would also direct the air towards the side of the case. Good news for people who have fans sucking air OUT of their case on their case door. Oh wait. Fans on the side of the case are traditionally intake fans. Ooops.

Finally a decent card from ATI that isn't a power pig .

I can't wait to see if it's more efficient than the 2900 as far as power consumption with that low die process. Hopefully they'll fix some driver issues so the frame rate of the new Radeon's isn't so inferior by the time this comes out.

Don't think it will beat the 8600 if it is as inefficient as the 2900 xt with the drivers now since 320 ATI shaders < 96 nvidia's and 120 is about a bit more of a third of the 2900 and 32 also for nvidia and also shader clock is still higher with nvidia so I still think they maybe =

ATI should consider adding more ROPs and texture units .

what does the shader actually do? more the shader the better?

I just hope that shortage of TMUs and ROPs don't limit the card's performance.

I think... they'll screw this one up. 8 TMUs and 4 ROPs ain't enough for such architecture. Yeah, ridiculous shader horsepower, but if it can't output pixels fast enough...? I don't have much faith on this card.

It seeems I'll have to wait till late june to know if my predictions are true.

4ROPs??

Is the same thing of 7600gt vs. x1600xt

8600 with 8ROPs and HD 1600 with 4ROPs

the same thing, the same mistakes

I'm confident at lower resolutions this card will be great . But with a low number of ROPs and Texture units , it doesn't have much chance . Atleast it's clocked quite high , so it's pretty possible it'll beat the 8600 GTS .

there is a slim chance this will beat the 8600GTS and I would be a betting person and say it doesn't.

Look at the 2900XT running at 105Ghz/sec vs. the 8800GTS of 86Ghz/sec. Bandwidth is not all roses here. ATI/AMD made a huge mistake by bottle necking the bandwidth with a low number of texture units and ROPs.

That is the fatal error of the 2900XT and will be the same here unless between now and June they increase these to be the same as the 8600GTS.

Whoops sorry 8800GTS only has 64Ghz/sec bandwidth...which even makes my point even more.

8800GTS here I come...looks like ATI made my card buying decision for me.

The amount of pixel fill rate and texture fill rate is very close on the 8800GTS and HD 2900 XT ... the problem must be in the drivers.

agreed! HD 2600XT will not be more powerful than the 8600GTS. HD 2600XT has much less "horse power" but it's "a huge car" so, the size is impressive but the power........ ! texture fill rate and pixel fill rate is almost the DOUBLE in 8600GTS, but so much less shaders, so its bottlenecked. the HD 2600XT is the reverse, a larger field of power and NO power to run the field. will be the same things... and the funny is... X1650XT has more ROPs and more Texturing units... exactly the DOUBLE. so... i guess this card will be another error from DAAMIT.

Well.. in newest games the amount of shader horsepower does matter by A LOT . At lower resolutions ( 1024x768 , perhaps even 1280x1024 ) it has a chance of outperforming the 8600 GTS .

good card for good price, i guess :)
wondering how good its playin' dx10 games...

Wow ati is counting the shaders wrong here. It's really 64 not 120. The other 56 are'nt used much, It's just for show. If nvidia counted shaders the same way it would be 64.
And nvidia's higher shader clocks make up for the deficiency.

sounds like a nice card but well see.

As always, you can't judge a book by it's cover, so we'll have to wait for the benchys....

I just want to see the specs of the card with 2 2600 cores on a single PCB.

I wonder if it will beat my eVGA e-GeForce 7900 GS KO.

Hopefully this isn't a POS like the Nvidia 8600 series was.

Why am i only seeing 4 ROP's :|?

Here are some benchies about the referred cards
http://www.nvnews.net/vbulletin/showthread.php?s=cf72589af382082228d0c6924e6270ae&t=93842

heres a review im disgusted:
http://www.nvnews.net/vbulletin/showthread.php?s=cf72589af382082228d0c6924e6270ae&t=93842

Hey I found a review I'm appalled by the performance: http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,1697,2151679,00.asp

for 150 dollars what do you expect?

"I just hope that shortage of TMUs and ROPs don't limit the card's performance.

I think... they'll screw this one up. 8 TMUs and 4 ROPs ain't enough for such architecture. Yeah, ridiculous shader horsepower, but if it can't output pixels fast enough...? I don't have much faith on this card.

It seeems I'll have to wait till late june to know if my predictions are true."

Well, my predictions were true. Now we've to wait till they release the HD2650 series to fix the core flaws and see the same as when the X1650XT was released.

Any particular reason these mid-range cards are so flawed? As people already picked out, only 4 ROPs? Are they trying to turn the midrange section into nothing but home theater specialties while forcing us to get a 400 dollar card to get any kind of decent performance, or is this just some kind of backlash from the shift to DX-10 and the unified shaders?

because they want you to shell out the big bucks for a fast video card.there is no such thing as a mid-performance midrange card anymore.

Hey (any admin) would you mind putting up another page for the GDDR3 variants?

We thought about it and we don't want to make a new card every time a card is released like this. It would be out of control pretty fast. As you can see, all the HD 2600 XTs have their memory type in the card name and you can organize the list by clicking on "Mem" at the top of the table.

This card is very bad for price.

Does Shader Operations matter? It's got a lot more than the 8600GTS, it is enough to beat it?

Yes but it is not everything the card is so horribly unbalanced wonder why ATI has been making weird proportions now a days.

The low number TMUs and ROPs paired with a high number of shader processors only works with high end cards ( X1900 , HD 2900 ), not on midrange or lowend cards , I really hope ATi will realise that before they release the new generation of cards .
Lol... almost all reviews test this card with antialiasing , no wonder it's giving such crappy results .

Is it true that this card will perform better when DX10 games are released?

And is it enough to outperform the 8600GT with a lower number of TMUs and ROPs?

Obviously it'll show it's true performance in REAL DX10 games , but I don't think it has any chance to go up against the 8600 GT , because of the low number of TMUs and ROPs .

what is the wattage usage for this card?

How ROPs works and how many are needed?
This card is able to fill 3.2GPixels/second, or about a thousand 2048x1536 screens per second, the low performance couldn't be due to something else other than ROPs?

This card is good for its low price I think...

It's certainly because of the low number of ROPs and TMUs . Also , the super-scalar architecture is... well not really efficient . Without very efficient drivers , the performance is lower than it can potentially do .
I wouldn't buy any DX10 card , exept for the high end cards . The mid-end cards simply got screwed up ( massive performance gap between the high and mid end cards ) .

elaborate for me what a rop and a tmu is for me

wow, the 7600gt has more ROPs and TMUs then this piece of junk. Even though the technology is 2.5 years old.

you people are making me upset...

YES. 4 ROPS, 8 TMUs... but you wanna know something? TSMC's 65nm process means 800MHZ. its doing 3.2Gpixels/sec, which is enough for 1200X1000 or 1440X720. Quit yer whinin'.

oh and Avivo HDMI supported out = zen.

an ROP is the last stage on a pipeline. Up until that point the image has no resolution. Its just a perfect looking image. The ROP allocates colors to pixels for writing to the v-sync buffer (or lack there of). It is supposed** to perform all AA on the card, but the general rumor is that ATIs broken AA architecture is due to the fact that the ROPs are effed up in the head, so AA is done on general purpose shaders.

A texture maping unit is the part of the pipe which places the correct texture on the correct area. It puts the texture on the face of a polygon.

In heinsight, I believe this to be a well balenced card for 19" or smaller monitor owners. The high speed GDDR4 on this card means that the memory subsistem will have a very low tax on AA performance (as compaired to traditional GDDR3 cards) meaning the memory subsystem will effectivly subsidize the crappy performance of AA on the GPPUs. end effect: AA doesnt mean a huge loss in peformance, on the GDDR4 version at least.

geez guys, can't enyone give a solid answer, all we want to know is which is beter for over-all gaming, GeForce 8600GTS 128bit 256MB or the ATi 2600XT Crosfire. simple, aint it?

@anonymous Based on the reviews that I have read, and the opinions of my friends and forum familiars, I would say that the 8600 GTS is better than the HD 2600 XT when playing games.

does this card perform any better than an 8600GT?

It performs about the same as the 8600 GT , provided you don't turn antialiasing on .

@anonymous Two 2600XTs in crossfire would be better than a single GTS

This card isn't as bad as many reviews say. Simply because you can get it for a lot cheaper than the GTS, which is what it gets compared to. (In UK £60 v £90/100)

This thing would be awesome for overclocking if you could vmod it. The thing craps out at 860mhz, even though the temps are around the 50C mark. Give it some juice and I could see it reach 900mhz.

Oh it wipes the floor with my X800, which cost £200 back in the day. This is a stopgap for the next cards coming out later this year/early next year.

The 65nm process itself tops out at 860mhz .
This isn't a bad card , but it's not a good one either . This and the 8600 GT are about in the same pricerange .
Anyway , I'd wait for the G92 ( 256bit memory bus , there to replace the midend cards ) .

Is this card clocked at 1100mhz (2200 DDR) or 700mhz (1400 DDR)?

Everywhere I look it says its 700mhz (1400 DDR), so I dont know what to believe...

mike... what will i buy x1950pro or hd2600xt? cause i don't have enough knowledge about the features... w/c is better for a gaming pc?

please answer my question... i'll wait for your explanations

The X1950 Pro is better .. atleast in most games . The HD 2600XT is very limited by 8 TMUs and 4 ROPs . I'd get the X1950 Pro , if I was you ( no matter if you are looking for a new PCIe or an AGP card ) .

@anonymous - the GDDR3 one is at 1400 , the GDDR4 one is at 2200 .

tnx radiator... i'll buy the x1950pro...

When I upgrade (still a long time away), should I get 2 512 MB versions of this in CrossFire, 1 8800 GTS 640 MB, or 2 8600 GTSs 512 MB in SLI?

how much the x1950pro and the 2600xt differ in speed? in percentage... answer pls...

I had to RMA my MSI HD 2600 XT 512MB GDDR4 card. The refund is due today. I won't be replacing it but rather taking a credit. The problem with the card is that it overheats. According to the vendor, ComputerHQ, I'm not the only one who has returned this model card for the same reason. I was told today that the vendor was considering removing the product from their web site store. I may hold out for a 3870. Until then I'm back to a lame o' pci card.

Which card should i buy..? Gecube HD 2600XT or Palit 8600GT Sonic...? i can't make up my mind... i hope you guys can help me decide... tnx..

@Pk7 get a single 8800GT.

@cure the X1950 pro seems to be the better buy. I wish the X1950XTs were still going for $180 :(

and @ Xoier, seems to me the HD2600XT and 8600GT are very evenly matched.

@MrWizard6600 tnx for the reply... it seems ill be going for the hd2600xt since my mainboards chipset is ATI... tnx...

this card is better than the 8600gt... it is also the best card under $100!

is there any difference between the GDDR3 and the GDDR4 ones, there seems to have a great difference in memory clock

This card really disapoint me, I've been supporting ATi for all the years. Actually this card can go faster than the 8600GTS in some games without AA, with AA, it's barely compatible with 8600GT. The only good thing is this card is great for videos, I had enough of ATi, I'm supporting Nvidia from now on...

After 10 years, this card finally died on me, I was stuck in the middle of Crysys 3 in more than 100SPF, serious this card suck, really

i saw an ad about a 2600XT-X2 in a philippine computers buy and sell site, is there really one? here -> http://www.tipidpc.com/viewitem.php?iid=1705934

is it better than XFX 9400gt 1G ?

@jo2009 I think it is too close to call. Find yourself a nice 9600 GT and call it a day.

@Steve

Nope

9400GT is only slightly better than an 8500GT

The 2600XT is much better. It's more or less the same as the 8600GT.