X-bit labs

Silence of the Radeon HD 2600: Gigabyte GV-RX26T256H Graphics Card Review (page 9)

Category: Video

by Alexey Stepin , Yaroslav Lyssenko

[ 11/19/2007 | 11:51 PM ]

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The reduction of the memory bandwidth doesn’t affect the overall system performance, but the main problem of ATI Radeon HD 2600 based solutions is their low performance and a very low minimum of speed.

The owner of a GV-RX26T256H will have to turn FSAA off to avoid slowdowns in heavy scenes. If you want to have the highest quality of visuals, you should think about buying an ATI Radeon X1950 Pro or a more expensive Nvidia GeForce 8600 GTS or 8800 GTS.

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You can see the Gigabyte Radeon HD 2600 XT Silent Pipe II have a good speed at a resolution of 1280x1024 with FSAA and the highest graphics quality settings.

Despite the reduced memory frequency, the Gigabyte manages to outpace its main opponent Nvidia GeForce 8600 GT at 1280x1024. It is overtaken by the Nvidia card after that, but both deliver too low performance at resolutions higher than 1280x1024. You can only use them if you lower the level of detail or disable FSAA.