by Alexey Stepin , Yaroslav Lyssenko
11/19/2007 | 11:51 PM
For the last decades the PC has evolved from a technically sophisticated device into a simple and easy-to-use tool. The invention of the small form-factor brought the computer into the living room where there are other priorities than at an office. The small PC must be functional and provide enough performance, yet it must not be noisy or too complex.
<%BANNER[article]%>As you know, it is the active coolers of such very hot devices as PSU, CPU and graphics card that are the main sources of noise in a PC. The problem of cooling is especially crucial for the graphics card since there is limited space to install a heat-dissipating system for it.
Gigabyte Technology’s product line-up has included graphics cards with passive coolers for many years. After the release of such DirectX 10 compatible solutions as ATI Radeon HD 2400/2600 and Nvidia GeForce 8500/8600 it became possible to offer high-functionality and silent products and the company carried the tradition on.
The Gigabyte GV-RX26T256H graphics card we are going to test today is based on the ATI Radeon HD 2600 XT. It is equipped with the Silent Pipe II cooler and has 256 megabytes of GDDR3 memory. Let’s see how appealing this solution is in the eyes of a user who wants not only run multimedia applications but also play games.
Before we describe the passive cooler, we want to discuss a few other factors the market success of the graphics card may depend upon.
Gigabyte remains true to its design tradition of matching the exterior of the box with the enclosed game. The box with the Gigabyte GV-RX26T256H is decorated with a picture from Neverwinter Nights 2 and you’ll find a copy of the game inside. A sticker on the box informs you that the card employs only modern solid-state capacitors for a longer service life. As usual, there is the main box under the colorful wrapper. Besides the graphics card (securely fixed in a polyurethane-foam tray), there are the following accessories here:
Perhaps the accessories are not numerous, but Neverwinter Nights 2 is a highly popular, even though not very new, game that definitely adds more appeal to the product.
Unfortunately, like many other manufacturers, Gigabyte Technology doesn’t include a DVI → HDMI adapter from ATI that would allow connecting the card to modern TV-sets with HDMI input and HDCP support. The card is going to have a lower retail price without many accessories, yet the lack of such an important item as that adapter is disappointing.
We have no complaints about the user manual, and the box contents are good overall.
Being a full-featured ATI Radeon HD 2600 XT, the Gigabyte card uses a smaller PCB and GDDR3 memory instead of the reference card’s GDDR4.
Somewhat shorter than the PCB of the ATI Radeon HD 2600 XT GDDR4, it is also simpler in design, resembling the PCB of the less advanced Radeon HD 2600 Pro. The smaller dimensions will help install the card into a compact system case like a hi-fi styled case for a home multimedia system or a classic barebone from Shuttle. The PCB design may have been developed by Gigabyte, but we guess the company buys PCBs and applies an azure solder mask typical of its products.
The card not using external power supply, the power circuit components are located not in the rear part of the PCB but near the S-Video/YPbPr connector. It is based on the two-phase PWM controller Nexsem NX2415 that controls four classic power transistors. This section of the circuit delivers power to the GPU. The other section, located in the top right corner of the PCB, feeds the memory chips. The power circuit contains only three solid-state capacitors with a polymer dielectric. This is normal for the company that uses such capacitors (with better characteristics and a longer service life than classic electrolytic ones) in its Ultra Durable mainboard series. Some of the power circuit elements are on the reverse side of the PCB. You can see a label there reporting that this product doesn’t contain lead and its compounds.
The PCB carries four GDDR3 memory chips from Hynix (HY5RS123235BFP-14, 16Mbx32, 1.8V). These chips have a capacity of 512Mb and a 32-bit memory bus. Four of them make up a memory bank with a total capacity of 256 megabytes and a 128-bit bus, which is standard for the Radeon HD 2600 XT. The chips with the FP-14 suffix have a rated frequency of 700 (1400) MHz, and this is indeed the frequency they are clocked at by the card. The ATI Radeon HD 2600 XT GDDR4 comes with 1100 (2200) MHz memory, so the Gigabyte card has a reduced memory bandwidth, which is going to affect its performance at resolutions of 1600x1200 pixels and higher and with full-screen antialiasing. We’ll check this out in our tests shortly.
As opposed to the memory frequency, the graphics core frequency is not lowered. It is 800MHz. The core has a standard configuration with 120 ALUs grouped into 24 universal shader processors with 5 ALUs in each, 2 texture processors equivalent to 8 classic TMUs, and 1 raster processor (ATI Technologies calls it a render back-end) roughly equivalent to 4 ordinary ROPs. There are no disabled subunits in this core. A yellow thermoplastic material typical of Gigabyte products serves as the thermal interface between the GPU die and the cooler’s sole.
Unlike the reference ATI Radeon HD 2600 XT GDDR4 design, this PCB doesn’t have a seat for a VIVO chip. The card offers a classic selection of connectors: two DVI-I and one universal S-Video/YPbPr connector. The PCB wiring provides for the installation of a HDMI connector instead of the bottom DVI. The connectors support dual-link mode, so you can attach two monitors to the card and enable a display resolution of 2560x1600 pixels. As opposed to the ATI Radeon HD 2600 Pro, the Gigabyte GV-RX26T256H supports CrossFire technology and offers two standard CrossFire connectors. Like the external connectors, the CrossFire ones are protected with special caps – just a nice trifle for the user.
Gigabyte has rejuvenated the Silent Pipe II architecture. We described a passive cooler with a similar name in our GV-NX76T256D-RH review, but the new reincarnation has nothing in common with the older one.
All of the Silent Pipe II components are placed on one side of the card and occupy one slot only. This is possible, among other things, due to the thinner tech process of the chip. Although the 65nm ATI Radeon HD 2600 XT chip consists of as many as 390 million transistors its peak power consumption is only 48.6W.
The main component of this system is a heatsink with thick diagonal ribs that also serve as the cooler’s foundation. The ribs are fastened right to the PCB with four spring-loaded screws and an X-shaped plastic plate. There is a copper plate on the cooler’s base. It contacts with the GPU die and drive the heat flow to the two heat pipes.
The pipes help to distribute the heat evenly in the heatsink. Take note that the heatsink goes out of the dimensions of the PCB. You should take this into consideration if you are going to install the Gigabyte GV-RX26T256H into your multimedia system.
Silent Pipe II does not cool the memory chips, probably due to the low heat dissipation of GDDR3 chips working at a frequency of 1440MHz. The cooler is based on the natural convection principle overall.
There are three small holes in the card’s mounting bracket. These are meant for letting in cool air from the outside. Perhaps these holes are not very efficient as the cooling elements of Silent Pipe II would become scorching hot during the short time our system took to boot up. On the other hand, the high temperature of the heatsink is indicative of an efficient transfer of heat from the GPU.
We don’t discuss the overclockability and noisiness of the graphics card due to obvious reasons.
To test the performance of Gigabyte GV-RX26T256H we assembled the following standard test platform:
Since we believe that the use of tri-linear filtering optimizations is not justified in this case, the ATI and Nvidia graphics card drivers were set up to provide the highest possible quality of tri-linear and anisotropic filtering. Also, to ensure maximum image quality, we enabled transparent texture filtering. As a result, our ATI and Nvidia driver settings looked as follows:
ATI Catalyst:
Nvidia ForceWare:
We selected the highest possible graphics quality level in each game using standard tools provided by the game itself. The games configuration files weren’t modified in any way. Performance was measured with the games’ own tools or, if not available, manually with Fraps utility version 2.8.2. We also measured the minimum speed of the cards where possible.
The tests were performed in the following resolutions: 1280x1024/960, 1600x1200 and 1920x1200. For the games that didn’t support 16:10 ratio we set 1920x1440 resolution.We used “eye candy” mode everywhere, where it was possible without disabling the HDR or Shader Model 3.0. Namely, we ran the tests with enabled anisotropic filtering as well as MSAA 4x. We enabled them from the game’s menu. If this was not possible, we forced them using the appropriate driver settings of Catalyst and ForceWare drivers.
Gigabyte GV-RX26T256H will be competing against the following graphics accelerators participating in our test session:
For our tests we used the following games and benchmarks:
First-Person 3D Shooters
Third-Person 3D Shooters
RPG
Simulators
Strategies
Synthetic Benchmarks
Unfortunately, the silent operation of the card comes at the expense of the memory bandwidth. The Gigabyte GV-RX26T256H is considerably slower than the Radeon HD 2600 XT GDDR4 in the first test. The gamer may find the speed too low even at 1280x1024 unless he lowers the level of detail or disables FSAA.
This game’s engine doesn’t require a lot of computing resources from the graphics card, but seems to need a high speed of texture-mapping. As a result, the Nvidia GeForce 8 and the ATI Radeon X1950 Pro deliver higher performance than the newer cards from AMD.
You’ll have to disable full-screen antialiasing and, perhaps, some special effects to achieve a playable frame rate (i.e. 30fps) on a Gigabyte GV-RX26T256H.
Things are quite different in Call of Juarez that values the GPU’s computing capacity. Gigabyte’s engineers didn’t reduce the GPU clock rate, and the performance of the GV-RX26T256H is about as high as that of the reference card.
Note that the ATI Radeon HD 2600 and Nvidia GeForce 8600 cannot deliver good performance even in the lowest of the tested resolutions, especially considering the low minimum of speed of each card. So, we again recommend you to lower the quality of visuals in Call of Juarez to have a comfortable speed.
The Gigabyte card is terribly slow in Call of Juarez DirectX 10. Although it is almost 30% faster than Nvidia’s solution, you just cannot play a first-person shooter at a speed of 7fps.
So, if you are choosing a graphics card that would permit to play upcoming games, you should think about buying a more advanced product. You’ll have to reduce the quality of graphics if you’ve got an ATI Radeon HD 2600.
Unfortunately, AMD hasn’t yet solved the obvious problems its ATI Radeon HD 2600/2400 products experience in Far Cry. As you can see, the Gigabyte card is not only worse than the GeForce 8600 GT, but is also twice slower than the ATI Radeon X1950 Pro.
At an average frame rate of 35fps, the Gigabyte card may not have enough speed for the heaviest scenes. You’ll have to turn off FSAA and, probably, reduce the level of detail in that case.
You can see that the relatively slow GDDR3 memory does not make the ATI Radeon HD 2600 XT too sluggish. You can play the game at 1280x1024 without FSAA but with high-quality lighting.
The Gigabyte GV-RX26T256H has a normal result here even though it cannot match the Nvidia GeForce 8600 GT, let alone the ATI Radeon X1950 Pro.
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.
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.
Prey and Enemy Territory: Quake Wars used a modified game engine from Doom 3, so there is no fundamental difference between the two tests. The ATI Radeon HD 2600 XT is slow in both cases even at a resolution of 1280x1024.
Although the Gigabyte is ahead of the Nvidia GeForce 8600 GT in Prey, you surely have to disable FSAA or special effects to achieve a playable speed. You may even have to buy a more expensive card for that.
If you’ve already got an ATI Radeon X1950 Pro, there is no sense in replacing it with newer solutions from the same class. The card is faster than DirectX 10-compatible solutions priced at $149 across a number of applications.
The game doesn’t support FSAA when you enable the dynamic lighting model, but loses much of its visual appeal with the static model. This is the reason why we benchmarked the cards in S.T.A.L.K.E.R. using anisotropic filtering only.
The resource-consuming lighting model employed in this game is a problem for more advanced cards than the Gigabyte GV-RX26T256H. You’ll either have to disable it or use a faster card. Once again we can note the high performance of the ATI Radeon X1950 Pro and Nvidia GeForce 8800 GTS.
The Gigabyte GV-RX26T256H is as fast as its main opponent Nvidia GeForce 8600 GT in this test, but that’s hardly a success for any of them. The average speed of 17fps is far from the desired 30fps.
As you can see, none of the cards, except for the Nvidia GeForce 8800 GTS 320MB, shows a good result at the highest graphics quality settings. Once again we have to recommend you to play with reduced settings. Modern inexpensive DirectX 10 cards cannot provide a good speed even in DirectX games.
We try to get the highest possible image quality from each game, and choosing between FSAA and HDR we preferred the latter. That’s why the game was tested with anisotropic filtering only.
The shaders-heavy Splinter Cell: Double Agent favors GPUs with a unified architecture as the defeat of the ATI Radeon X1950 Pro suggests.
The ATI RV630 has a high computing capacity, and the game runs fast on the Gigabyte GV-RX26T256H at 1280x1024. The GeForce 8600 GT delivers a lower frame rate. The resolution of 1600x1200 seems to be playable on the Gigabyte card as well.
The current version of the game doesn’t support FSAA, so we performed the test with anisotropic filtering only.
The Gigabyte GV-RX26T256H and Nvidia GeForce 8600 GT have similar, and very low, results here.
You need an Nvidia GeForce 8800 GTS 320MB or faster graphics card to play this game normally.
This is a hard nut of our test program. The poor results of the ATI RV630 aren’t a defeat if you compare them to those of the other cards. But the game is included into the Gigabyte GV-RX26T256H kit, so the speed of 10fps is depressing. The buyer won’t be able to appreciate the game fully on this graphics card.
The more expensive Nvidia GeForce 8800 GTS 320MB remains the only card to play Neverwinter Nights normally at 1280x1024 and 1600x1200 with maximum graphics quality settings.
The game loses much of its visual appeal without HDR. Although some gamers argue that point, we think TES IV looks best with enabled FP HDR and test it in this mode.
The Gigabyte GV-RX26T256H is handicapped in this test by its reduced memory bandwidth. Instead of competing with the Nvidia GeForce 8600 GTS, it is only as fast as the Nvidia GeForce 8600 GT. Its performance is quite sufficient for resolutions up to 1600x1200, though.
The open vistas of The Elder Scrolls IV put forth completely different requirements to the graphics card. The speeds are lower here than in the closed environments, but the Gigabyte card is not slower than the GeForce 8600 GT, even outperforming the latter in higher resolutions. We recommend limiting the resolution to 1280x1024 since its minimum of speed, like that of the other mainstream cards, is below 20fps at 1600x1200.
Although the Gigabyte card is obviously an outsider in the X3 universe in comparison with the other cards, it delivers enough performance for you to play at such a high resolution as 1600x1200 with maximum graphics quality settings and 4x FSAA. The ATI Radeon X1950 Pro has the best minimum speed while the Nvidia GeForce 8600 GTS offers the highest average frame rate.
The game having a frame rate limiter, you should compare the minimum frame rates in the first place because it is the minimum speed that determines your playing comfort in Command & Conquer 3.
Unfortunately, none of the below-$150 cards can provide acceptable performance at the maximum graphics quality settings with 4x FSAA even if the resolution as low as 1280x1024. The Radeon X1950 Pro, a bestseller of the previous generation, is on top again, outperforming the newer solutions.
The Gigabyte Radeon HD 2600 XT Silent Pipe II is about as fast as the GeForce 8600 GT and even faster at 1920x1200. Alas, this victory doesn’t mean much as you can hardly play a real-time strategy at a speed of 10-14fps.
If you play this real-time strategy, you should consider more advanced products than those selling at less than $150 or reduce the quality of graphics. Modern mid-range graphics cards cannot ensure a comfortable speed at the maximum visual quality and with 4x FSAA.
We can note that the Gigabyte GV-RX26T256H is about as fast as the Nvidia GeForce 8600 GT. The ATI Radeon X1950 Pro delivers high performance, again.
Notwithstanding the reduced memory performance, the Gigabyte card looks competitive against the GeForce 8600 GT as well as GeForce 8600 GTS. Unfortunately, the minimum speed fluctuates wildly in this test, so the results shouldn’t be viewed as 100% accurate.
The tests in the DirectX 10 mode suggest that the new API hasn’t yet come for real despite the arrival of new-generation GPUs. DirectX 10 capabilities are only available on top-end graphics cards.
The reduction of the memory frequency of the Gigabyte GV-RX26T256H makes is about 10% slower than the reference card in 3DMark05. The Gigabyte scores about 1600 points more than the Nvidia GeForce 8600 GT, though.
As we have seen in the previous tests, the Gigabyte GV-RX26T256H and GeForce 8600 GT match each other’s performance. The reduced memory bandwidth proves to have a small effect on the card’s performance even if you use full-screen antialiasing.
The 10% gap between the Gigabyte card and the Radeon HD 2600 XT can be observed in the newer Futuremark, too. The GeForce 8600 GT is a loser in this test.
The overall picture remains the same in the two resource-consuming SM3.0/HDR tests, but it is the Gigabyte card that shows the lowest speed in the SM2.0 tests.
The Gigabyte copes worse than its opponent with the SM2.0 tests.
The advantages of the RV630-based cards are outlined sharply in the SM3.0/HDR tests. The Gigabyte GV-RX26T256H beats Nvidia’s solutions here.
Featuring the passive cooling system Silent Pipe II, the Gigabyte Technology GV-RX26T256H graphics card has left the impression of a well-made product. Good accessories, an absolutely silent cooler, a clever PCB design, and a rich functionality of ATI Radeon HD 2600 XT that includes DirectX 10 support and the advanced Avivo HD engine – all of this is going to suit perfectly for a home multimedia system, but we have to note the low performance in 3D games.
The Gigabyte GV-RX26T256H could hardly yield an acceptable frame rate in most of our tests. The minimum speed suffered the most from the reduction of its memory frequency. The performance hit from a few to 10 percent relative to the reference ATI Radeon HD 2600 XT GDDR4 often makes the Gigabyte card slower than its main opponent Nvidia GeForce 8600 GT. Besides the reduced memory bandwidth, the ATI Radeon HD 2600 is overall weak in 3D games.
It should be acknowledged that graphics cards like ATI Radeon HD 2600 XT GDDR and Nvidia GeForce 8600 GT/GTS cannot deliver high performance in modern games unless you lower the graphics quality settings and play in resolutions below 1280x1024. These cards may even be slower than previous-generation products such as ATI Radeon X1950 Pro.
So, if you need a silent and economical graphics card for applications other than gaming, you should consider the Gigabyte GV-RX26T256H. It is compact and offloads the CPU greatly when playing HD video (for details see our article called The Look of Perfect: Analysis of Graphics Accelerators Performance during Media Playback). It supports HDMI output (with an appropriate adapter) and offers high-quality post-processing for HD video (for details see this article) .
But if you need a graphics card for playing games, the Gigabyte GV-RX26T256H with its GDDR3 memory and a reduced memory frequency cannot be a good buy for you. If you are seriously into games and want to enjoy them fully, you should search among high-end products such as ATI Radeon HD 2900 Pro or Nvidia GeForce 8800 GTS 320MB.
Highs:
Lows: