Conclusion
Just like with Nvidia’s DirectX 10 midrange and enre level boards, our opinion on these new Radeons is mixed. We hoped that the transition to 65nm would allow AMD to actually offer an interesting mid-level line. Unfortunately, the 35% more transistors of the Radeon HD 2600 compared to the GeForce 8600 don’t add higher performances and only serve in squandering the additional costs of AMD’s DirectX 10 architecture. Obviously, this architecture has higher performances in geometry shaders, but this doesn’t justify the existence of the 100 million supplementary transistors. AMD’s architecture is overall less efficient which creates the need for more calculation units in order to offer equivalent performances.
But the real disappointment comes from relatively poor antialiasing performances due to ROPs that are not entirely functional. This weakness is felt even more, because traditionally this has been a strong point for Radeons. Besides good DirectX 10 support, we have to look to video to find the interest of this line. Here, it is particularly well adapted for this use with the integration of HDCP support, an audio controller to facilitate the transport of sound in secure environments via an HDMI connection, and efficient decoding of the two flagship HD formats.
To play in 1280x1024 with recent games, the current mid-level won’t entirely be enough to take advantage of the latest effects. You will have to make a compromise and turn to cards like the GeForce 8600 GTS and if your budget allows, you can go even higher or wait for the second generation of mid-level DirectX 10 cards, which should arrive at the end of the year or beginning of 2008 and offer more interesting models in terms of performances.
To be clear, we find the Radeon HD 2600 XT GDDR4 of no interest. The difference in performance compared to the GDDR3 version is reduced, power consumption is much higher, and it is much bulkier. The GDDR3 model is more interesting and should be more attractive if it is found for around 100€ as recent rumors have suggested. Its performances with antialiasng, however, lag and this card is more adapted to 1024x768 than 1280x1024.
In our opinion, the GeForce 8500 GT, Radeon HD 2600 Pro and Radeon HD 2400 XT don’t have any interest either except to fill Nvidia’s and AMD‘s catalogues. These cards have low performances for gamers and the entry level DirectX 10 lines offer the same video capabilities. In other words, if you don’t play games and are looking for a graphic card adapted to HD video, the GeForce 8400 GS and Radeon HD 2400 Pro will suffice, the latter being our preference thanks to its standard HDCP support.
