Published in Reviews

Sapphire HD2400 XT and HD2600 XT play games

by on27 September 2007

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Review: eXTraordinary value for money


After testing a couple of HD2400/2600 PRO series ATI cards, we thought it would be nice do dissect some XT cards too. Unlike their cheaper Pro siblings, which use GDDR2 memory, Sapphire's XT cards use GDDR3, and the HD2600XT is also available with fast GDDR4 memory.

It will be interesting to compare the performance of these two series. The XT cards are mid range and low end products, as you probably know by now, HD 2400 cards have a 64 bit memory bus, which brings about some performance limitations, especially if you want to use Antialiasing.

On the other hand, all HD 2600 cards use a 128 bit memory bus, but as we've already said, they ship in three different memory flavors.

We will compare the XT performance to Club3D's PRO series, and in case you missed that review, you can catch up here.

Let's get back to Sapphire for now. Both cards come with 256MB GDDR3 memory, and both work at 1400MHz. The HD2600XT has a 128 memory bus, while the HD2400XT is stuck with 64 bits. The HD2600XT is based around the RV630 GPU, the HD2400XT uses the RV610.

Both cards utilize a Unified Shader architecture and are fully DX10 compatible. Compared to DirectX 9 cards, the new stream processor architecture gets us better and faster shader effects, Shader Model 4.0 support and numerous processing advantages and new capabilities.



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Supplied by: Ingel Tuzla

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One of the most interesting features is the HDMI support and integrated UVD. All HD2400/2600 series cards support 1080p HD video and HD sound. This, combined with the built in UVD, makes these cards an interesting choice for all consumers who see multimedia capabilities as their priority. The cards are HDCP compatible, so you should have no trouble watching HD DVD and Blu-Ray discs.


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Inside the box, you'll find a driver DVD, one DVI dongle, one HDMI adapter, one S video cable and the Valve voucher.


Radeon HD2400XT

The HD2400XT is passively cooled, the GPU is clocked at 700MHz, and the memory at 1400MHz. Having in mind the 64 bit bus, the faster memory should get this card better performance compared to the PRO version with DDR2 memory.


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A massive aluminum heatsink stretches almost the entire length of the card, and it looks pretty good too.

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Of course, as with all passive cards, a good case airflow is a must

Radeon HD2600XT

The RV630 GPU is clocked at 800MHz, while the memory works at 1400MHz, and the card uses a 128 bit memory bus.

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The Radeon HD2600XT is a single slot card, and it shouldn't be a hassle to install in most machines.




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The card's cooler is pretty quiet, and encased in plastic, of course in Sapphire's trademark colors.

Testbed:

Motherboard: Foxconn C51XEM2AA-8EKRS2H
Processor: AMD Athlon 3800+ X2
Memory: DDR2 2x 1GB OCZ Platinum PC6400 800MHz 4-5-4-15
HDD: Seagate Barracuda 250GB SATA II 7200.10
PSU: Fortron BlueStorm 400W

 

Graphics cards:

Sapphire ATI Radeon HD2600XT 256MB GDDR3;
Transisor count: 390 miliona
GPU: 800MHz
Memory clock: 1400 MHz
Memory bus: 128 bitna
Memory type: GDDR3
Cooling: active
DirectX support:  DX10 – SM4.0
Video support: MPEG-2; MPEG-4; DivX; WMV9; VC-1; H.264
 
Sapphire ATI Radeon HD2400XT 256MB GDDR3;
Transisor count:  180 miliona
GPU: 700MHz
Memory clock: 1400 MHz
Memory bus: 64 bitna
Memory type: GDDR3
Cooling: passive
DirectX support:  DX10 – SM4.0
Video support: MPEG-2; MPEG-4; DivX; WMV9; VC-1; H.264


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Last modified on 27 September 2007
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