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The Verdict ..
I have to admit, a HIS product never fails to disappoint. Now we can discuss the generic performance of the 2600 series over and over again, but this is what AMD-ATI has to offer at the moment. So get this, the card as shown today you can pick up for roughly 120 EUR, that's including the cooler and the 512MB gDDR3 memory, with plenty of texture memory for upcoming game titles that in my book definitely is a positive. Take GRAW 2 for example, if you start that game up with a 256MB card, your texture quality will be set to medium automatically.
Let me show you, take a good look at the image above; GRAW2. To the left 256MB medium texture quality, to your right the 512Mb high-quality option is now enabled. There's just much more detail.
So then; with 512MB, you get to play with high-quality textures. It's in these facts where you need to look for the advantage of 512MB. Obviously 512MB normally would also help with Anti Aliasing, yet since the overall performance of ATI's current mid-range product line is lacking, you don't have enough horse power to play around with high AA levels. You'll need to stick with resolutions up-to 10x7 and 12x10 in games.
But granted the 512MB definitely is great for high-quality textures which make games look more crisp. The insertion of the higher default clock speeds on both core and memory make this product perform faster then the fastest ATI mid-range product, the HD 2600 XT gDDR4, and that's absolutely interesting to see as you definitely need that extra performance.
The HD 2600 XT ICEQ Turbo DDR3 is a very prominent series. For the money versus the features this is going to be a well received mid-range product. It offers heaps of features and functionality for a fair sum of money. With videocards however, there's more to consider then just gaming. Think about other functionality for a minute. The media playback/encoding/decoding functions. HDTV, media center, Dual-link DVI, HD playback, offloading the CPU for playback, H.264 or whatever decoding process you need; this product is capable of it.
The card would rock as a HDTV decoder in a HTPC, it's completely silent, it scores a near perfect score image quality wise with HQV HD and can accelerate the decoding process over the GPU.
So while overall performance has a hard time keeping up with the competition, everything else about the HIS Radeon HD 2600 XT ICEQ Turbo 512MB gDDR3 model is really promising, including the price. For roughly 120 bucks you get to have this product that is factually faster than the more expensve gDDR4 model.
Definitely a product worth considering if you are in the market for a sub low- to mid-range mainstream product or a bloody good HTPC graphics card. Editor's choice for features versus pricing, no doubt.
Product type: 512 MB (GDDR3) mid-range graphics card
Manufacturer: HIS
Website: hisdigital.com
MSRP: 119 EUR / 129 USD
