Although the initial information was that AMD was going to launch the entire product gamma at once, from the strongest Radeon HD 2900 XT all the way down to the weakest Radeon HD 2400 PRO, something obviously went wrong. Therefore, it is only now that we received samples of their mid-range cards. Problems probably have something to do with the 65nm manufacturing process of the mid-range GPU's codenamed R630 for the stronger and R610 for the weaker model. Also, there seems to have been some trouble with the drivers that were initially badly optimised. All of these problems have been surpassed now, so we have two interesting new products at hand for testing. - InsideHW

AMD Radeon HD 2600 XT, HD 2400 XT 256MB Preview

The aforementioned GPU's are meant to be the basis of mainstream models for not so wealthy gamers. The cards with these GPU's have exactly the same multimedia possibilities as the Radeon HD 2900 XT, with not as good performance in games, of course. For starters, we have UVD technology that enables HD video reproduction completely reliant on the graphics card, thus reducing the strain on the processor to the minimum. Alongside that, there is a possibility of audio reproduction through the separate audio section within the GPU itself. However, audio transmission is only available through the HDMI interface.

The R610 is manufactured in 65 nm, just like the R630, which should mean less heat and less power consumption. Also, as a consequence of a smaller lithography, higher GPU clocks are possible. None of the cards with this chip has an extra power supply connector, which will be a very important factor for many. As far as the R630 is concerned, it possesses 120 stream processors, which do not work in the same way as NVIDIA cards do which are clocked twice as high as the core, but their number may just make up for that drawback. However, the number of raster operators is low, there are only four of them.

Cards from the mainstream segment have had a miscarriage in terms of performance, both NVIDIA and AMD. We are positive that users were having higher expectations, just like we did. The Radeon HD 2600 XT is of similar performance compared to the GeForce 8600 GT, but things may improve after a few driver revisions. Therefore, we suggest that you postpone the card choice until a later time, when there is more information available on the gaming performance with the newer upcoming driver versions.