Test Rig Configuration

That's it about the card itself, from a hardware and design point of view. Leaving you all with a first impression of the PowerColor Radeon HD 2600 XT we are going to move to the performance you can expect from this graphics accelerator. The system used to compile and analyze the gaming performance figures is build around the high-end Intel Core 2 Duo technology, which will provide extensive central processing power supporting the G84 visual and processing capabilities. We are using our new and high performing system based around the Intel 975X Express chipset powering our mainboard. So, let's go through the system specifications...

• ASUS P5W Digital Home Deluxe (i975X) Mainboard
• Crucial Ballistix 2GB PC2-8000 Dual Channel Memory
• PowerColor Radeon HD 2600 XT 256MB Graphics Card
• Point of View GeForce 8600 GTS 256MB Graphics Card
• Western Digital 320GB Caviar SE 8MB Cache Hard Disk
• Speeze RockeTeer 600W (SLI Ready) Power Supply
• Cooler Master Stacker 832 (RC-832) Tower Case
• Arctic Cooling MX-2 Performance Thermal Compound
• Dell UltraSharp 30" 3007WFP (Black) LCD Flat Display
• Microsoft Windows XP Professional incl. SP2 Edition

As you can see we have used the some high performance components, and we would like to thank Crucial and Point of View for their generosity on supplying us with some excellent hardware. The ASUS mainboard is based around the Intel 975X chipset supporting the Intel Core 2 Duo processor and DDR2 memory. We will be using our modest Core 2 Duo E6300 but running at 2.8GHz to support the high-end graphics cards. So both the mainboard and CPU are fine tuned to support this overclocking, to provide the maximum compatible and stable clock speeds. Throughout the benchmarking and gaming analysis we are using the new Catalyst 7.6 drivers provided by ATI along with the introduction of the Radeon HD 2600 series.

Synthetic Benchmarks

As usual we start of the benchmark analysis by going through the different benchmark suites coming from Futuremark, and normally also AquaMark 3. These will provide a good indication on the game play of today's games. Although with AquaMark 3 we experienced since the Radeon HD 2600 series some issues being that it doesn't show the final score at the end of the benchmark. So, due to that we will only be using the suites from Futuremark starting with 3DMark03, followed by 3DMark05 and last but not least 3DMark06. We will reboot our system each time for each of the four synthetic API's used and leave all processes running in the background. We put the PowerColor Radeon HD 2600 XT accelerator against the GeForce 8600 GTS 256MB graphics card provided by Point of View, and doing so analyze the performance figures...

Futuremark 3DMark03

To start the exercise we first go back to actually an older benchmark suite from Futuremark. By combining full DirectX 9.0a support with completely new tests and graphics, 3DMark03 continues the legacy of being the industry standard benchmark. The high quality game tests, image quality tests, sound tests and others give you an extremely accurate overview of your system's current gaming performance. So the synthetic analysis begins by taking a spin with 3DMark03 which is build around the DirectX 9.0 specifications, although still using quite some DirectX 8.1 features. This is actually the first gamers' benchmark that could really be called this name, and actually earned it since it was released.

Benchmark Results - 1280x1024 - E6300 2.80GHz - 2GB RAM
	GeForce 8600 GTS 256MB	3DMark03 Score
0x AA/Optimal	675/2000MHz (Ref - Single)	14373
4x AA/8x AF	675/2000MHz (Ref - Single)	7690
8x AA/16x AF	675/2000MHz (Ref - Single)	5239
	Radeon HD 2600 XT 256MB	3DMark03 Score
0x AA/Optimal	800/1400MHz (Ref - Single)	9285
4x AA/8x AF	800/1400MHz (Ref - Single)	3842
8x AA/16x AF	800/1400MHz (Ref - Single)	2574
Results Interpretation: Higher index values are better.

Oldest first, so that is exactly what we did when taking a spin with 3DMark03, but it remains one of those very popular benchmark suites and certainly still very useful for the mid-range video card segment. This benchmark should provide a first indication on the gaming performance of the Radeon HD 2600 XT graphics card. When looking at the results above it does somehow struck us as a disappointment as it can't really take on the GeForce 8600 series, and certainly not the GTS version. The results are each time lower, and almost twice as low when we enable anti-aliasing and anisotropic filtering. We expected that the Radeon HD 2600 series would give the GeForce 8600 series a run for their money, but nothing of that is true.

Benchmark Results - 1600x1200 - E6300 2.80GHz - 2GB RAM
	GeForce 8600 GTS 256MB	3DMark03 Score
4x AA/8x AF	675/2000MHz (Ref - Single)	5635
	Radeon HD 2600 XT 256MB	3DMark03 Score
4x AA/8x AF	800/1400MHz (Ref - Single)	2833
Results Interpretation: Higher index values are better.
Benchmark Results - 2560x1600 - E6300 2.80GHz - 2GB RAM
	GeForce 8600 GTS 256MB	3DMark03 Score
4x AA/8x AF	675/2000MHz (Ref - Single)	2537
	Radeon HD 2600 XT 256MB	3DMark03 Score
4x AA/8x AF	800/1400MHz (Ref - Single)	1432
Results Interpretation: Higher index values are better.

Since we got a very nice and decent widescreen 30" LCD display, and due to the fact that quite some gamers are going for bigger screens and the true HD gaming resolutions, we took the liberty to run our benchmarks as well at some higher resolution. As you might already know, both ATI and NVIDIA are now really pushing for the High Definition standards to provide the gamer just that little extra and an even more realistic gaming experience. Well the Radeon HD 2600 XT could please us to a certain extend, naturally the ultimate HD resolutions is just a bit too much to handle for this mid-range graphics card. But the capability is certainly present; the gaming experience is trailing a bit behind. Lowering the resolution does make a difference and gives a much smoother impression.