As much as we would all like to own the GeForce 8800's and Radeon HD 2900 XT it's simply out of reach for some people or complete overkill for others. The latest cards to enter the limited Radeon HD series at the moment are the Radeon HD 2600 PRO and XT, both of these designed to compete with the mid-range GeForce 8 series cards from NVIDIA. What we need to find out though is whether or not these cards are worth looking at. Can the Radeon HD 2600 series from AMD battle against the GeForce 8600 series from NVIDIA? While we focus on that we also see what Palit have done with these particular models. The GeForce 8400 GS was quite an impressive low-end card. - TweakTown

Palit Radeon HD 2600 PRO and XT Sonic Card Review

Both boxes share exactly the same design with the only difference being the main sticker on the front. Apart from that, the only other difference is the Xpand Rally sticker found on the front of the Radeon HD 2600 XT box. The layout is typical of Palit with the model name being easily seen along with the main specifications of the card and some of the key features. What's nice is that Palit also include the core and clock speed on the front of the box for the Sonic series. The back of the box is exactly the same with just a few more details on the card, though this time in a multitude of languages.

With the package out of the way it's time to move on to the card and see what exactly we have with us here. The front of the two cards are quite similar, both share the same black heatsink and fan along with a red PCB. The main difference is that the Radeon HD 2600 PRO comes in a fair bit shorter. You can see that it finishes at the end of the PCI Express connector while the XT incarnation continues on. The XT includes the CrossFire connector on top of the card, though it's a little unfortunate that Palit chose not to include the cable. The lower end PRO also supports CrossFire, but sadly this particular model does not.

Palit has been using the Sonic naming scheme to determine when the cards are overclocked, not unlike the way they use Super for their 512MB models. The Radeon HD 2600 PRO comes in at 600/1400MHz clock speed which is up from the stock 600/1000MHz speeds. The Radeon HD 2600 XT comes in at 800/1600MHz which is up from the stock 800/1100MHz speeds. The Radeon HD 2600 PRO in two words? Absolutely Brilliant! This is the reason it's so important to include pricing into the structure. The card is priced at the same level as the GeForce 8500 GT and manages not only to beat it but kill it every time.

The Radeon HD 2600 XT is also an excellent performing card, but with what the PRO offers as far as bang for buck goes, it's hard to look past. Focusing on the GeForce 8600 GT versus the Radeon HD 2600 XT debate, we would probably recommend you opt for the GeForce 8600 GT at the moment. But, with monthly driver updates from AMD it's quite possible that we could see some decent gains on the new mid-range cards, and the GeForce 8600 GT isn't exactly killing the Radeon HD 2600 XT. The choice between the two cards could almost come down to who you're a bigger fanboy of.

The bottom line though is that the dark horse of the group was the Radeon HD 2600 PRO which performed well and truly above our expectations. Don't forget that when you throw in the fact that it has a HDMI port built into it, it's really a win win card all round. The only thing we need now is the ability to overclock the new mid-range cards and we can see what they are really capable of. As soon as the ability pops up we will be re-looking at the cards in a performance analysis.