While AMD promised us a launch of their entire range of Radeon HD 2000 series parts back in May, the only part available in retail on launch day was the high-end Radeon HD 2900 XT part, leaving anyone looking for the latest and greatest in the mid-range with only NVIDIA's GeForce 8600 boards for company, in the DirectX 10 market segment at least. It took a while, but the release of Radeon HD 2400 and HD 2600 series eventually followed, giving us a full picture of the DirectX 10 landscape. With NVIDIA's mid-range parts offering solid performance without ever dropping any jaws, there was a general feeling that this could be a golden opportunity for AMD to reclaim the mainstream market. - Elite Bastards

Sapphire Radeon HD 2600 XT 256MB GDDR4 Review

Starting out with the basics, the Radeon HD 2600 XT is based around AMD's 390 million transistor, 65 nanometre manufactured RV630 core, and is basically a shrunk and reduced version of the massive R600 core that powers the company's flagship Radeon HD 2900 XT part. Compared to the 320 shader processors which make up that high-end part, RV630 features 120 shader processing units, split into three arrays of forty processors. Finally, RV630 finds itself with a good old 128-bit memory bus, utilising a ring bus memory controller, compared to the 512-bit behemoth on R600.

As per most ATI graphics boards, Sapphire have stuck rigidly to the reference specification, both in terms of clock speeds and the cooling solution employed. What does that mean for this particular board? One look at the design of the Radeon HD 2600 XT belies its relatively low price, with Sapphire's offering looking like a sleek, high performing board thanks to its length and that flame imbued cooler that brings back memories of the wonderful Radeon X1950 PRO. The use of a 65 nanometre manufacturing process means that no external power is required, with the PCI Express slot providing all the juice required.

Well, it is time to investigate its overclocking capabilities. To do this, we are stuck on using ATI's own in-driver Overdrive tool to set clock speeds. Starting off with the core clock speed, we managed to reach a stable speed of 855MHz, giving us an additional 55MHz to play with. The 256MB of memory on-board was a little more fruitful in the sense of overclocking, as we garnered another 150MHz out of this aspect of the board to reach a stable overclock of 2350MHz. This is actually a great result but take into account that our achievements are no guarantee, but it is a good indication on the overclocking potential.

So, the numbers are in, and we've benchmarked ever conceivable aspect of the Radeon HD 2600 XT, so do we have a new DirectX 10 champion in the sub-£100 price range? Sadly, the answer is no, not really. In essence, the Radeon HD 2600 XT shapes up against its direct competition in exactly the same way as ATI's high-end Radeon HD 2900 XT, that being with blistering rendering speed until anti-aliasing is enabled, at which point performance drops exceedingly alarmingly, to the point of being unusable in many situations. In the past this wouldn't have been an issue for a mid-range board, but not anymore.

Of course, if you're one of the minority who cares not for anti-aliasing, then the Radeon HD 2600 XT is a great card. An extremely low price for absolutely superb performance in the vast majority of titles, and the likelihood of further increases as drivers mature and improve for these new parts. If you have decided that the Radeon HD 2600 XT is the board for you, then Sapphire's offering is a simple but effective one, featuring the reasonably quiet single slot reference cooler, and a game-free bundle that should give you everything else you need, including an adapter for HDMI functionality which may convince some users.

If you don't fit into that niche, and anti-aliasing in some shape or form is a must for your mid-range gaming exploits, then it's time to start looking at NVIDIA's offerings. If your budget can stretch to it, the GeForce 8600 GTS is increasingly looking like the way to go, although if your budget really is tight and you need a DirectX 10 board for under £100, the GeForce 8600 GT is most certainly your best shot.