In a war that has spanned over decades which has caused tension between the enthusiast and the noob, we all ask what's better; more memory or more speed. Palit continue to expand the Super and Sonic line up with each new release from AMD. The latest participants to the small epic battle is the Radeon HD 2600 XT, coming standard with just 256MB of GDDR3 memory Palit have taken it upon themselves to offer three models. There's the standard model which we don't really care about, because everyone knows that standard is boring. But next to that Palit also released two special versions going by the suffix Sonic and Super edition, which are pre-overclocked or with more memory. - TweakTown

Palit Radeon HD 2600 XT 512MB Super Board Review

We then have the Sonic which is an overclocked 256MB GDDR3 card, and in the other corner we have the Super which comes in at stock clocks but carries with it 512MB of GDDR3 memory. With both cards at around the same price $130-150 range there isn't much difference between the two, though the 512MB Super naturally comes in with the slightly higher price tag. It's time to settle this battle once and for all as we pitch these two cards up against each other. No more shall we hear but it has 512MB of memory so it's better! In fact we are more for a quality over quantity, so overclocked would please us more.

Palit really only have two types of boxes and both look almost identical. The NVIDIA cards offer a green background while the AMD ones offer a red. The good thing about this is that it helps keep the costs down; instead of having to produce a bunch of different boxes every time a new card comes out they can do a run of stickers, slap it on the box and ship the card straight out. This helps to get the cards to the market quicker and the savings are handed down to the consumer. As for the front of the box we have the standard layout, we of course have our main sticker that tells us the model.

What you notice when you pull it out of the box is that there isn't a whole lot to the PCB, it's actually quite bare on the right side with not a whole lot going on. Without the extra 256MB of GDDR3 it's possible that they could have made the card smaller. The left side has got a bit more going on and we of course have the black heatsink fan that is sitting in the middle of the card. While Palit generally choose to use a dual slot cooler on a lot of their mid-range NVIDIA cards, we can see that they have only opted for a single slot one on the Radeon HD 2600 XT Super graphics accelerator.

There you have it! We hear end users every day ask for 512MB mid-range cards and sales guys refusing to offer advice. Wel in fact, 512MB on a mid-range card simply doesn't offer any benefits. Does this make Palit a bad company for releasing a 512MB version of the card? No, the bottom line is it doesn't matter what you tell some people, they will be convinced that a 512MB mid-range card is so much better than a 256MB one and if Palit didn't have a 512MB offering the user would simply go and buy another brand. The main problem with people who purchase 512MB cards is that they don't have the money for the next model up.

This dives even deeper sometimes with people telling us that a GeForce 8600 GTS 512MB is better than a GeForce 8800 GTS 320MB simply because there is more RAM. People simply have to remember that on a mid-range card raw speed is generally better than more memory. It isn't until we move up in the range and hit cards that are able to perform well at widescreen resolutions that we can see the extra memory on a card come into effect. So, in the end the most important thing to remember is to buy smart!