Will that humming noise ever cease? It's driving us insane! Many of you know just how painfully annoying a loud video card can be. It hums all the time and God forbid you put the graphics card under load and its fan now sounds like a saw mill in your computer case. The solution to this common problem is silent performance. This means that we're looking for a video card that is completely silent, but still cranks out the numbers. So, let's take a look at Sapphire's new Radeon HD 2600 XT Ultimate edition graphics card. And we've had only great experiences with Sapphire's Ultimate line of video cards so we hope this Radeon HD 2600 XT doesn't disappoint. - OverClockers Club

Sapphire Radeon HD 2600 XT 256MB Ultimate Review

Sapphire is one of ATI's leading partners. The company creates some of the most innovative, unique, and honest products for customers all over the world. Sapphire continues to strive to be among the elite of the graphics card industry by delivering the needs of various users in an affordable manner and staying up-to-date with the newest technologies. We were very surprised at the size of this box because it was almost twice as big as the regular Radeon HD 2600 XT. On the front of the box, we still have the attractive woman who is suited up for a futuristic battle in the same nonchalant pose.

Once you unwrap the Sapphire Radeon HD 2600 XT Ultimate graphics card, you will notice the fueled by Sapphire heatsink and the heatpipes. When you flip the card over, you will notice how big the heatsink fins are and also see how the fins do not touch the video card at all. On the video card you also find the dual DVI ports, the S-Video port and the CrossFire connectors. There is a plethora of accessories that is included with this graphics card. One thing to mention is that the memory chips on the Ultimate edition are not covered at all by any heatsink or cooling solution.

The Sapphire Radon HD 2600 XT Ultimate edition video card wasn't what we thought it was going to be. Our assumption was that this card was going to have the exact same performance as the Sapphire Radeon HD 2600 XT, but be completely silent. We were correct about the silence because this video card has no fan on it, which made our case almost dead silent. When you look at the testing results, you will really see just how close this video card was to matching the regular Radeon HD 2600 XT. It was only off by a few frames per second for every game so we can't say this card is terrible.

If you're looking for a high-end gaming video card, this isn't your card. This card is ideal for the people who do play games, but lightly and don't need to play everything at maxed out resolutions. This card can handle the high resolutions, and don't forget it's DirectX 10 capable as well. If you're looking for a silent video card that has onboard audio, High Definition capabilities, and supports DirectX 10, but you're not a hardcore gamer, don't look past this Sapphire Radeon HD 2600 XT Ultimate edition video card.