There are a lot of modifications of ATI Radeon HD 2600 XT available today that form a family of inexpensive graphics accelerators. Today we are going to introduce you a solution from MSI that has every chance to win the crown of the fastest single chip product on RV630. The ATI Radeon HD 2600 XT was meant to enter the market in two flavors, with GDDR3 memory and with high frequency and faster GDDR4. However, even the latter version couldn’t surpass the NVIDIA GeForce 8600 GT due to the bottlenecks in the architecture of the new RV630 graphics processor. Being superior to the opposing G84 core in sheer computing power, the RV630 is limited by less texture and raster processors. - X-Bit Labs

MSI Radeon HD 2600 XT Diamond Video Card Review

The next model in AMD/ATI's graphics product line-up is ATI Radeon HD 2900 XT, but the technical characteristics of this graphics card are far superior to those of the RV630 based solutions. The gap between the two families has diminished somewhat after the release of the Radeon HD 2900 PRO, yet it's still quite large because the new card is selling at over $200. The reasons are many, particularly the high manufacturing cost due to the use of a complex PCB two GPU's and a double amount of memory chips. While classic single chip graphics cards guarantee maximum performance in every game.

So, until the arrival of new GPU's from ATI that would make a good foundation for building classic single chip solutions capable of competing with the GeForce 8600 GTS and with NVIDIA's upcoming mainstream solutions, AMD/ATI's partners can do nothing but release overclocked versions of Radeon HD 2600 XT. Considering the support for GDDR4 memory which can be clocked at very high frequencies and the good frequency potential of the RV630 core, this can indeed lead to appealing products. Let's see if it can match the performance of the GeForce 8600 GTS graphics card.

Since this version of the Radeon HD 2600 XT GDDR4 is equipped with 512MB of memory, it has four memory chips on the reverse side of the PCB, which you don't often see on modern graphics cards. The chips have a rated clock frequency of 2200MHz but are clocked at 2300MHz by the card. Although each chip has a 32-bit interface, the total width of the memory bus is 128-bit, the standard value for the RV630 chip. The GPU of the Radeon HD 2600 XT Diamond is clocked at 850MHz which is 50MHz higher than the frequency of the standard Radeon HD 2600 XT video card.

The MSI Radeon HD 2600 XT Diamond did well in our tests, leaving a positive impression overall. Its dual slot cooler can be viewed as a kind of drawback, but it makes the card silent despite the increased GPU and memory frequencies. This card doesn’t suit for compact system cases but multimedia PC's are quite often assembled in rather large cases, which can accommodate a dual slot graphics card. The accessories included with the Radeon HD 2600 XT Diamond provoke no complaints, either. As for pure gaming performance, the MSI product ensures a nice performance increase over the reference card.

Of course, this is not enough for this card to be competitive against the GeForce 8600 GTS designed by NVIDA which delivers superior gaming performance. If you need a quiet and economical graphics card, and games is not your priority, you should definitely consider the MSI Radeon HD 2600 XT Diamond as one of the best options, but you should look up in the higher class if you want to play games with high quality visuals. This is going to require more money, but you won't be disappointed with the card's performance.