Don't have a lot of money but need something to get you by for a while? Maybe you need something better than that onboard video but don't need something like an enthusiast might need. Well, might we offer the VisionTek Radeon HD 2600 XT 256MB. Inexpensive, dependable and has low power consumption. Does that sounds to be the solution that your are looking for and you want to do some Christmas shopping, well then we can offer you already a bit more details. And although VisionTek might not be so known, it has been making graphics card for quite a while now with excellent quality and performance. This VisionTek card might be the upgrade that you need to rejoy HD movie playback. - Bjorn3D

VisionTek Radeon HD 2600 XT 256MB Edition Review

The picture of the box below is a picture taken from VisionTek's website. My box had a huge white sticker on the front, qame box though. It is a generic non flashy box and doesn't exactly scream pick me. The Radeon HD 2600 XT is a small form factor card. This makes it possible to fit into home theater machines. Which is what this card, in my honest opinion, should be used for. The accessories are nice and just as expected. When looking at the card itself it is rather small with a single slot cooling solution. The card will fit in any case and is should offer decent mid-range gaming performance.

We were really hoping for more out of this card. It wasn't quite what we had expected. We could not overclock even in the slightest bit and just didn't get great frame rates in the games that we like to play. On the other hand this card can play movies splendidly. We do like the fact that it is a small form factor that can be put into a home theater system. That is nice. Going back to gaming, if the game settings were turned down to medium then it was acceptable to play. The plus side to this card is that it is cheap and someone that may not play games very often could really benefit and saving money at the same time.

As we said before this card does great for HD playback and comes with the HDMI cable, video cable and the converter. Although it is a mid-range card it has very low power consumption and is why it would do great in a home theater system. Low power consumption means lower heat. Also a little softer on the electric bill. It wasn't what we expected as we said before and didn't really have anything that set it apart. Although did perform splendidly for HD media and was quite cheap compared to other mid-range solutions.