We've said before that the Radeon HD 2600 PRO should be passed over in favor of the XT for anyone who wants to play video games, or the Radeon HD 2400 XT for people just interested in having a discrete graphics card without all that gaming malarkey. But then, Gigabyte has put together a compelling package with the Radeon HD 2600 PRO board. A memory bump to 512MB, a clock speed bump, passive cooling, component and video out and Neverwinter Nights 2, a popular sequel by a big developer. But it's still a Radeon HD 2600 PRO, right? Is a pretty package enough for the card to surpass its shortcomings? Sure, there's double the memory. Can the quantity make up for the quality? - TheTechLounge

Gigabyte Radeon HD 2600 PRO 512MB Board Review

It is a pretty card. Luminous blue PCB crowned with a golden aluminum heatsink if not stately, playful to say the least. There's almost no exposed PCB on the front, though if you looked under the heatsink, you'd see the smaller, more stress tolerant all aluminum capacitors from Gigabyte's Ultra Durable line. Even the video out connections have little blue caps. On the back you can see the additional memory chips. Besides the TV dongle, the game, and the rest, the card is missing something as it doesn't include an HDMI adapter. The Radeon HD 2600 PRO does, however, include a DVI to VGA adapter.

This video card is, essentially, no different than any other Radeon HD 2600 PRO. During some tests, in which memory bandwidth was particularly important, the card actually did worse than a 256MB GDDR3 card. But, like any good Radeon HD 2000 series card, the video acceleration was fantastic. That would be the only saving grace. We couldn't push the card past its stock timings and, although it didn't seem to be a cooling issue, it did run a little hotter than a fanned PRO version. Even with a fan set against the heatsink, the card would not overclock one MHz which is somehow a disappointment.

Gigabyte is just going through the motions with this unimpressive card. This way they can go back to AMD and say, we made your card. Putting a pretty heatsink on it doesn't make it go faster. Adding aluminum isn't what holds in more frames. For a few hundred more pennies, you can get the XT, which also comes with Neverwinter Nights, two VGA adapters, and no HDMI adapter. It's also passively cooled and overclocked. Get it and be done with it. It's not that the PRO is a terrible platform, it's just not good. And there are better options across the board.