ATI's Radeon HD 2600 XT is a pretty nice card. It plays games acceptably well, consumes a negligible amount of power, and has flawless video acceleration. It's our first choice for the mainstream. So where does that leave the Radeon HD 2600 PRO? Being a cut down, budget version of a cool card, what, then, is missing? The Radeon HD 2600 PRO is targeted to anyone who wants a discreet video card, the casual gaming ilk, but doesn't really want either the lowest-end model or to spend over a hundred dollars. All that seems reasonable, but it's just not true. We think the GDDR3 model should be skipped altogether. It does a couple things right, but misses the mark too often. - TheTechLounge

ATI Radeon HD 2600 PRO 256MB Video Board Review

We have an engineering sample from AMD that includes an HDMI adapter, which is about as much bundle as you'll get from other vendors, except maybe you'll get some TV out hardware as well. The standard HDMI adapter supports sound, like the other Radeon HD 2000 series cards, which means that early HDTV adapters will find that a computer equipped with this card will slip into their home theaters effortlessly. The look of the hardware really does take us back. There's almost nothing on the PCB, the memory is exposed, and there are a couple of big, conspicuous capacitors and coils toward the edges.

The heatsink is small and lonely, though conditioned by a sharp-edged fan. The card's light, it's square just barely longer than the PCI Express connector, and it doesn't need auxiliary power. It doesn't even have CrossFire connections and should that ever be utilized, this budget video card manages just fine with only the PCI Express bus. For such a small card, the stock fan churns a huge amount of air. We would easily say it was overkill, and that's just by the sound of it. With all the passive options out there, skip anything with this mean little turbine as it is just not a good choice and making too much noise.

We're not exactly sure why AMD really designed this card, except that they probably wanted a SKU at the price point. If you're only interested in re-playing your old games, but still want near perfect video acceleration, then this is your card. If you're actually interested in playing new games or even just games from the recent past, then you should move higher up the list, starting with the Radeon HD 2600 XT. If you're only interested in video, then save some cash and get a Radeon HD 2400 XT. If you have this card now and think there's something wrong with it, there isn't. Start saving for a replacement.