ATI HD 2600 and HD 2400

valnar · Post by **valnar** » Mon Jul 02, 2007 7:55 am

I see that there will be some 2400Pro AGP models that are passive. I was hoping somebody would put out a 2600Pro AGP model that is passive too. There will be some passive PCIe 2600 Pro models.

Robert

Alex · Post by **Alex** » Mon Jul 02, 2007 12:42 pm

So HD 2600 XT seems to be on par with 8600GT (and certainly not the 8600GTS).

But I guess you can't get it all.

But we were pleasantly surprised by the combination of gaming performance and lower heat production.

This is good for us SPCR fans.

Source:
http://www.reghardware.co.uk/2007/06/28 ... page3.html

Max Slowik · Post by **Max Slowik** » Mon Jul 02, 2007 12:52 pm

My own tests indicate that the 2600 XT requires under 40 watts; actually, just a hair over 30.

angelkiller · Post by **angelkiller** » Mon Jul 02, 2007 2:48 pm

2400 Pro now availible at newegg. $60 + $5 shipping

Don't think this has been posted yet.

~El~Jefe~ · Post by **~El~Jefe~** » Mon Jul 02, 2007 6:55 pm

holy crap.

35-38 watts of power.

man.

I eagerly await either the r650 revision of the r600 when they ditch 80nm and go new process + 65nm 2900xt, or, crossfire 2600XT. Also, I think 256 is a bit hobbled when it comes to high texture levels, lots of AA/AF and higher resolutions. I wonder what a 512 version would do.

Fascinating.

Mikey · Post by **Mikey** » Mon Jul 02, 2007 7:26 pm

I want this

Will be perfect for my htpc build. Will have to 'borrow' another card until august, methinks.

http://www.powercolor.com/Global/produc ... uctID=1362

Is the 64 bit memory bus really that much of an issue? It's unlikely that i'd ever play any games on this card, only decode video etc.

geoff2k · Post by **geoff2k** » Mon Jul 02, 2007 8:45 pm

I just ordred a Sapphire 2600XT from ewizDOTcom which appears to have stock ($149 + ship).

Google's product search appears to be turning up lots of listings for 2600XT's this evening (though I'm sure they weren't there this morning?)

HueyCobra · Post by **HueyCobra** » Tue Jul 03, 2007 3:40 am

DailyTech's Daily Hardware Reviews - ATI Radeon HD 2600 Edition - links to 16 ATI Radeon HD 2600 and HD 2400 reviews.

It's worth noting that the HD 2600XT will be available in GDDR3 and GDDR4 versions.

v3n · Post by **v3n** » Wed Jul 04, 2007 5:49 am

should be good for oldersystems wanting to watch HD video

haggis663 · Post by **haggis663** » Wed Jul 04, 2007 6:37 pm

I noticed that gigabyte has two new boards, one (DDR3) is a passive board. The passive board looks good, but I am concerned that it will not fit into my Antec NSK2400 as the heatsink seems to be over 1 cm higher than the slot top. Does anyone know the dimension that the NSK 2400 (or Fusion) has available over the slot top?

phusg · Post by **phusg** » Fri Jul 06, 2007 4:35 am

valnar wrote:I see that there will be some 2400Pro AGP models that are passive. I was hoping somebody would put out a 2600Pro AGP model that is passive too. There will be some passive PCIe 2600 Pro models.
Robert

Yes, me too. I can confirm MSI is bringing out at least a PCIe 2600 Pro, see http://global.msi.com.tw/index.php?func ... at2_no=137#[/url]:

phusg · Post by **phusg** » Fri Jul 06, 2007 4:57 am

PowerColor is also coming out with a passively cooled 2600 Pro, only by the looks of it it won't fit my Shuttle HTPC case, see http://www.hexus.net/content/item.php?item=9076:

plympton · Post by **plympton** » Mon Jul 09, 2007 1:10 pm

Mikey wrote:I want this

Will be perfect for my htpc build. Will have to 'borrow' another card until august, methinks.

http://www.powercolor.com/Global/produc ... uctID=1362

Is the 64 bit memory bus really that much of an issue? It's unlikely that i'd ever play any games on this card, only decode video etc.

Looks like it's in-stock at Mvwave.com - look for the "SCS" model, its about $12 more expensive. What the heck, just ordered one. Will post back on how it goes!

-Dan

Mikey · Post by **Mikey** » Mon Jul 09, 2007 4:31 pm

That's awesome dan, look forward to hearing about how it goes!

plympton · Post by **plympton** » Thu Jul 12, 2007 6:26 am

Mikey wrote:That's awesome dan, look forward to hearing about how it goes!

Still waiting MWave to ship the thing... shoulda waited for Newegg to get stock... oh well.

-Dan

Aris · Post by **Aris** » Thu Jul 12, 2007 8:30 am

with a TDP of only 45w, that 2600 should come stock with a single slot passive cooling solution, like the 7600gs did.

A little dissapointed theres no HDMI on it, mabey aftermarket company's can impliment this? I know now a days they pretty much copy reference boards, but they do have the option of changing some things like interfaces, cooling solutions etc.

If its competative with a 7600gs or better, and someone makes a stock single slot passive heatsink on it, i might actually consider it for an upgrade. Though with sh**ty ATI drives, it would have to be noticably better.

Mikey · Post by **Mikey** » Thu Jul 12, 2007 3:14 pm

plympton wrote:
Mikey wrote:That's awesome dan, look forward to hearing about how it goes!
Still waiting MWave to ship the thing... shoulda waited for Newegg to get stock... oh well.

-Dan

That's annoying, i would have thought you'd have it already

Aris :

There doesn't need to be hdmi on it. ATI has made a special DVI-HDMI converter which also carries sound, so you're unlikely to see any of the new ATI cards with an inbuilt HDMI - or so i've read anyway.

Apparently stock standard DVI-HDMI connectors will work for video, but not for sound.

jackylman · Post by **jackylman** » Thu Jul 12, 2007 3:28 pm

Ok, has ATI/AMD finally realized that there are a hell of a lot of people with widescreen monitors that want fixed aspect scaling? Is that present in the new R6xx series or any recent releases of the Catalyst driver?

Also, Linux support is very basic for these cards at the moment (that's being kind; linux enthusiasts would probably use the word 'abysmal').
http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=a ... =773&num=2

Aris · Post by **Aris** » Fri Jul 13, 2007 12:20 am

i was hoping when i heard AMD was taking over ATI, that maybe we'd finally get some good driver support for ATI cards. Still waiting....

plympton · Post by **plympton** » Fri Jul 13, 2007 11:10 am

Mikey wrote: That's annoying, i would have thought you'd have it already

Gets worse - now MWave says its not in stock. Oh well. Now that 2400XT's and 2600Pros are coming out, I'm going to sit it out... it was an impulse purchase anyway!

-Dan

yefi · Post by **yefi** » Fri Jul 13, 2007 3:05 pm

It appears at idle, which is all one need consider for a desktop system, the 7300GT is a better choice than the 2400pro.

According to this review system idle power was 87W with a 7300GT but 101W with the 2400pro.

14W? I could fry an egg with that.

Mikey · Post by **Mikey** » Fri Jul 13, 2007 5:12 pm

yefi - while that may be true, the 7300GT doesn't have the video decode capability of the 2400 series.. thus while decoding video the 7300GT system is likely to use more power (mainly from cpu) than a comparatively configured system with a 2400.

Thus the attraction of the 2400pro.

Thats a bummer dan, i'd hoped to get an early review out of you

will have to wait until someone from AVS forum gets their hands on one.

Chang · Post by **Chang** » Sat Jul 14, 2007 2:09 am

yefi wrote:It appears at idle, which is all one need consider for a desktop system, the 7300GT is a better choice than the 2400pro.

This doesn't make sense. At idle, you have the least amount of heat generated and have fans running at the slowest speeds. The actual cooling required is negligible. It's hardly "all one need consider".

Average power consumption is much more meaningful. Idle measurements are perhaps the last thing you should consider. The way I see it mattering most is in difference between idle and average. As you go from idle to average loads, temps will start to rise and fans (if you have them) will start to ramp up. That difference represents the additional cooling required between a "normal" light usage state and doing something more involved graphically . I can see a large difference there as being a bad thing from a silence freak's point of view (but a good one from an engineer's POV).

klankymen · Post by **klankymen** » Sat Jul 14, 2007 6:17 am

actually that does make sense... because if you don't ever load the card, only the idle figures are important. and how often are you going to put 3D load on a desktop system (ie one that never leaves the desktop)

yefi · Post by **yefi** » Sat Jul 14, 2007 3:35 pm

Mikey wrote:yefi - while that may be true, the 7300GT doesn't have the video decode capability of the 2400 series.. thus while decoding video the 7300GT system is likely to use more power (mainly from cpu) than a comparatively configured system with a 2400.

Thus the attraction of the 2400pro.

If you were decoding a lot of H.264 (say in a HTPC) I would generally agree this card is attractive. But the 25W TDP is misleading for desktop systems and the 7300GT is still the best choice there.

Chang wrote:Average power consumption is much more meaningful

Average power consumption browsing the web or opening e-mail is going to very closely approximate idle power consumption (and I mean that for the whole system as well as the graphics card).

Chang · Post by **Chang** » Sun Jul 15, 2007 11:08 am

I'm not in disagreement with the idea that the GPU is often underutilized in may peoples' day to day usage. If you're staying in 2D and not hitting DX9/10 or any sort of VMR, you'd probably be better off with some sort of onboard graphics.

But I'm do disagree with the idea that idle power consumption is all that important for a desktop system. It might be important for a laptop system where battery life is a concern, but when you're plugged into the wall, it's of less a concern. If you're in the market for a video card where onboard graphics isn't enough for you, your primary concern shouldn't be idle power consumption. If you're concerned about keeping your system quiet, other measures should carry more weight.

klankymen · Post by **klankymen** » Sun Jul 15, 2007 1:06 pm

There are many situations in which onboard graphics aren't enough even though a card is never loaded... multimonitoring is one example.

Chang · Post by **Chang** » Sun Jul 15, 2007 4:34 pm

Funny. The onboard video on my mobo can support dual monitors. If I'm not mistaken the DFI 482 can too. Yes it's limited to DVI + VGA (or DVI + TV-Out), but it's still multimonitoring. I haven't looked, but I wouldn't be suprised if there were boards that had dual VGA or dual DVI.

I suspect that "many situations" is really only a handful, comparable to those you'd find with many video cards.

yefi · Post by **yefi** » Sun Jul 15, 2007 4:50 pm

klankymen wrote:There are many situations in which onboard graphics aren't enough even though a card is never loaded... multimonitoring is one example.

Spot on. There are reasons for resorting to dedicated cards besides pure 3DMark scores.

Chang wrote:I'm do disagree with the idea that idle power consumption is all that important for a desktop system.

Idle power should be of primary importance. Divide the time your PC is on and it will be idle for nine tenths. This is also why TDPs are misleading. Only a tiny proportion of the time your PC is on will it ever be consuming those sums. For a CPU, a TDP of 65W may be worse than 130W if the idle power is greater.

Of course, this an argument of efficiency, let me make that sparkingly clear. I argue for better efficiency because (a) bills cost less and (b) we're using far too much energy already. (There are probably a c,d and e but I'll omit them for the point of arguing.) Maximum power consumption, however, is important in that you must dissipate all that heat converted from energy. The lower that figure, the quieter the cooling solution can be without jeopardizing system stability, which is slightly different from efficiency.

That may be an important argument for a graphics card discharging 60W into the air, where fans are ramped up to cope with the excess heat, but why are you going to need that on a desktop system? Especially with cards that are passively cooled?

yefi · Post by **yefi** » Sun Jul 15, 2007 4:58 pm

Chang wrote:Funny. The onboard video on my mobo can support dual monitors. If I'm not mistaken the DFI 482 can too. Yes it's limited to DVI + VGA (or DVI + TV-Out), but it's still multimonitoring. I haven't looked, but I wouldn't be suprised if there were boards that had dual VGA or dual DVI.

Show me the mobo with onboard Dual-Link DVI. Actually, you'll be able to find a thread on this forum for one with the 690G chipset that does. I'm in there. I am complaining (really, I don't do it often), because it simply can't hack it. So, it's a 7300GT for me.

Not to mention that purchasing a board solely for the onboard graphics may be limiting your options. Personally I want a memory controller with support for ECC RAM not (for example) a HDMI interface without it.

ATI HD 2600 and HD 2400

Gigabyte GV-RX26T256HP-B & GV-RX26T256H 2600 XT

Passive 2600Pro from MSI

PowerColor HD 2600 Pro SCS3