HD 2400/2600 why no reviews

[mactronix]

I like the idea of a 2650card myself then it would prob and im only guessing(Dont all shoot me) be close to worth having.
However i started a thread the other day about how the board partners could improve these cards and the the replies i got seemed to indicate that ther was not a lot you could do to them phisically only frequencies etc.
It seems the old days of people like HIS getting hold of a card and unlocking pipelines etc,(like they did with the x1650xtICEQ turbo)are gone.
The 2600xt can be had with either gddr3 or 4 so maybe thats a pos the great ape pointed it out earlier his idea was thet it should be called an xtx as they make no distinction with the model numbers at the min.
Mactronix

 

[Jakc]

Just wanted to say a big thanks to all for input and support,dont know what tracks problem is but maybe we should cut him some slack could be having a bad day,happens to us all,i know its no excuse but id just as soon leave it.
Any way that aside i now have the answer to the question i first posted so thanks again all
Mactronix

Track has a bad day every day.
He redefines the term fanboy in the worst way possible.

I am really curious regarding the 2600 performance.
According to the inquirer, the 2400 has unexpectedly good performance:
http://www.theinquirer.net/default.aspx?article=40495
If true, one should be hopeful about the 2600 performance.

The way I see it, nvidia won no battle yet. Their new design is interesting, but for most of us, that don't get to spend 300+ euro on a 3d card every 6 months, their value options so far are greatly disappointing in perfomance.
Hopefully ati will be able to close this gap.

 

[quantumsheep]

Why do u care?

The way I see it, the only people who should care about the 2600's are the ones who want to buy the AGP versions.
And the AGP version aren't due to be released with PCIe versions in July.

Bit blunt dont you think? am i not allowed to be interested in whats happening in the gpu market place.

Do what you want. I was just pointing out that you shouldn't be interested in this particular product.

What if i want a decent mid-range GPU? The only other alternative is to spend about £80 on an 8600GT and overclock it to 8600GTS levels.

 

[TheGreatGrapeApe]

Maybe I'm in a minority, but I don't get a new graphics card every 6 months to one year. So, I'm into future proofing. That's why I recommend an X2600 or 8600 over an X1950 Pro. If performance in the limited DX10 titles today isn't good enough to warrant an upgrade to such a low end card, then I recommend just waiting for the next generation.

I don't upgrade as often as I used to (I upgrade my ski gear more often) because my laptops do fine for what I expect them and I upgrade when I like (sometimes in less than a year sometimes in 2 years). But the GF8600 is USELESS at DX10 gaming right now, not only poor, but so poor as to be a slide show. The GF8800 and HD2900 have headroom that enabling the DX10 path that the performance impact requires them to lose AA or to go from playable at 1920x1200 to 1600x1200 or less, but the GF8600 becomes unplayable t anything other than 800x600 or less, and then any benefit of DX10 is pretty much useless compared to playing at 1500x1200 with DX9. Look at COH and even LostPlanet and you would be insane to play at DX10 on the GF8600 versus DX9, and for that reason I think of it as a DX9 solution with a DX10 slidshow viewer option.

I don't expect the HD2600 to be much different one way or the other. But for serious hardcore gaming the GF8600 is not as attractive as an X1950XT for less money which will play all current games better, and will play those future games better when both X1950XT and there two mid-range DX10 cards (GF8600 and HD2600) play at DX10 level. To think you'll be playing either Crysis or UT3 on those with DX10 with any level of fluidity is overly optimistic IMO.

I just don't think an X1950 Pro or a 7900 GT will be viable for longer than a year, and even then it will just be the DX9 path in new games.

Yeah and I don't think you're going to want to enable the DX10 path on the DX10 midrange cards unless you like playing at half the resolution on your LCD. And to me people playing DX10 at 800x600 on a 16x10 LCD are going to have a worse visual quality due to interpolation than those playing the DX9 path at native resolution.

So the GF8600 and HD2600 will be ok for the most casual of gamers, who prefer good 2D quality and video acceleration. But IMO even for gaming, unless they use a CRT the benefits will be wasted.

 

[TheGreatGrapeApe]

It seems the old days of people like HIS getting hold of a card and unlocking pipelines etc,(like they did with the x1650xtICEQ turbo)are gone.

You're confused, nothing was unlocked. The X1650XT was a whole new chip once ATi realised that even a refresh of the X1600XT wasn't going to do it, they needed a true redesign to essentially double everything. It's not an 'unlock' it's a whole new chip. And the hope is that nV and AMD will do that with a 256bit 65nm part like the RV670 and whatever nV brings (rumoured to be named anyting from the GF8600Ultra to the GF8800GS) but no will be 'unlocked' potential that was already there, like the X1650XT they will need to be new parts to fit the role because crippled parts like the X1800GTO, X1900GT, GF7900GS, are all to expensive to bring down from the huge G80 and R600 chips.

I think the 256bit 65nm parts are the killer part that people like yourself an Yipsl should be looking for, the question is WhenTF do they arrive? December's a long time to wait, and might as well get a cheap $120 X1950PRO/GF7900GS for now and then replace it later if that's the case.

 

[mactronix]

Just checked your link and i gota say its disapointing really i know that it targets the lower end market and has a lot more going for it in technical terms but as inquirer said they use the best cpu`s generally when they do benchmarks and the 3dmark score it gets is lower than my old 9800se used to get on a single core 2 gig cpu and 1 gig of ram.

 

[mactronix]

Yea sorry ape was under the impresion that the HIS one had more pixel shaders than the others but have checked and of course your right 😳
Must have been in something i read but cant think what i better start double checking myself thats twice this week now 😳 😀

 

[yipsl]

Yeah and I don't think you're going to want to enable the DX10 path on the DX10 midrange cards unless you like playing at half the resolution on your LCD. And to me people playing DX10 at 800x600 on a 16x10 LCD are going to have a worse visual quality due to interpolation than those playing the DX9 path at native resolution.

So the GF8600 and HD2600 will be ok for the most casual of gamers, who prefer good 2D quality and video acceleration. But IMO even for gaming, unless they use a CRT the benefits will be wasted.

The X2900 improved with recent drivers and I expect the same from Nvidia for the 8600 and 8800. I expect the X2600 won't just be aimed at the HTPC market, because there really needs to be a good mainstream/performance DX10 gaming card for under $250. Right now, I think the marketing departments are calling the shots with an unrealistic separation of multimedia and gaming segments of the population.

Everyone seems to think that the 8600 is the new FX5200, that the whole 8xxx series will be a dog of a series like most of Nvidia's FX. That may be true, but we'll need two things to know for sure; mature drivers and enough DX10 games to separate out the poorly implemented from the elegantly implemented.

The popular wisdom today is that if you don't have an 8800GTS 320, or the power hungry X2900XT that you don't have even a barely capable DX10 card. My advice was that if one simply has to get a new card that will last for a couple of years, the X1950 Pro is a dead end. It's best to get an 8800GTS 320 for the low end of the performance market, but they are priced a bit high now. They aren't priced where they should be.

Both AMD and Nvidia's partners want to get rid of their inventories of X1950 and 7900 class cards. I guess they are worth it if you want to upgrade again in one year. Someone will buy it on Ebay.

As for LCD vs. CRT, maybe the reason I can tolerate my 7600GS is because I have a CRT? The whole LCD resolution thing makes me think that technology just isn't oriented towards gamers, despite the 8 ms response times.

The question was a card in a particular price range and my response relied upon expected driver improvements to mainstream cards. Ideally, I'd say don't buy now but wait until you can afford an 8800GTS if you must have DX10 by this fall. if someone prefers an X1950 Pro, then that's fine with me, I'm not the one buying it or a 7900GT.

As for framerates, Tom's has the 8600 cards at between 10 (GT) and 18 (GTS) fps in Oblivion outdoors at 1600 x 1200. Those are playable framerates by TES RPG standards, I get similar framerates at 1024 x 768 on high with a 7600 GS, but I'm sure the 8600 and X2600 cards will allow ultrahigh features.

In FEAR they get 46 (GT) to 62 (GTS) at 1600 x 1200. The X1950 Pro only gets 59 fps at that resolution. What's the big difference if the minimum framerates are still playable?

If new drivers allow the new cards to do better in DX10 than they do in demos like Lost Planet, then they will be viable in both FPS and RPGs, though not with all features maxed out as with the 8800 or X2900 series.

Should people wait? Well if we wait, we can wait too long to really enjoy the games we have. I avoided the faster X800 series for my AGP system because I didn't want high fps but no HDR. I waited until an affordable and reasonable shader 3.0 solution from ATI on AGP. I finally got my X1650 Pro for the old PC a month after I build the new system. Should I have waited for the X2600 AGP come fall?

http://www.tomshardware.com/2007/04/17/geforce_8600/page7.html

I think the 256bit 65nm parts are the killer part that people like yourself an Yipsl should be looking for, the question is WhenTF do they arrive? December's a long time to wait, and might as well get a cheap $120 X1950PRO/GF7900GS for now and then replace it later if that's the case.

Yes, when will they arrive? I got my 7600GS in the new build just to hold me over until I could afford a DX10 card and some DX10 titles had arrived. I bought the cheapest card that had at least 12 pixel pipelines for Oblivion. If I'd known I was going to wait until Q1 2008, then I might very well have gone 7900GS

As far as it goes, if I do wait for the next generation, I'll still spend between $300 and $450 on a card, depending on benchmarks in RPGs. I'm not looking for a mainstream part in my dual core.