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In the test 15 years ago: 249 euros was too much for the Radeon HD 2600 XT X2

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In the test 15 years ago, the ATi Radeon HD 2600 XT X2 (test) was a dual GPU card that had no competition for a price of 249 euros – but not in good condition senses. The Radeon lost out to an equally expensive single-GPU card from Nvidia, but it offered all the disadvantages of a dual-GPU graphics card.

Table of Contents

  1. Two Radeon HD 2600 XT
  2. Slower than a GeForce 8800 GTS
  3. Conclusion

Two Radeon HD 2600 XT

The Radeon HD 2600 XT X2 was nothing more than two Radeon HD 2600 XT on one PCB. AMD planted two RV630 GPUs on the PCB and added a PLX chip to enable the GPUs to be addressed individually with the full 16 lanes. The only difference compared to two Radeon HD 2600 XT was the slightly higher memory clock of 800 MHz compared to 700 MHz of the 512 MB GDDR3 memory. At 249 euros, the price was slightly higher than the acquisition costs of two HD 2600 XT, which each cost around 120 euros in the 512 MB version.

GeForce 8600 GTS Radeon HD 2600 XT (GDDR4) Sapphire HD 2600 XT X2 Radeon HD 2900 XT Chip G84 RV630 2 × RV630 R600 transistors approx. 289 million approx. 390 million 2 × approx. 390 million approx. 700 million production 80nm 65nm 80nm Chip Clock 675MHz 800MHz 742MHz Shader Clock 1450MHz 800MHz 742MHz Pixel Pipelines – Shader Units
(MADD) 32 (1D) 24 (5D) 2 × 24 (5D) 64 (5D ) FLOPS
(MADD/ADD/MUL) 139 GFLOPS* 192 GFLOPS 2 × 192 GFLOPS 475 GFLOPS ROPs 8 4 2 × 4 16 Pixel fill rate 5,400 Mpix/s 3,200 Mpix/s 2 × 3,200 Mpix/s 11,872 Mpix/s TMUs 16 8 2 × 8 16 TAUs 16 2 × 16 32 texel fill rate 10,800 MTex/s 6,400 MTex/s 2 × 6,400 MTex/s 11,872 MTex/s Vertex Shader – Unified Shader
in hardware ✓ Pixel shader SM 4 Vertex shader SM 4 Geometry shader ✓ Amount of memory 256 MB GDDR3 256/512 MB GDDR3
(256 MB GDDR4) 2 × 512 MB GDDR3 512 MB GDDR3 Memory clock 1,000 MHz 700 MHz
(1,100 MHz) 800 MHz 828 MHz memory interface 128 bit 512 bit memory bandwidth 32,000 MB/s 22,400 MB/s
(35,200 MB/s) 2 × 25,600 MB/s 105,984 MB/s

The graphics card's PCB was 28.5 cm long, even longer than that of a GeForce 8800 GTX or GeForce 8800 Ultra. In comparison, the 13 cm long PCB of the Radeon HD 2600 XT seemed tiny. At 14.5 cm, the height was also 2 cm more than usual. These expansive dimensions could lead to space problems in many cases.

  1. Sapphire Radeon HD 2600 XT X2

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Radeon HD 2600 XT X2 rear side
Radeon HD 2600 XT X2 Caption
Radeon HD 2600 XT X2 Description
Radeon HD 2600 XT X2 bracket
Radeon HD 2600 XT X2 without cover
Radeon HD 2600 XT X2 without cooler

The two GPUs were each developed by supplied with fresh air by a 65 mm fan. The coolers themselves – which are made of aluminum despite the misleading copper hue – appeared comparatively delicate once the huge plastic cover was removed. The manufacturer did not install a fan controller.

Slower than a GeForce 8800 GTS

The benchmarks showed where the dog was at Radeon HD 2600 XT X2 lay buried. While a cheaper GeForce 8600 GTS was noticeably slower than the dual-GPU Radeon, it couldn't hold a candle to an equally expensive GeForce 8800 GTS 320. The performance difference between the Radeon HD 2600 XT X2 and the GeForce 8800 GTS 320 was between 29 and 43 percent, depending on the resolution.

Performance rating

Performance Rating – 1280×1024

Unit: percent performance rating – 1280×1024 4xAA/16xAF

Unit: Percent performance rating – 1600×1200

Unit: Percent Performance Rating – 1600×1200 4xAA/16xAF

unit : percent

In addition to poor performance, the Radeon HD 2600 XT X2 had all the other downsides of a CrossFire system. In addition to a constant 53.5 dB(A) that is annoying (in this case due to the missing fan control), this also includes a high energy consumption – despite modern 65 nm production. GPU temperatures were low both idle and under load, which made the lack of fan control all the more annoying.

Charts

Volume

Unit: dB(A) Power consumption

Unit: Watt (W ) Temperature

Unit: °C

Conclusion

Overall, the Radeon HD 2600 XT X2 could not be recommended, especially considering the price of 249 euros. Users could already get a GeForce 8800 GTS 320 for 240 euros, which worked significantly faster and quieter. The conclusion from 15 years ago was: hands off, at least as long as the price had not fallen sharply. For the advertised price, the Radeon HD 2600 XT X2 was unrivaled bad.

In the category “In the test 15 years ago”, the editors have been taking a look at the test archive every Saturday since July 2017. The last 20 articles that appeared in this series are listed below:

Yet more content of this kind and many other reports and anecdotes can be found in the retro corner in the ComputerBase forum.

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