Sapphire Radeon HD 2600 XT Ultimate Review

[Chierin]

In regards to technical specs, Sapphire's HD 2600XT Ultimate doesn't differ from other 2600XT video cards on the market. The card comes clocked in at 800MHz for the GPU core and 1400MHz effective for the 256MB of GDDR3 memory (512MB versions are also available). There are two DVI-I video outputs which support HDCP, one VIVO, and of course the cards support ATI's Avivo HD, for high-definition decoding. What does separate it from the rest and where it gains Sapphire's title of Ultimate is in the cooling which is completely passive. We've looked at a number of passive cards over the years from Sapphire and others and it is one way for a product to stand out in the mid-range market and something near impossible with high-end graphics cards without water cooling. On the front of the card is one large heatsink covering the GPU connected to two heatipes with an even larger heatsink in the back, covering the entire length of the card. The card does get fairly hot because of this but we encountered no stability problems whatsoever. Of course not everyone needs a passively cooled video card but for those who are concerned about noise or are looking for a graphics card for their home theater PC, this makes it an excellent option.

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