[grogi]

HIS Radeon HD 2600 PRO IceQ 512MB
"I think pretty much everyone knows that AMD's HD 2900 XT didn't exactly make a positive impact when it hit. Quite noisy, power hungry, expensive for the performance and the competition is cheaper and faster to boot. To top it off, the much vaunted media capabilities of the new generation of AMD cards is not a feature in their flagship product.

Still, let's move onto more 'positive waves baby' and talk about the midrange area. The HD 2600 series of cards has a lot more going for it. Better temperatures and power consumption, lower noise levels, better value for money, HDMI with HDCP support and 5.1 Audio support, decoding of VC-1 as well as the better known formats including H.264 and MPEG2. In every way that counts, the 2600 series (and 2400) appears more positive overall than the 2900, on paper at least.

HIS are no stranger to Viperlair readers. We've been looking at their products for years, and I honestly don't recall any of our staff ever having a bad experience with their products. One thing that stood out in all cases with HIS products were the extra steps they took to ensure you get the best from your product, be that extra cables or superior cooling. Admittedly, the winning formula used by HIS with ATI and now AMD products has changed little of late, but the HIS Radeon HD 2600 PRO IceQ 512MB does make a couple of changes from the expected. Coupled with the media capabilities of the new GPU and chipset, it should make for an interesting HIS review."

Sapphire 2900XT 512mb
"ATI were well behind nVidia when it came to releasing their DX10 hardware. 6 months passed between the introduction of the 8800 range from the green guys before the boys in red brought their 2xxx series of cards to the table. Even then, the king of GPUs at the time, the GTX, was still way out of the 2900XT's league. However, many have claimed it is a fantastic mid-high range solution; let's see if we concur."

Diamond Viper Radeon HD 2900XT 1GB Videocard Review
"The ATI Radeon HD 2900XT VPU core runs at 743 MHz while the 1GB of GDDR4 memory hums along at a very sweet 2 GHz! In pairs, the Diamond Viper Radeon HD 2900XT is ATI Crossfire compatible on supporting motherboards."