PowerColor HD 2600 PRO

Advantages: alot of features and power
Disadvantages: lack of analog output

...ATI Radeon HD 2600 Pro is the perfect graphics adapter for the budget gamer. This card is in my system consisting of Gigabyte M52L-S3 with the AMD Athlon 64 3500+ and with 2 GB of DDR2 singelchannel RAM. In this setting, I have the standard 256 mb shared to 512 mb, with the top of 1 GB. This card is very fast. In my processor review, the fps shown for these games are done with this card. Only drawback is the lack of analog output. There are two HDMI outputs and a s-video, so you can hook up 2 HD TV sets. I tested it with two 32" HD screens and the card played a 2K film without any lag and distortion. Currently, I have a 19" widescreen LCD on it and it runs anything smooth and undistorted. My only problem is with 128 bit memory interface. As I use solid edge and other editing programs, this is not as smooth and fast as expected... Read review

Ciao members have rated this review on average helpful

Advantages: Single slot design, Great over clock ability, no external power requirements
Disadvantages: Easily gets hot, No game bundle

...This is one of a view card I just bought a friend of mine. As based by ATi's newest GPU R600 series, this card is using the RV630 GPU which already support HD gaming in DirectX 10 games. Retailed at around US$ 79, this card has a great performance for it's level. This card runs great for playing games in medium setting. But when it gets a little dirty, high detail and high resolution, the FPS quickly gets dropped. As with other Sapphire cards, this card came with superb over clocking performance. A few things that I should note is, along with great over clocking capability, this card generates quite a heat and came with no bonus game bundle. The lack of game bundle could be a bit frustrating for some people, although it doesn't matter with me.... Read review

Ciao members have rated this review on average somewhat helpful

Advantages: Huge VGA ram, Runs vista aero smoothly
Disadvantages: NOT a gamers card, but will handle light gaming

...This is a good Card for Vista because of its 512mb of VGA ram. I was taken by surprise when games woudnt run that much faster than on the card that this card was designed to replace (x1600pro) so I am slightly disappointed, but keeping in mind this is a budget/value card, this isnt soo bad. Was very easy to install and drivers are very nice to work with. VERY quiet after a weeks of use, people will experience a high noise output for the first weeks of use, and they may tell you about this, but this is only because the thermal compound under the cooler needs to settle to make the cooling fan and heatsink as efficient as its going to be. After a week of use(not constant use), the fluctuating fan settles down (perminently) and remains very quiet and only noticable at start up. HD 3850 should be considered over this card!!!... Read review

Ciao members have rated this review on average helpful