#6.

The prices for 8600seires have dropped down a lot

Currently 8600GTS can be found at $149.9 after rebate (same as HD2600XT)
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814130084

8600GT cost $99 after rebate (same as HD2600pro)
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814130085

And HD2600pro performs very bad, I'm pretty sure that even 7600GT beats it and it cost about $80 after rebate in newegg

oh man...9600 Pro for me until 2008..WTF happened with ATI ?

Well I'll still be picking up a $89 2600 Pro so that I can have a quiet, passively cooled DX 10 card to use in my AMD/AMD/AMD system. (AMD CPU, AMD Chipset, AMD Video) I don't like to mix rival's drivers on a system if I can avoid it.

Wait, why is everyone bashing when another review was just posted that showed they were equal http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/ATI/HD_2600_XT.

Here is a review
http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,1697,2151674,00.asp

8600GTS is faster than HD2600XT

8600GT is faster than HD2600pro

#33, Yea, HD2600 is a horrible video card

http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=3023&p=10

Just look at STALKER and Prey benchmark, even 7600GT kicked HD2600 *** !!

How disappointing. I guess us midrange users just get the shaft this generation.

Any Cross Fire results?

"This is Falcon’s fastest ATI Crossfire based system put up against our own fastest SLI based system that PC Magazine had reviewed less than two months earlier. The testing was done under Windows Vista 32-bit. And yes, ."our ATI based system destroyed the NVIDIA based system

http://www.dailytech.com/article.aspx?newsid=7864

I can grab a:

8600gt for £82
x1950pro for £91
2600xt for £94
x1950xt for £115

Yet in terms of performance it goes (worst at top):

2600xt
8600gt
x1950pro
x1950xt

What amazing value for money this new ATI card is :o

For everyone's information, if that's the real Dave Baumann, he's the Technical Marketing Manager for ATI.

Ack: reply to #30...

The 1950pro will kick the heck out of the hd2600xt, even the x1650XT does a lot of the time.

http://www.hexus.net/content/item.php?item=9187&page=7

These results make me happy I picked up a high end DX9 card, a Radeon X1950XT 256MB, instead of waiting around for the midrange DX10 cards.

anyword on AGP versions?

Reading some other reviews, it looks like the 8600GTS stomps the yard.

After all the heat NVIDIA took for the 8600's, you would think that AMD would have stepped up to the plate for the mid-range at least.

I'm starting to think the FX...er...R600 has a hardware issue.

Scott, will there be Xfire tests in your review? Prices of these cards are actually cheap enough to make Xfire a reasonable proposition right out of the gate. 2* HD2900XT in Xfire for $300 and no need for auxiliary power don't sound bad if it scales pretty well, say between the x1950xt and the 8800GTS.

*sigh*

I really want ATI to do well, I hate nVidia being the only one in the market right now. I'm a long time ATI buyer (my last 7.. yes 7 cards have been ATI) and just spent $170 on an MSI 8600gts-oc. C'mon ATI, you're practically forcing me to buy nVidia. My next purchase will be in Aug... will you have something for me then, or is it back to nVidia?

Scott: At present, the one real advantage I see for Radeon HD 2400 and 2600 cards is their support for audio output over HDMI and their built-in crypto keys for HDCP over dual-link DVI.

Hey, Scott.. The nVidia Dx10 cards certainly do not have the audio support over HDMI, but I believe that the 8600-series does have full dual-link DVI with HDCP crypto-key support. That latter HDCP support may be missing on the 8500 (and 8400) series. Can you check my recollections ?

AMD/ATi having to bid down prices to gain market share at first product-release sure is not going to pay back the huge development costs. Meanwhile, nVidia has been smiling all the way to the bank for the last 9 months with the 8800GTX and GTS in a totally open market. How long will AMD allow ATI to bleed money, when AMD is already bleeding vast quantities themselves? ATi desperately needs a second run at a full range of Dx10 cards, but the design-costs and the small-geometry masking costs are horrific. Is the 2900 XT ATi's last gasp at high-end discrete-graphics cards? With the less-than-stellar introduction of the latest series of ATi graphics cards, will AMD now begin to control ATi expenses a lot more and concentrate all future graphics development on integrated-graphics and volume-sales of low-end HTPC-style discrete graphics offerings?

Funny you should mention the X1600, because the HD 2600XT offers equivalent performance to the X1650XT in some games also when you turn on AA in other games.

I have read 4 reviews (Anand,Hexus,3dguru,firingsquad) and the results are abysmal.

It is hard to think of a reason to buy one of these unless it is the cheapest HD2400 passively cooled for a home theater box.

ATI has done what I thought was impossible, they made the launch of the HD2900 look like a raging success in comparison.

Just please don't introduce the XTi, GTO, GT, GS, vanilla, etc., etc. versions - make the number bigger for better performance!

I gave up on ATi cards the last round because I got tired of trying to figure out if a lower number but more letters or higher number but less sexy letters was better.

Sorry about the fry.. Damage..

So finally your name goes with the game. huh?? ;)

Scott! You hijacked Cyril's post!

But sheesh, at least we know why he was teasing us with the "we'll it to you soon" bit. Sorry about the magic blue smoke. It was blue, wasn't it? :)