HIS Radeon HD 2600 Pro IceQ Turbo 512MB

When we evaluated the Radeon HD 2600 and HD 2400 series of cards back in June, we were impressed with their multimedia features and their reasonable price tags. However, after using the HIS Radeon HD 2600 Pro IceQ Turbo 512MB for a few weeks, our impression is less positive. From a performance standpoint, the HIS Radeon HD 2600 Pro IceQ Turbo 512MB lags behind the GeForce 8600GT, even when it is overclocked 90MHz over its stock clock speed, which itself is 50MHz higher than ATI's reference design. We weren’t able to crank up the core clock speed past 740MHz, and suspect that the memory could have overclocked a bit higher as well, if the card’s huge heatsink would have made contact with the memory chips. Also, we saw only a slight performance improvement when going from the 256MB Radeon X2600 Pro to the 512MB HIS version, even though the HIS product already had a 50MHz overclocked core and 25MHz overclocked memory frequency.

Although the IceQ Turbo line has been very successful for HIS, bringing its features to the Radeon HD 2600 Pro might have taken things a step too far. Although we were able to use the IceQ cooler to significantly overclock the card, the results still put it behind the stock GeForce 8600GT. Although the heatsink is very quiet, the HIS Radeon HD 2600 Pro IceQ Turbo 512MB is a hard sell to any gamer looking for solid performance. The card uses a two slot GPU cooler, is more expensive, and yet slower than the GeForce 8600GT.

It is nice that HIS is including Half-Life 2: Deathmatch and Half-Life 2: Lost Coast (via Steam), but those two games are now available to anyone with an ATI Radeon graphics card. The Radeon HD 2400 and 2600 series are being targeted to more mainstream users with a distinct multimedia focus, but it seems as though HIS is trying to stretch the target audience to gamers and enthusiasts on a budget, and unfortunately, the HIS Radeon HD 2600 Pro IceQ Turbo 512MB doesn’t offer the best value to users in these groups.