Because I picked up yet another Radeon 2600pro in a box of stuff last week, and got the 2400pro PCI earlier this year, I was doing some investigation of the performance envelope of these cards... ... ... they don't got one.
Well, they don't got one that seems to belong very well in a "pride of 2007" system, they seem a bit like a SiS6326 or a GF4 440MX, fine as long as you pitch it 2 years earlier.
Where you'd like to guess that maybe a 2600 was about 66% of a 2900, it's the other way, more like 33% at best.
A review on the early drivers, later ones didn't seem to improve things much https://www.overclockersclub.com/reviews/powe … _hd2600pro_512/
I am not even sure crossfiring my two 2600s would be worth it. Certainly I don't want to "waste" a board with two long slots when they can do much greater things. Possibly I might try a hacked up frankenstein with one long slot and a short one... since PCIe graphics doesn't really show a dent at 1x vs 16x until you get to about a HD4670 card.
The 2400 is gonna be worse of course, possibly I'll reserve it for doing something stupid like installing Vista on a Celeron 566.
TechPowerup in the GPU database is somewhat optimistic I feel about their performance level, setting the 2600 equal to HD5450 and HD6450, which seems wrong, those aren't powerhouses, but definitely give you low power elevation over onboard stuff and are capable of some playable framerates in older stuff. Other stuff I am finding here and there has 2600pro more around the level of an 8400GT, which of course was mildly warmed over for 9400 and GT210. TPU ranks them twice as fast as those, I'm not seeing anything to support that elsewhere. So I don't know where the 2400pro on PCI is for real, but gut adjustment based on poor 2600 scores makes me think GF 6600 to Radeon 9600Pro kinda area.
Though I don't know if I'm looking at the right stuff, is it possible they are redeemed by games that can really use 120 shaders, whereas the older stuff would expect only a third or less of that?? Though I am guessing that by the time those games were around, the shader count on everything else had got massive and still made them look horrible in comparison, even if contemporaries were struggling with less.
So I guess, more of a curiosity for representing ATI's first go round at DX10 but not very useful for it, I guess like GF5200 where you can run DX9 BUT.... So maybe a card for odd situations like you want up to 2006 gaming in XP only with a PCIe slot s754 or s775 or something, and you are avoiding the 05-06 cards in their high models that just burn up or have solder probs.... not entirely sure these are free of solder probs but at least they're cheap.... however if looking for something "particularly this fast" you're probably better with a 8400/9400/210 as they use less power and can be fanless/noiseless, or step up to the HD5450/6450 for probably better upward range though not a lot... I guess either are slightly more worth considering in AGP to get more top end out of AGP boards, but of course you can spend a lot more and get a lot more.
Anyway, bit of a shame that a card that has a number that is almost as 1337 as 1337 isn't up to much.
Unicorn herding operations are proceeding, but all the totes of hens teeth and barrels of rocking horse poop give them plenty of hiding spots.
