$59 for a Palit 2600XT Super 512MB PCI-e, what the heck, great for a third machine.
It went in a socket 939 3600+ @ 2.6GHz, my other two rigs are C2D's both on Gigabyte P31-SG3 @ 3GHz+ with 9600 GT's.
So mostly out of curiosity, I wanted to see just how much bang for the buck I could get for just a few $'s.
First off the stock cooler was not very efficient, hitting 70c under full load in a cool case.
Put an extra Zalman VF700 on it that I had laying around unused, 58c under full load, problem solved.
Tried a half dozen or so Catalyst drivers, and the 8.4 seemed to work pretty good. The CCC is annoying, it takes time to load up and when I checked Revo uninstaller it showed like 5 entries! So uninstalled the CCC and used ATI tray tools. The whole OS was a little more responsive after getting rid of the bloatware, just as bad as Nvidia ntune in my opinion.
Used the amdgpu overclock utility, Rivatuner, Atitools, or several others could not set the clock speeds on the 2600 XT. The bloated CCC only allowed for 850/750 max, the stock clocks were 800/700 (1400MHz DDR). I've heard the core has a lock at 859Mhz, which seems true because amdgpu would not set the core clock any higher. Max stable at 859/1750. Got rid of the amdgpu junk and flashed the bios to those speeds, as well as changing the fan settings. Tried flashing the core over 859Mhz and the card freaked in Windows XP, but booted to the bios menu no problem, so looks like there is some kind of lock on the core for sure.
The two hardest games I play are GRAW2 and COD4. On GRAW2 I used 2X AA and 8X AF at 1152 x 864 with all detail on high. Framerates stay in the 30-45fps range, with maybe a dip in the high 20's occasionaly. Nothing compared to my 9600GT rigs of course, but without obsessing on the fps counter the game played smoothly with no stutters or slow downs.
COD4 was played at 2X AA and 8X AF at 1024 x 768 with all detail on high. It couldn't quite cut the mustard at 1152 x 864. But framerates at 1024 x 768 were in the low 40's never dropping below 30fps.
I still play many older games, NFS Porsche Unleashed, Mech Warrior 4, Unreal 2003 and 2004 and many others. It played all these beautifully, of course framerates where much higher in these older games, gpu power was not part of the equation. In comparison an 8600GT OC I was playing with had major issues with the Unreal 2 engine in WinXP, and the driver had to be modded to allow more resolution options in these same older games.
Bottom line, I had fun gaming with 2600XT, it did everything I needed it to and more.
It has found a home in my third rig.
No, it's not anywhere as fast as my 9600GT rigs, but it got the job done and managed to play smoothly at what I asked it to do and looked good doing it. For $59 I was both surprised and impressed. Not quite as fast as the 8600GT OC, but close and it worked in every game I tried with no issues.
It went in a socket 939 3600+ @ 2.6GHz, my other two rigs are C2D's both on Gigabyte P31-SG3 @ 3GHz+ with 9600 GT's.
So mostly out of curiosity, I wanted to see just how much bang for the buck I could get for just a few $'s.
First off the stock cooler was not very efficient, hitting 70c under full load in a cool case.
Put an extra Zalman VF700 on it that I had laying around unused, 58c under full load, problem solved.
Tried a half dozen or so Catalyst drivers, and the 8.4 seemed to work pretty good. The CCC is annoying, it takes time to load up and when I checked Revo uninstaller it showed like 5 entries! So uninstalled the CCC and used ATI tray tools. The whole OS was a little more responsive after getting rid of the bloatware, just as bad as Nvidia ntune in my opinion.
Used the amdgpu overclock utility, Rivatuner, Atitools, or several others could not set the clock speeds on the 2600 XT. The bloated CCC only allowed for 850/750 max, the stock clocks were 800/700 (1400MHz DDR). I've heard the core has a lock at 859Mhz, which seems true because amdgpu would not set the core clock any higher. Max stable at 859/1750. Got rid of the amdgpu junk and flashed the bios to those speeds, as well as changing the fan settings. Tried flashing the core over 859Mhz and the card freaked in Windows XP, but booted to the bios menu no problem, so looks like there is some kind of lock on the core for sure.
The two hardest games I play are GRAW2 and COD4. On GRAW2 I used 2X AA and 8X AF at 1152 x 864 with all detail on high. Framerates stay in the 30-45fps range, with maybe a dip in the high 20's occasionaly. Nothing compared to my 9600GT rigs of course, but without obsessing on the fps counter the game played smoothly with no stutters or slow downs.
COD4 was played at 2X AA and 8X AF at 1024 x 768 with all detail on high. It couldn't quite cut the mustard at 1152 x 864. But framerates at 1024 x 768 were in the low 40's never dropping below 30fps.
I still play many older games, NFS Porsche Unleashed, Mech Warrior 4, Unreal 2003 and 2004 and many others. It played all these beautifully, of course framerates where much higher in these older games, gpu power was not part of the equation. In comparison an 8600GT OC I was playing with had major issues with the Unreal 2 engine in WinXP, and the driver had to be modded to allow more resolution options in these same older games.
Bottom line, I had fun gaming with 2600XT, it did everything I needed it to and more.
It has found a home in my third rig.
No, it's not anywhere as fast as my 9600GT rigs, but it got the job done and managed to play smoothly at what I asked it to do and looked good doing it. For $59 I was both surprised and impressed. Not quite as fast as the 8600GT OC, but close and it worked in every game I tried with no issues.