The Cards

With the package out of the way it’s time to move on to the card and see what exactly we have with us here.





The front of the two cards are quite similar, both share the same black heatsink and fan along with a red PCB. The main difference is that the HD 2600 PRO comes in a fair bit shorter. You can see that it finishes at the end of the PCI-Express connector while the XT incarnation continues on.



The HD 2600 XT includes the Crossfire connector on top of the card, though it’s a little unfortunate that Palit chose not to include the cable. The lower end HD 2600 PRO also supports Crossfire, but sadly this particular model does not. There are “Crossfire Editions” of the HD 2600 PRO which have the connector on top.



I/O wise is where it gets interesting. The HD 2600 XT is pretty standard with Dual DVI connections (both support Dual-Link connectivity), and of course a TV-Out port.


The HD 2600 PRO on the other hand, while coming with a Dual-Link DVI connector, VGA port and standard TV-Out connector, it also sports a HDMI connector built onto the card. This is always a plus for anyone who is looking for a new budget card to put into their home theatre computer.

Palit has been using the “Sonic” naming scheme to determine when the cards are overclocked (not unlike the way they use “Super” for their 512MB models). The HD 2600 PRO comes in at 600Mhz / 1400MHz DDR on the core / memory which is up from the stock 600MHz / 1000MHz speeds. The HD 2600 XT comes in at 800Mhz / 1600MHz DDR which is up from the stock 800Mhz / 1100MHz speeds.