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Meet the heat-pipe endowed Sapphire HD 2600 XT Ultimate Edition

Sapphire Technology has announced its silent HD 2600 XT Ultimate Edition graphics card. The new Sapphire HD 2600 XT Ultimate Edition features a passive cooling solution with dual heat-pipes. The dual heat-pipes route around the backside of the graphics card to multiple fins in a radiator-style layout, leaving front-adjacent expansion slots open for use.

Despite having a passive cooler, the Sapphire HD 2600 XT Ultimate Edition features AMD’s ATI Radeon HD 2600 XT GPU clocked at 800 MHz, similar to actively cooled models. Sapphire pairs the 800 MHz GPU with 1.4 GHz GDDR3 memory. Sapphire offers the HD 2600 XT Ultimate Edition in two memory sizes, 256MB and 512MB. The GPU communicates with the memory via a 128-bit memory interface.

Sapphire equips the HD 2600 XT Ultimate Edition with dual dual-link DVI-I outputs and video input and output capabilities. With an included adapter, the Sapphire HD 2600 XT Ultimate Edition will output HDMI multichannel audio and high definition video.

Sapphire is currently shipping the HD 2600 XT Ultimate Edition, however, retail availability isn’t expected until July.

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8600GTS > HD2900XT
By maroon1 on 5/24/2007 9:00:05 AM , Rating: 2
HD2600XT has only 4 Render Output Pipelines
8600GTS has 8 Render Output Pipelines

HD2900XT has only 8 Texture mapping units
8600GTS has 16 Texture mapping units

8600GTS has faster memory as well, so there is no doubt that 8600GTS is going to beat HD2600XT




RE: 8600GTS > HD2900XT
By Fenixgoon on 5/24/2007 9:24:20 AM , Rating: 2
8600GTS > HD2900XT... you're joking, right?


RE: 8600GTS > HD2900XT
By maroon1 on 5/24/2007 9:28:34 AM , Rating: 2
No, I did mistake

I mean 8600GTS > HD2600XT


RE: 8600GTS > HD2900XT
By h0kiez on 5/24/2007 9:30:01 AM , Rating: 2
Between the title and his 3 stats, he said 2600XT twice and 2900XT twice. I think it's safe to say he meant the 8600GTS > 2600XT


RE: 8600GTS > HD2900XT
By Proteusza on 5/24/2007 9:30:02 AM , Rating: 2
He made a spelling mistake there, look at the others, they are all 2600XT.

As for ATI, they neeed to realize that shader power and bandwidth arent everything - now and then graphics cards still need to push pixels and textures around, and ATI's seems to really stingy when it comes to that.


RE: 8600GTS > HD2900XT
By Chadder007 on 5/24/2007 10:48:13 AM , Rating: 2
As soon as we see some benchmarks in video encoding/decoding and a few games im going ahead with building a new PC. :D
I really wished that ATI went with 256bit memory interface though instead of 128 for this card.


RE: 8600GTS > HD2900XT
By Lightning III on 5/24/2007 9:53:33 AM , Rating: 3
yea for 50 dollars cheaper you can get a x1950pro that will smoke your 8600gts like a cheap cigar check the bench marks

it has a 256 bit interface and isn't as memory bandwith starved as 8600 or the 2600 series


RE: 8600GTS > HD2900XT
By maroon1 on 5/24/2007 11:18:00 AM , Rating: 1
I have checked many benchmarks.

8600GTS beats in X1950pro (and even 7950GT) in shader-intensive games like STALKER and oblivion.

I agree that X1950pro is overall better in current games, but this might change in future games.

Memory bandwidth is not everything. 7600GT has low memory bandwidth compared to 6800GT and Ultra, but it beats them both.


RE: 8600GTS > HD2900XT
By Lightning III on 5/24/2007 2:39:23 PM , Rating: 2
was that the HIS turbo the current King Of the x1950 Pro its oc ed to 620 core meory 1480 it only gives up the future


RE: 8600GTS > HD2900XT
By Griswold on 5/24/2007 10:25:31 AM , Rating: 2
That remains to be seen and dont pretend you know what you're talking about.

But one thing is for sure, the 8600 series is still overpriced junk.


3, 2, or 1?
By Googer on 5/24/2007 7:56:47 AM , Rating: 2
Wow, I am surprised to see that it doesn't use three PCI slots as a standard 2900XT uses two. Nice job Sapphire.




RE: 3, 2, or 1?
By h0kiez on 5/24/2007 8:10:00 AM , Rating: 2
2900 != 2600...this isn't exactly a high-end gaming card.


RE: 3, 2, or 1?
By Chadder007 on 5/24/2007 9:51:12 AM , Rating: 2
Plus I believe that the 2600xt is going to use the 65nm process.


RE: 3, 2, or 1?
By MatthewAC on 5/24/2007 8:11:58 AM , Rating: 2
Ya, but are these heatsinks really worth it?
I just finished building my brand new rig, on which it employs a 8600gts.
My GTS is the MSI OC one(except for it has a dual slot fan/heatsink solution).
On a silent card theres nothing blowing the air out, of course who am I to judge whacky heatsink designers.

Seeing as I already bought my card I'm interested to see how it stacks up. :)

*DDR3 memory, that might be a killer ;).[My ddr2's runnin at 2.1ghz)


RE: 3, 2, or 1?
By Goty on 5/24/2007 8:26:38 AM , Rating: 5
quote:
On a silent card theres nothing blowing the air out...


*psst* That's what case fans are for!

=P


RE: 3, 2, or 1?
By killerroach on 5/24/2007 8:29:20 AM , Rating: 2
DDR3 might not be so much of a killer when you figure the 2900XT has an option to use GDDR4... at the present time, the memory bandwidth of that card is still its biggest selling point, and why one can hold out hope that newer drivers might make it more competitive with nVidia's offerings (bit late for me, as I just ordered an 8800GTS myself, but still).


RE: 3, 2, or 1?
By rbuszka on 5/24/2007 9:32:50 PM , Rating: 2
Notice that Sapphire's heatsink has significantly more surface area than the typical cooler having a fan. The idea here is that by using heatpipes and a large body of widely-spaced fins (for low airflow impedance), natural convection is enough to cool the GPU. If the card is stable with a passive cooler, why bother with a noisy fan that could fail in three or four years?

I'm personally waiting to see the HIS iSilence passively-cooled 2600XT card. Their design also uses a large body of fins, with a couple of heatpipes conducting the heat, but the real genius of the HIS iSilence and Gigabyte SilentPipe coolers is that they use the case's own negative pressure to draw air in over the fins. Sure, both are dual-slot card coolers as a result of that, but it's still a very elegant solution in a day and age where motherboard layouts are designed to accomodate double-slot video cards anyway. I'm currently using a HIS iSilence Radeon X1650XT card, and it doesn't run particularly hot. The same system uses an MCubed TBalancer programmable microprocessor-controlled fan controller, and the thermistor on the HIS iSilence heatsink controls the speed of the rear case fan. It's a great setup that is truly 'silent' - in that its noise output disappears under the noise floor of a quiet room. I stopped putting up with noisy PCs a long time ago, and I'm glad to see that video card manufacturers are building products for the acoustically-conscious.


Why?
By Proteusza on 5/24/2007 8:11:17 AM , Rating: 3
We dont need a silent 2600 XT, we need a silent 2900 XT.

Or at least quieter.




RE: Why?
By subhajit on 5/24/2007 8:47:37 AM , Rating: 2
They should come out with a 65nm refresh of 2900XT.


RE: Why?
By Griswold on 5/24/07, Rating: 0
RE: Why?
By rbuszka on 5/24/2007 9:39:28 PM , Rating: 2
Why is this a big deal? Because some of us are sick and tired of putting up with noisy PCs invading our space, and there's really no reason from an engineering standpoint why silent operation can't be attained. Silence is the newest defining characteristic of truly high-end hardware that takes both performance and ergonomics into account. (Noise is an ergonomic concern.)


RE: Why?
By bunnyfubbles on 6/6/2007 5:52:12 AM , Rating: 2
But you have to be incredibly stupid to believe they purposely throw on loud cooling solutions to higher end cards such as the 2900XT if they could have a reasonable quiet/silent solution instead.

I remember the backlash of when 2 slot cooling designs were being introduced for retail video cards, to get silence for today's top end you'd need 3 or 4 slot designs...that wouldn't bode well.

If you want quiet and high end you're almost always going to have to rip off the junk that comes with it and throw on your own choice of 3rd party cooling.

Whereas with midrange the parts are naturally designed to be less powerful and thus less power hungry...top that off with the fact that they're almost always the pioneering parts when it comes to die shrinks and you get parts that are just begging to be designed with fanless cooling solutions.


How about an AGP version
By PAPutzback on 5/24/2007 9:36:02 AM , Rating: 2
This would be nice in AGP for us HTPC builders who have old parts laying around. If the Video card can offload the decoding from the CPU then all our 2 - 3ghz cpus can be used for htpcs.




RE: How about an AGP version
By jak3676 on 5/24/2007 10:14:05 AM , Rating: 2
Probably possible, but don't hold your breath. I'll put down money that you won't see any new ATI/Nvidia cards on AGP anymore.


RE: How about an AGP version
By Griswold on 5/24/2007 10:23:28 AM , Rating: 2
By Vanilla Thunder on 5/24/2007 10:48:12 AM , Rating: 2
I'll take a piece of that pie....

http://www.theinquirer.net/default.aspx?article=39...

vanilla


the HTPC wonder card long live the new King
By Lightning III on 5/24/2007 9:44:50 AM , Rating: 3
for all you gamers with that puzzled glassy eyed look on your face's you are looking at the new King of HTPC's with the new universal video decoder.

HUH you say whats that?

what's hampering ATI/AMD with the 2900 is they didn't pull off the die shrink for the 2900XT

but they did manage it for the midrange cards. So it uses less power and gives off less heat. It has better video decoding that the 8800 ultra all at half the watts.
So if it's sitting in your living room disguised as a stereo component it will be utterly silent.

I have one of these devices because I grew tired of paying time warner 130 a month now I pay 50 (couldn't drop road runner and kept basic )

I get local channels in hd via a ATI 650 tv wonder and and use beyond tv for guide and DVR funtionality heck it even has a built in record to dvd function. And I use I tunes for video on demand all outputed to a 48in widescreen rear projection tv.

so lets count here
1. its my basic cable set top box
2. it delivers OTA HD content
3. its a 600 gig DVR
4. it gives me video on demand via ITunes
5. its a highend dvd player
6. add a hd or bluray drive and its that player as well (haven't done this yet
7. allows me to surf on couch with Bluetooth keyboard and mouse upscales video clips beatifully
8. via front mounted card reader works as a slide show player for digital cameras
9. put all 15gb's of my music at my finger tips in my living room.

Okay now you will understand why HTPC people are saying the King is dead long live the new King

this is a differnt kind of halo card for a different type of enthusiest.

My system

silverstone LC-03 vfd
E6600 core 2 duo
Corsair 2gb ddr 2 800
Asus P5B deluxe
2 maxtor 300gb sata II
Ati 650 wonder
samsung 18x dvd burner
sapphire x1950pro




RE: the HTPC wonder card long live the new King
By Proteusza on 5/24/2007 9:52:05 AM , Rating: 2
Off topic:

I'm looking to build an HTPC soon. I want to use the Silverstone LC17B case, and am thinking of a HD 2900XT. I know these arent silent or cheap, but the PC will also be a games PC, and surely it wont be too bad in 2d mode?

Could I find one TV card to rule them all? Not sure how many free PCI slots I will have.


By Lightning III on 5/24/2007 10:24:22 AM , Rating: 2
I use the 650 because it has the most advanced 3d comb filters and noise reduction algorithms on the market.

But other than those updates its a hdtv wonder with the theater 550 pro for the analog tuner and capture functions combined onto one card(analog capture was really poor with the HDTV wonder ). I still have both of these cards laying around the house somewhere and will probably work them back into the equation for dual tuner functionality the 650 upgrade was last weekend.

its working great so far.

although I think somone out there has a Qam card for unencrypted HD signals

and of course no cable company wants to support the OEM ony cable card standard

I have similar feeling's about the HD2900XT I'm waiting to see What HIS will finally do with some kind of artic cooling solution, as well

we could end up with a near silent solution that will still game and has the universal video decoder

which would make it the best all around card there is somthing other that FPS

any thing over 35 is really almost imperceptible to the human eye


By Lightning III on 5/24/2007 10:32:02 AM , Rating: 1
Damn left off 10. running win XP pro no DRM laden OS for me they can keep their will only play on this computer MCE DRM *%#*&% kawtow to hollywood crap.


People arent getting the point
By GlassHouse69 on 5/24/2007 4:57:27 PM , Rating: 2
Those who are comparing this to a 8600gts are completely misunderstanding the 2600xt.

The xt uses 45 watts on load. an 8600 cant touch that. the 2600xt can run trully passive. I see other super hot cards with huge heatsinks on them claiming that they are passive. while they are in many ways passive, they run excessively hot, ruining life of the card and adding a load of excess heat into the case for the psu to ramp up, case fans needing to push more, etc.

the 2600xt will be able to do some gaming on it yet not add a lot of heat.




RE: People arent getting the point
By Fenixgoon on 5/24/2007 5:04:30 PM , Rating: 2
but we expect performance increases from a new architecture, and we expect DAAMIT to address nVIDIA's current card lineup. THe 2600XT is best positioned, based on previous cards schemes, to take the 8600GT or GTS. ATI's x600/700 and x1600 both failed (until the x1650 pro and XT) to successfully compete with the 6600 vanilla/GT and 7600GS/GT. i hope it's different this round, but ATI is typically late with the card they REALLY need at the midrange point (x800 GTO, x1650XT. 1800GTO was good but didn't pan out for some reason).


By GlassHouse69 on 5/24/2007 8:34:54 PM , Rating: 2
Compete means something is equal to something else, or even similar and then price comes into play. the 2600xt runs less than 1/2 the wattage of a 8600GTS. A 8600 is overclocked and 50-80 dollars more. I dont think the 8600gts is worth anything to anyone as a 8800gts with 320 megs on it is below 260 dollars. 8600gt clocked lower or a 8500gt at least takes care of light gaming and vista/1080p. shrugs? I dont think the 2600xt is meant to blow the doors off of anything. It is the x1600 bumped up a whole lot with like 30 watts less power. That has a big place in the regular world of computing.


By Proteusza on 5/25/2007 4:42:24 AM , Rating: 2
That doesnt cut it.

Its all about efficiency and effectivesness. Its better to be effective than efficient. That is, its better to solve the right thing the wrong way, than to solve the wrong thing the right way.

that may sound cryptic, but in this instance, it means that 2600 XT wont use much power or produce much heat when playing games, problem is it will be so lousy at games it wont be worth it, even with the energy savings.

The 8600 GTs may produce more heat, but at least it works.


By Treckin on 5/24/2007 10:55:01 AM , Rating: 2
I think many of you are confusing your own needs with those of the general public. For example:
(Im a 'till the wheels fall off' overclocker)
My last rig was a Athlon Barton 2500+, with the multiplier unlocked. I rant that proc at 230 FSB x 13.5. I had the best cooler of the day, an Alpha PLU with a 200cfm fan. I ran that on a Epox 8rda3+ mobo, as it had passive cooling stock on the I/O. Graphics? Non other than the blazing Geforce 4 Ti4600.
I had 8 case fans, the antec SmartBlue PSU had 2, the CPU had one, the vid card had 1, and the North bridge had 1. Needless to say, this computer sounded like a 747. Yes, it smoked EVERYTHING (of its day, I believe you can find my stats still on www.overclockers.com) but it was so loud, you had to use it with headphones.

Point being, not the average joe wants a fan-boat under his desk. For the casual user, this is a great solution! It is not really a poor performer. Sure, it wont play S.T.A.L.K.E.R on maxed out settings, but its a DX10 card that makes no noise, decodes HD, and draws little power (thanks to the die shrink)

Really, im just saying dont confuse your own wants with the needs of others.




By Treckin on 5/24/2007 10:56:43 AM , Rating: 2
thats 12 fans BTW... I dont know what I was thinking... I had the Geforce 4 overclocked and the northbridge was overvolted like crazy...


128bit
By Sungpooz on 5/24/2007 11:55:43 AM , Rating: 2
128-bit

always disappointing

256 plz :D




RE: 128bit
By BucDan on 5/24/2007 11:31:42 PM , Rating: 2
double post, but how about GDDR4...i thought the 2600xt was suppose to be either GDDR3 or GDDR4...but why GDDR3? Do they have to be that cheap!!! cause my preferred 2600xt is a 512mb Gddr4(too bad not 256-bit...amd gotta step up and move on and have the ability to say to nvidia "256-bit sucka what now?!")


128bit
By Sungpooz on 5/24/2007 10:16:49 AM , Rating: 3
128-bit

always disappointing

256 plz :D




By DingieM on 5/25/2007 4:38:43 AM , Rating: 2
Believably it will be the HD 2900pro or something in Q3




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