ati/amd hd 2600

[sonoma1993]

Does anyone know if ati/amd will be releasing a hd 2600 with a 256mbit memory bus? If not, I think they should. Going with a 256mbit memory bus and like 256mb or 512mb of gddr4 memory. Put it at like a $200-$250 price range, then they would have a nice mid-high range performace video card.

 

[bigsnyder]

The recently announced RV670 would fit this criteria (X1950 pro replacement), but the latest news seems to indicate 1Q 2008 would be the earliest till we see any retail release. I bought a good used X1900 to hold me over until DX10 hardware (especially upper mid-range) has had time to mature.

 

[coldpower27]

Originally posted by: sonoma1993
Does anyone know if ati/amd will be releasing a hd 2600 with a 256mbit memory bus? If not, I think they should. Going with a 256mbit memory bus and like 256mb or 512mb of gddr4 memory. Put it at like a $200-$250 price range, then they would have a nice mid-high range performace video card.

The problem is that the HD 2600 is shader power limited, and ROP limited packing on more memory bandwidth isn't gonna do much to assist in this.

 

[sonoma1993]

yeah, i currently have a x1900xtx, nice card. I think when I'm going to upgrade to the next generation video cards, I'm going to start going with the mid-range cards.

Yeah I saw some more indepth reviews about the hd2600, i think one of the reviews I read, said it only had 4 pixel pipelines? Maybe i'm wrong on that, but I know it said somethen about 4 pixels.

 

[bryanW1995]

Hey, what do you recommend for video card software? I originally couldn't get catlyst 7.6 to work, but I downloaded 7.7 today and it's working fine. I liked atitool, but I started having ghosting problems earlier today so I uninstalled that to see if I could get cat 7.7 to work. Atitool seemed to be much more user-friendly. I downloaded ati tray tool but haven't used it yet since I got cat 7.7 to work. I'm coming from a 7600 gt, 6600 gt before that, geforce 2 gts before that, so this is my first foray into using an ati card in my own computer on a daily basis.

 

[Extelleron]

Originally posted by: sonoma1993
yeah, i currently have a x1900xtx, nice card. I think when I'm going to upgrade to the next generation video cards, I'm going to start going with the mid-range cards.

Yeah I saw some more indepth reviews about the hd2600, i think one of the reviews I read, said it only had 4 pixel pipelines? Maybe i'm wrong on that, but I know it said somethen about 4 pixels.

There's not really any such thing as a "pixel pipeline" anymore. The HD 2600 has 120 shading processors, 8 TMUs, and 4 ROPs.

OP, no, a straight HD 2600 with a 256-Bit interface is definately not coming. The HD 2600 is just not memory bandwidth limited; the GDDR4 version, with 2200MHz memory, does not see any large gains over the 1400MHz GDDR3 card.

What AMD needs is more processing power, mostly they need more TMUs and ROPs. RV670 should fill this role.

 

[sonoma1993]

Originally posted by: Extelleron

Originally posted by: sonoma1993
yeah, i currently have a x1900xtx, nice card. I think when I'm going to upgrade to the next generation video cards, I'm going to start going with the mid-range cards.

Yeah I saw some more indepth reviews about the hd2600, i think one of the reviews I read, said it only had 4 pixel pipelines? Maybe i'm wrong on that, but I know it said somethen about 4 pixels.

There's not really any such thing as a "pixel pipeline" anymore. The HD 2600 has 120 shading processors, 8 TMUs, and 4 ROPs.

OP, no, a straight HD 2600 with a 256-Bit interface is definately not coming. The HD 2600 is just not memory bandwidth limited; the GDDR4 version, with 2200MHz memory, does not see any large gains over the 1400MHz GDDR3 card.

What AMD needs is more processing power, mostly they need more TMUs and ROPs. RV670 should fill this role.

alrighty, thanks for clearing that up for me.