Category: Video Card Manufacturer: Diamond Multimedia Product: Diamond Viper HD2600XT GDDR4 256MB Gallery: Click Here Price: $140

Introduction
The current generation of high-end video cards has largely been dominated by NVIDIA’s G80 offerings. ATI showed up late to the dance; think: a Sunday when prom was Saturday and on top of that they came wearing secondhand clothes. It hasn’t been pretty for ATI in the high-end market this generation. In turn ATI has focused on price points vs. their competitors' trying to compete in the mid-range and low-end markets and that is where today’s subject for review comes in, the Viper HD2600XT from Diamond Multimedia.

We should note that as “cool” as the high-end bragging rights are, the real money isn’t made in that segment. The mid-range and low-end cards sell much more and is a far more lucrative market to stay competitive in. So while we all like to brag about having the fast high-end cards, as do the manufacturers, it really isn’t that significant when it comes to overall sales. Sure it may help sell a few more cards by those in the thought process of “well NVIDIA has the fastest card, all their cards must be faster”. But we enthusiasts know that isn’t always the case at each individual price point. So today we ask: How does ATI compete with its previous mid-range card, the X1950Pro which was the reigning card last generation, and a middle of the road card from NVIDIA? Read onward and we shall find out.

The Card
This HD2600XT comes from Diamond Multimedia but it isn’t your average everyday run-of-the-mill HD2600XT. It’s a supped up version with higher-than-normal clocks, but we will get to that later. For right now we shall take a peek at the standard card’s specs which differ from this only in clock speeds.