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How does HD 2600 XT stack up? Overall -- judging only from this first card -- the HD 2900 XT shows some promise. It delivers what you would expect: decent performance, at a fair price. Sure, the Powercolor HD 2600 XT won't be not knocking off any socks with it's performance, such as in F.E.A.R and Prey, but for something not all that much more than a hundred dollars, there is not really much to complain about. It was a similar story with the 8600 GT's -- perhaps unstellar performance, but when you consider its a DirectX 10 HD playback-ready card, and priced not too far over a hundred bucks, what can you complain about?

Well, you could complain about AA/AF performance hits. You can definitely see some of the R600 family DNA shared between the HD 2900 XT and the HD 2600 XT. Whereas in previous generations, ATI cards generally delivered better performance with AA/AF enabled than their NVIDIA counterparts, the roles seem to be reversed now. Like the HD 2900 XT, the HD 2600 XT offers less AA/AF enabled performance than you'd expect appraising its AA/AF disabled performance. Besides the stellar DX10-patched Company of Heroes performance, the HD 2600 XT consistenly delivered less frames with AA/AF enabled then the NVIDIA cards -- even compared to the older BFG 7600 GT OC. Driver revisions in the coming months may alleviate this but its begining to look like an architectural weakness given the consistency of the AA/AF performance drops both in the 2900 XT and 2600 XT.

On the subject of drivers, we'll have to wait a little bit to see what the future brings. It is too premature for us to judge ATI's drivers for the HD 2600 XT, as it'll still be a few weeks before these cards hit your local hardware shelves. Right now, Vista game performance, for both the HD 2600 XT's, and the 8600 GT's/GTS', is not where it should be.  As gamers, we are all still anxiously awaiting the big coming DirectX10 titles. Those titles will be the true test of this card, and the 8600's. Once more of these native DirectX 10 games start rolling out, and the drivers have had time to mature, we might be seeing a new picture for these current generation, inexpensive mid-range cards.

This showdown between the new generation of mid-range cards shares some similiarites with last generations' battle for the middle market. Last time around, NVIDIA was also first to get their mid-end cards -- the 7600's -- out the door. While last time around, the 1600 XT performed comparably to a 6600 GT, ATI's card were more expensive, leading many people to favor the 6600 GT in the end. Similiar to last generation's cards, many consumers might decide to go with the comparably-priced, best offerings from the previous generation's cards: such as a X1950 GT or a 7950 GT. What's different this time around with these mid-range cards are the prices: the 8600's, and HD 2600 cards, relatively speaking, are selling for less. For example, at its inital launch, the X1600 XT sold for around the $250 mark. So it seems ATI has changed its strategy this time around, with our new HD 2600 XT. The HD 2600 XT sells for roughly half the price that the X1600 XT initially did. With mid-range cards now selling around the $150 mark, maybe they plan to make up this price difference by selling to a broader market, including many people looking for a card that can handle Vista, and offer better HD DVD playback.

In the end, does the HD 2600 XT appear to be a good purchase? For the price range, it does. However, if you were hoping to be able to game with AA and AF enabled at reasonable levels, it becomes harder to recommend a HD 2600 XT over NVIDIA's competitive 8600 GT line. It'll be interesting to see what other models of the HD 2600 XT's can do -- especially the available HD 2600 XT's with the faster GDDR4 memory. Dual-GPU HD 2600 XT's have also been promised from Sapphire. But for now, while this Powercolor HD 2600 XT does offer fair performance for its price, it doesn't perform well enough to outshine its competitors.