ATI ships out Radeon HD 2400 and HD 2600 graphics cards

While some of you may be holding out for a 1GB Radeon HD 2900 XT, those looking to spend a little less can get a bit of instant gratification. ATI has just announced that the Radeon 2400 HD and 2600 HD are now shipping to board customers, meaning that a few more DirectX 10 graphics cards will be hitting store shelves in the not too distant future. Both cards will also include the company's Unified Video Decoder (UVD), are based around a 65-nanometer chip, and will support HDMI and HDCP. Time to start scouring the neighborhood couches for spare change, eh?

[Via TGDaily]

[Ismael @ Jun 12th 2007 10:45AM]

Guess what? I hope nvidea finally wakes up and starts shipping better cards lol

[Matt B @ Jun 12th 2007 11:13AM]

The 8800GTX is already a better card.

[Faisal Rahman @ Jun 12th 2007 11:26AM]

@Matt B

he means nVidia should start releasing better lower end cards with DX10...sure the 8800GTX is the best now, until the HD 2900 XTX, but now the HD 2900 XT beats the 8800GTS.

[Dubb @ Jun 12th 2007 11:43AM]

They already do, it's called the 8500GT. Also the 8800 Ultra is out which is better then the GTX. Probably beats the HD 2900 XTX, haven't seen any bench camparison's on the two yet though.

[JK @ Jun 12th 2007 11:29AM]

I don't see them available anywhere. Are they shipping them to their suppliers or to customers?

[Shibathedog @ Jun 12th 2007 12:24PM]

The ultra edition is stupid though, It costs an extra few hundred dollars and according to benchmarks only gets you an extra 4 or 5 FPS.

NVidia claims that the reason for this is that most of the enhancements done to the Ultra are software based, Which is supposed to mean they aren't finished with the drivers for it.

But that also makes me wonder, if most of the improvements over the GTX to Ultra are software based, Why can't i just get some better drivers for a GTX and make it the same thing

[Revrant2394 @ Jun 12th 2007 12:52PM]

You know, to those stating the 8800 beats this, fat chance, we're talking Peter Griffin and Homer Simpson formed into a mutant hybrid, then, a Roseanne and Rosie O'Donnell hybrid, and then the two hybrids combined to form what we call Louie Anderson fat.

Now, nVidia's next generation will be competition for this horribly overdue refresh, and ATI's next generation will be the most interesting since we'll start seeing the fruits of the AMD "fusion". ;)

[Kevin @ Jun 12th 2007 1:07PM]

Does it really have UVD? http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=3000

[M @ Jun 13th 2007 7:27AM]

http://www.amd.com/us-en/Corporate/VirtualPressRoom/0,,51_104_543~117974,00.html

[dfn_doe @ Jun 12th 2007 1:08PM]

Oh gee goly! I'm sooo freaking excited... Yet another HDCP compliant video card with built in HD codec processing (x264) without proper documentation and driver support. I wonder how long it will take these guys to realize that if they were to hand the keys to the castle over to the OSS movement and concentrate their efforts on building increasingly sophisticated hardware that is well documented and then let the marketplace decide how best to leverage it with software.

I sure would like to be able to build a nice linux based HTPC for my HD set, but until the specs on this hardware see the light of day it takes faaar to much load from the CPU to handle any sort of realtime 1080p+ codec processing AND still have any interface which isn't 2-3 generations old.

[Ken @ Jun 12th 2007 1:48PM]

I agree. Thier drivers have been sucking for far too long. Someone should be fired. I would like to add that ATI has been an all-around pillow biter as of late. Where's the DX10 mobile support? What happened to ATI's mobile GPU dominance?

[idfk @ Jun 12th 2007 10:46PM]

Ken, we already have AMD MR-HD 2600 cards in laptops that handle HD processing and have HDMI. Look at HP's new monsterous laptop. I also don't understand what all of you have been saying. Ever since I got an 8800GTS, I can now watch uncompressed 1920x1080 videos at full framerates that eat up well over 600000kbps, and I have been able to convert them to any other format I want easily. Which is something that makes my pc crash with just the integrated GPU. I don't see what the big deal over HDCP is either. Why would you want even more limitations?

[demetrius @ Jun 29th 2007 1:36AM]

hooray! only thing i'm really happy for is hdmi /w sound... but considering i don't own an hdtv yet, woopty doo! err... hopefully this outperforms the 8600/8500 series because ati really is still lagging in performance. i'm thinking about trading my 8800gts for a 2900xt just to see how much difference there really is. they'd be pretty nice for htpc setups though... kinda. if only the fi-90hd hadn't been such a dissapointment for me, i'd have gladly gone matx. time to start investing in programs that actually challenge the gpu/cpu...

[demetrius @ Jun 29th 2007 1:36AM]

what really sux is that there is no in between segment of the 8800 and 8600 series. one performs absolutely awesome, while the other is mediocre. there is no in between. 8700? ;p riiiight... kind of like what the 7900gs was for the 7xxx series.