Radeon 2400 and 2600 benched

WE ARE SWIFTLY closing in upon the time when DAAMIT's much-delayed and much-maligned 2400 and 2600 chipsets hit the market. Although, exactly when that date is we're not sure anybody really knows yet.

Lucky for us then, that those crazy Far Eastern types at PC In Life are happy to reproduce AMD's benchmarketing slides. Whilst language is a barrier, benchmark graphs are the graphics industry's own Babel fish.

The benchmarks have the 2600 Pro coming out consistently faster than the 8500 GT, at low resolutions. At high resolutions, things are a bit closer, but the 2600 still reigns, with the 260 XT appearing a few FPS faster than the 8600 GT. Some of the numbers look slightly suspicious - 2600 XT CrossFire appears to be more than twice as fast in Stalker as 8600 GT SLI, which doesn't sound quite right to us - but all in all its an interesting early look at the cards.

If nothing else, it proves that ATI hasn't completely dropped the ball. And it looks like, with some good marketing and a few reviews behind it, DAAMIT could be getting back in the game. Which would be good news all round, we're sure you'll agree. µ