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Very Affordable ATI card from Powercolor, the Radeon HD 2400XT

Videocards/VGA Reviews by geoffrey @ 2007-07-23

Shortly after releasing their long waited HD 2900 XT, ATI announced a new generation of mid-range and low-end graphic accelerators, the HD 2600 and HD 2400 series. The HD 2600 series follow up the X1600 and are ATI´s next best mid-range product while the HD 2400 series are meant for the entry level gamers among us. We take a look at Powercolor´s HD 2400 XT, the fastest in ATI´s HD2400 line-up, to find out what kind of graphic details can be expected with this low cost video card.

Quake 4

Quake 4
Official website

Quake 4 was released in 2006, based on the popular Doom 3 engine from ID Software. Unlike Quake 3 this game also has a fully fledged single player story which continues the events from Quake 2. In Quake 4 you, Matthew Kane, find yourself in a war with some kind of aliens called "Strogg". As a member of the Elite Rhino Squad u get dropped at the heart of the Strogg war machine. The scene we went true is at the beginning of Quake 4, when you walk outside for the first time, the “you are but a soldier in a war” approach also seen in the Call of Duty series, although the outdoor scenes are smaller in size.

The Air Defense Trenches level sure was a good place to benchmark Quake 4 as you get to see some indoor and outdoor action.

Madshrimps (c)

Played with 'high detail'-options activated, Quake 4 does look good for its given resolution, though the HD 2400 XT could not create fluently game play and even overclocking your VGA card won't save the performance here. With high detailed enabled the game surely looks good, but for a fast first person shooter you’ll want higher frame rates to stand a chance against the AI/multiplayer. I advice to turn back the image quality a bit more so that your game engine keeps running smooth when multiple enemies appear on your screen.

Here is a screenshot we took during our test loops:

(click to view it at full size )

Comment from jmke @ 2007/07/23

Noteworthy for the HDTV fans:

We have already explored Silicon Optix HD HQV in detail. The tests and what we are looking for in them have not changed since our first round. Fortunately, the ability of NVIDIA and AMD hardware to actually perform the tasks required of HD HQV has changed quite a bit.

Both AMD and NVIDIA told us to expect scores of 100 out of 100 using their latest drivers and hardware. We spent quite a bit of time and effort in fully evaluating this test. We feel that we have judged the performance of these solutions fairly and accurately despite the fact that some subjectivity is involved. Here's what we've come up with.

The bottom line is that NVIDIA comes out on top in terms of quality. We've seen arguments for scoring these cards differently, but we feel that this is the most accurate representation of the capabilities offered by each camp.

On the low end, both AMD and NVIDIA hardware begin to stumble in terms of quality. The HD 2400 XT posts quite a lack luster performance, failing in noise reduction and HD deinterlacing (jaggies). But at least it poorly deinterlaces video at full resolution. We excluded tests of NVIDIA's 8500 series, as their video drivers have not yet been optimized for their low end hardware. Even so, we have been given indications not to expect the level of performance we see from the 8600 series. We would guess that the 8500 series will perform on par with the AMD HD 2400 series, though we will really have to wait and see when NVIDIA releases a driver for this.

Source: http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=3047&p=3

Comment from Gamer @ 2007/07/23

Nice review, complete and very good !!
Got some trouble with this though :

Quote:

At 46,7 dBA we can't say that this card is one of the most silent VGA cards I ever tested

Quote:

- Noisy

Comment from jmke @ 2007/07/23

"bij 46.7dBa kunnen we niet zeggen dat dit een van de meest stille VGA kaarten was dat we al getest hebben"

we can't say.

Comment from Gamer @ 2007/07/23

Great, just great

Comment from jmke @ 2007/07/23

que?

I clarified the sentence a bit, no more confusion now

Comment from Gamer @ 2007/07/23

I guess I need some spectacles, that's it

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