GeCube Radeon RV630XT X-Turbo2 256MiB GDDR4 appearance
In contrast with Sapphire, GeCube goes for a larger PCB and more extensive cooling for its non-reference Radeon HD 2600 XT.
The card uses a GeCube X-Turbo2 fan that claims a sub-20dB noise profile when running at full load. Our testing showed that it is a near-silent solution and one that is able to effectively cool the 256MiB of onboard memory.
Instead of GDDR3, GeCube has opted for faster GDDR4 memory on the X-Turbo2 edition. This clocks in at an impressive, but stock, 2196MHz. Allied to the 128-bit memory bus, that gives around 35GiB/s of juicy bandwidth.
We're somewhat nonplussed that GeCube has installed an upgraded cooling design yet hasn't flashed the card with an overclocked BIOS. So core (at 796.5MHz) and memory speed (2196MHz) are both standard, though most enthusiasts will look to push things higher, no doubt.
Little of interest on the back.
The heat-pipe-clad double-width cooler is more than a little reminiscent of the one used for a Radeon HD 2900 XT. The only explanation for using such heavy-handed cooling on a SKU that consumes no more than 50W when under full load can only be attributed to frequency headroom, so we'll see just how high it goes in our overclocking benchmarks.
You can infer the low-power nature of the board by the absence of the usual six-pin PCIe connector.
The outputs are identical to the Sapphire's - the GeCube Radeon RV630XT 256MiB GDDR4 also supports two dual-link DVI ports with HDCP and HDMI pass-through. The hot air transferred from the GPU is blown out of the back of the card to keep system temperatures in check. And, of course, you can hook up two of these cards to indulge in some CrossFire action.
