TheTechLounge posted a review on the ATI Radeon HD 2600 XT 256MB

ATI is changing pace from their flagship by releasing their DirectX 10 mainstream cards within recent memory of NVIDIA's mainstream release. NVIDIA's mainstream release was memorable if bitter; the advantages of the unified shader architecture that made the 8800-series of video cards so powerful didn't have the same <em>puissance</em> once it was cut down for the masses. Made people sad. So a lot of people are excited about these mainstream cards. Not everyone wants a video card that costs $400 or more, and for a while there, the options were: buy a crappy mainstream current-generation card, or buy an aging card from way back when, that yeah, plays games as good (if not better) but doesn't have the features and consumes a lot of power, puts out a lot of heat, and makes all the noise associated with high-end parts.

ATI Radeon HD 2600 XT 256MB Review