The 2400 XT is the least expensive of the new ATI cards - it's even cheaper than the GeForce 8500 GT. As such, you shouldn't expect much in the way of features or performance.

But, the specifications aren't as modest as you'd expect. As the 2400 XT was built on a 0.065-micron manufacturing process, the 700MHz core and memory clocks are generous - the 8500 can manage figures of 500MHz and 450MHz only. There are also 24 more stream processors - 40 in all - which ought to give the XT an advantage when lots of shaders are required.

However, a 64bit memory interface tends to curtail the speed somewhat. Indeed, the resulting memory bandwidth of 11.2GBps is the lowest we've seen on a new card in quite a while. In our games tests, the XT struggled to keep on terms with the 8500. It managed marginally higher scores in Company of Heroes, but was defeated by around 5-to-8fps (frames per second) in FEAR. And in Stalker, it could overhaul the GT only at a resolution of 1600x1200 - and then by a single frame. You aren't going to want to play tomorrow's games with this card.

If all you want is a card that'll make a nice job of displaying video, the 2400 XT is a pretty solid bet. It's quite pretty and, best of all, extremely quiet. However, it isn't even able to match the slightly lacklustre performance of the 8500 GT.