I looked recently into currently available HW, and decided to write something about it. So shortly. HD 2400 pro, and HD 2400 XP are ... . Stay away from them. These are killed by memory interface, and fill rate. The only worthy 8500 GT is Gainward golden sample 8500 GT. If you want 8500 you have clear choice. If you would like NVIDIA for protected video playing, look for ASUS (And look carefully because cheap cards will not support it, the more expensive are however quite power efficient.) HD 2600 pro is worthy only with passive cooler. Too bad ATI didn't show any of manufacturer in theirs list. There might be some available later. HD 2600 XP is about as power hungry as 8600 GTS, and comparable in speed. Both HD 2900 and 8800 GTX are power hogs. The HD 2900 is more of power hog, mostly because it was build by 80 nm process. So stay away from them, use 7xxx series, or ATI if you need them now, or wait until NVIDIA 65 nm process, before choosing something. Catalyst drivers are quite unstable for HD 2xxx series, and nonexistent for Linux.

posting references would have been nice.