In terms of overall gaming performance, the graphical capabilities of the Intel HD Graphics 510 Desktop are significantly better than the AMD Radeon HD 2600 XT Diamond Edition.

The HD 2600 XT has a 500 MHz higher core clock speed and the same number of Texture Mapping Units as the Graphics 510. This results in the HD 2600 XT providing 4 GTexel/s better texturing performance. This still holds weight but shader performance is generally more relevant, particularly since both of these GPUs support at least DirectX 10.

The HD 2600 XT has a 500 MHz higher core clock speed than the Graphics 510 and the same number of Render Output Units. This results in the HD 2600 XT providing 2 GPixel/s better pixeling performance. However, both GPUs support DirectX 9 or above, and pixeling performance is only really relevant when comparing older cards.

The Graphics 510 was released over three years more recently than the HD 2600 XT, and so the Graphics 510 is likely to have far better driver support, meaning it will be much more optimized and ultimately superior to the HD 2600 XT when running the latest games.

The HD 2600 XT has 256 MB video memory, but the Graphics 510 does not have an entry, so the two GPUs cannot be reliably compared in this area.

The HD Graphics 510 Desktop has 12 Shader Processing Units and the Radeon HD 2600 XT Diamond Edition has 120. However, the actual shader performance of the Graphics 510 is 101 and the actual shader performance of the HD 2600 XT is 102. The HD 2600 XT having 1 better shader performance and an altogether better performance when taking into account other relevant data means that the HD 2600 XT delivers a marginally smoother and more efficient experience when processing graphical data than the Graphics 510.

The Graphics 510 transistor size technology is 51 nm (nanometers) smaller than the HD 2600 XT. This means that the Graphics 510 is expected to run massively cooler and achieve higher clock frequencies than the HD 2600 XT.

The HD Graphics 510 Desktop requires 47 Watts to run but there is no entry for the Radeon HD 2600 XT Diamond Edition. We would recommend a PSU with at least 300 Watts for the Graphics 510.