The need for Speed: Carbon is one of those titles that favored the Radeon architecture in the DirectX 9 generation of cards, and this trend seems to continue in the DirectX 10 cards. However, the results are close and both cards can deliver playability at 1280x1024.

It's the same story once AA and AF are added: the 8600 GT manages playable 1024x768 performance -if only barely - and the 2600 XT doesn't hold up as well, although results are very close at the higher (and totally unplayable) resolutions.