Even though PCI-E is the latest technology when it comes to video cards there is still a very large number of people using AGP, luckily the vid card manufacturers realize this and continue to produce AGP counterparts to most of their PCI-E versions. I think AGP still has some life left in it, some of us can't afford to go out and buy the latest tech every 6 months or so. Upgrading to a PCI-E card at a minimum requires a new motherboard, and possibly other upgrades like DDR2, maybe a new cooler if your current one won't work on your new board.

The card we are looking at today is the HIS X700 ICEQ 128MB AGP video card.

Specs:

Chipset:	Radeon X700 AGP Series
ASIC:	RV410 + Rialto
Pixel Pipelines:	8
Vertex Engines:	6
Manu. Process (Micron):	110nm
Transistor count:	120M
Fill Rate:	3200MTexel/s
Memory Size:	128 MB
Memory Type:	GDDR3
RAMDAC (MHz):	400
Engine CLK (MHz):	400
Memory CLK (MHz):	700
Memory Interface (bit):	256
Memory Bandwidth:	11.2GB/s
Max. Resolution:	2048x1536
Bus Interface:	AGP
TV-out:	Yes
HDTV:	Yes
Video-in:	No
Dual DVI:	No

Rialto mentioned above is basically a bridge that allows the X700 to run as an AGP card. The X700 is a PCI express core, so the bridge was needed in order to make it an AGP card.

Packaging:

The packaging is identical to the X800XL we took a look at not to long ago, an oval window giving a glimpse of the card, various images detailing some of the features all on a cloudy, blue sky background. The back of the package gives significantly more detail about the features and specs of the card.

What's in the bundle:

S-Video Cord, Driver and software disc includes full version Dungeon Siege, PowerDirector 3 SE Plus, Power2Go 4, 3D Album PicturePro, and several game demos, HIS X700, S-Video to Composite Video converter, HDTV Cord, DVI to Analog output converter, PCI slot vent , Manual

The Card
The X700 features the same custom Arctic Silencer found on all of the HIS cards. The Arctic Silencer has proven to be an excellent cooler and was an excellent choice by HIS to include it on their cards. The RAM is passively cooled using ramsinks.

Since this card is equipped with 128MB of RAM, you won't find any RAM on the back of the card. What you will find is the mounting hardware for the cooler and the Rialto chip covered by a small thermal pad.

Video output is provided by analog, S-Video and DVI. You can also plug the provided HDTV output cord into the S-Video out plug giving the you opportunity to output video to an HDTV device.

Since the X700 is natively a PCI-E core using the Rialto bridge to run in AGP it does require an external power source. At the tail end of the card near the fan is a four pronged plug to plug in a floppy connector.

I won't be covering installation since most likely you have installed a video card before, the only thing really I feel should be mentioned is this card does take up to slots, but that should be obvious due to the size of the cooling solution it uses.

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