When
the last generation of graphics cards came out, we found that
for the most part NVIDIA was sitting on top. They had the impressive
6800 Ultra which could also be partnered with another 6800 Ultra
card at the top of the ladder, and sat in direct competition with
ATI’s X850XT. However now we have the 7800GTX sitting at
the top with the equally impressive 7800GT just under it. Naturally
you would expect ATI to respond with a killer card of their own,
but the latest from them hasn’t been a high end replacement,
but a card that sits in the midrange, an area that does have a
lot more sales than the top end.
The
X800GT is a card which is aimed to compare with the 6600GT and
be marketed for the performance midrange. Until now, ATI have
not had anything that could compete with the 6600GT but as time
has moved on and there are inevitably defective GPU’s from
higher up the line, then ATI can still use these less than perfect
chips in the likes of the X800GT (ATI call this dead-die SKU).
The
X800GT uses 8 Pixel Pipelines and 6 Vertex Shaders, which while
not stellar, should perform nicely in the intended midrange arena.
The card we have for this review is the HIS
X800GT IceQ II Turbo 256MB, which has a few differences from
the reference design X800GT.
Specifications
•
Powered by ATI Radeon X800 GT VPU - 500MHz (iTurbo)
• 256MB-256bit quad-channel GDDR3 memory - 1GHz (iTurbo)
• 8 parallel pixel pipelines
• 6 vertex shader process engines
• PCI Express® x16 lane native support
• SMARTSHADER™ HD
• SMOOTHVISION™ HD
• TRUFORM™2.0
• 3Dc™
• HYPER Z™ HD
• VIDEOSHADER™HD
• FULLSTREAM™
Just
to clarify on the specifications here, the “(iTurbo)”
numbers mentioned indicate the speeds you get when you select
to run the HIS X800GT IceQ II Turbo 256MB using the iTurbo software
provided by HIS. I’ll get into the iTurbo overclocking software
later on, but suffice to say that by default you get 475/980 and
not 500/1000.
The
box for the HIS X800GT IceQ II Turbo 256MB is the usual HIS
high quality. You get plenty of information and a real ‘gamers’
feel from the box graphics; HIS even go so far as to tell you
how many Pixel Pipelines you get on this card in a nice big
bold label. Every side of the box offers you information on
the contents and technical capabilities. You also have a little
porthole in the top of the box which lets you see the actual
card inside, or at least the cooling solution used.
HIS
include with the card a DVI/VGA Adapter, HDTV Output cable,
S-VID cable, RCA cable and a converter for Mini-DIN to RCA.
You also get the HIS Platinum Pack with this card which includes
in the software 2 full games (Flatout racing game and Microsoft’s
Dungeon Siege), 3d Album PicturePro, Power2Go4 and Power Director
3SE Plus. You also get trials of Microsoft’s Dungeon Siege
II, PowerDVD Copy, Power Backup, Medi@show3 as well as some
nifty game movie trailers on the included CD’s and DVD.
The manual is also good, and while I can’t speak for the
other languages in it, the English is English and not some badly
translated mess.
Moving
on to the card itself, you can’t help notice the IceQ
II cooler that dominates the top of the card. The cooler itself
is longer than the card and makes this card a Dual Slot solution,
so do keep this in mind before buying.
The
cooler is unchanged from previous IceQ II cards, and features
the ‘warm air exhaust’ to the outside of the case
as well as a funky UV reactive, clear blue plastic surround.
The far end of the cooler sports this large blue bladed fan
which sucks the case air into the cards cooling system. Considering
the GPU used it is probably a little OTT, but it is a great
cooling system that works well so you will find no complaints
from me.
The
power regulation on the card is very reminiscent of the X800XL
series, and indeed the whole card looks similar; I wouldn’t
be surprised to find out this is in fact an X800XL that didn’t
make the grade.
Removing
the IceQ II cooling system we can get a better look at the copper
based cooler used.
We
can also remove the cooler and find out exactly which GPU is
being used here; an R423 core.
HIS
have done a lot to make sure all the ‘nice little touches’
are covered, including going as far as sleeving the wiring on
the fan connector. Turning the card over we find that there
is also a heatsink or rather a plate to cool the 128MB of memory
on this side (with of course the other 128MB being on the other
side).
Like
the main cooler, this memory cooling plate is also UV reactive.
The
I/O Panel sports (from left to right) a 15 pin VGA connector,
the TV out DIN port and a DVI header. One thing you can clearly
see here is that the PCI blanking plate grill that comes with
the card is a separate item and not attached to the cooling system
at all.
Test
System - Albatron PX925X Pro, Intel Pentium 4 520 (3.2GHz),
2 x 512MB Kingston HyperX PC2-5400 (4-4-4-12), 2x 80GB Maxtor
7200 SATA's, Windows XP w/SP2
Test
Software will be:
Doom
3 - Making good use of the BFG, rocket launcher and plasma
gun (the most graphically intense weapons), we'll be kicking ass
on the Enpro level and trying not to let the robot score all the
points
Half
Life 2 - can be very forgiving on hardware, or at least more
forgiving than other modern games with the right settings. However
when the action gets going and there is a lot on screen, it does
help to have a bit of horsepower pushing the graphics. We ran
through part of 'Follow Freeman', specifically the part as you
exit the Combine building to take on the 3 striders.
Battlefield
2 - We tested the gameplay on the Songhua Stalemate map with
15 bots. This map features a lot of greenery and water areas,
as well as lots of hills and buildings which makes both the fighting
tight and the views expansive, all of which gives your graphics
card a challenge.
Far
Cry - featuring lots of outdoor areas with spectacular nature
effects such as realistic water and beautiful vista's that all
add up to a virtual landscape that stretches off into the distance.
We ran through the Rebellion level, and headed outside into the
night time chaos.
Need
For Speed: Underground 2 – NFS:U2 features a lot of
particle effects, fogging and reflective surfaces. We tricked
an RX-8 and went for a blast around town in the rain.
We'll
be using FRAPS to record framerates in all our tests, playing
the game as anybody would (trying to stay alive), firing weapons,
dodging attacks, outrunning the traffic and so on. Unlike our
past video game tests, all benchmarks will be done with the audio
"on", as we're trying to illustrate real gaming experiences,
and I doubt any of our readers mute the audio during gameplay.
The
driver settings were manually configured for AntiAliasing and
Anisotropic Filtering (on or off), and set to "Quality".
All games were set to their highest playable game settings via
the in-game menus unless otherwise stated.
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