When both ATI and NVIDIA released their latest VPU/GPU chipsets last Summer, it marked a drastic improvement over their previous chipsets in terms of image quality and performance. Being able to run games at 1600x1200 with everything on (at playable framerates) was a fantasy for most gamers prior to this release and both companies were able to deliver the tech, albeit in small numbers for people who actually wanted to buy the hardware. That is of course, a debate for another day.

The X850 series of VPUs is not the revolution that the X800 series was, and more of a late Winter refresh of existing technologies. Outside of the clock speed difference, you will not find any changes technology wise between the X800 and X850. Availability is still a question, but today we'll be checking out a retail edition of the video card.

Specifications
" Over 160 million transistors " Up to sixteen parallel pixel pipelines " Six parallel vertex processing engines " 256-bit quad-channel GDDR3 memory interface " PCI Express® x16 lane native support	" " " " "

The HIS X850XT PE IceQ II Dual DVI VIVO 256MB PCIe

The HIS X850XT PE IceQ II Dual DVI VIVO 256MB PCIe (referred to as the HIS X850XT-PE for the rest of this review) arrived in a windowed box that clearly displays the IceQ II cooler. The only indication that this is a Platinum Edition card is the product sticker on the box as the product logo itself just says X850XT. Other than the card, you'll find some video cables (S-Vid, composite, and video-in), as well as a manual, driver CDs and two DVI-to-VGA adapters. There is also the required power dongle which draws power from one Molex source and adapts it for the 6-pin PCI Express connection on the card. The other end of the dongle can be used for any other item such as a fan, hard drive or optical drive. If you have a meager PSU, we do suggest leaving this spare connection unused.

The HIS X850XT-PE is based on ATI's reference design (a Made in Canada sticker is present on the back of the card) and features an Arctic Silencer 5 cooler silk-screened with HIS' artwork. The VPU is clocked at 540MHz and the memory is clocked at 590MHz. As with the reference VPU, the card features 16 pixel pipelines with hardware support for DirectX 9B and Shader Model 2.0.

The cooler extends about one inch past the rear of the card, so for those of you with tight cases take note. The card still requires two slots in the case which will pretty much rule out the use of the card in most Small Form Factor PCs with the x16 PCIe slot near the edge of the motherboard. The fan works the same way as ATI's fan where it draws the air from inside the case and exhausts it out through the rear of the computer. The fan does not feature a LED light as previous HIS cards we've used, but it is UV ready for those of you who are equipped with UV CCFLs.

On the rear of the card, there is a large heat plate that aids in the cooling of the rear ram modules. Compared to ATI's card, I found the plate much cooler to the touch which isn't too surprising given the size. Having never used an Arctic Silencer before, I was curious how loud the fan would be as it's a lot bigger than ATI's stock fan (it is rated at less than 20dB). Surprisingly, it seemed to be about the same in terms of noise (so, it's relatively quiet), and it doesn't have the annoying loud spin up the ATI stock fan has when the PC is powered on for the first time.

For your input and output options, moving from left to right is the first DVI connection, followed by the video-in and out, and the second DVI connection. CRT users need not worry as mentioned earlier, two DVI adapters are included. Just above these connections is the grill plate used by the cooler to exhaust the warm air.

Test Setup

Soltek SL-K8T890Pro-939: Athlon 64 3500+, 2 x 512MB Corsair XMS3200 ProSeries DDR (2-2-2-5), ATI Radeon X850XT-PE, 160GB Seagate 7200.7 SATA, Windows XP w/SP1, Catalyst 5.4.

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 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. We will also provide some numbers from "traditional" benchmarking using timedemos and scripts. ATI's own X850XT-PE and an ASUS AX800XT will be the comparison hardware.

Test Software will be:

Doom 3 v1.1 - Making good use of the BFG, rocket launcher and plasma gun (the most graphically intense weapons), we'll be killing demons on the Enpro.

Far Cry v1.3 - Another graphically intense shooter, we'll be fighting baddies in the Rebellion level.

Unreal Tournament 2004 v3355- We'll be playing some bot deathmatch (31 bots in all) on the Compressed map.

Half-Life 2 - This game needs no introduction, as anyone who picked up a $500 video card in the last 6 months probably did so for this. We'll be playing the D3_C17_12 map (Follow Freeman).

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 allowable game settings unless otherwise noted. The comparison hardware will be the ASUS Extreme AX800XT and ATI's Radeon X850XT-PE. We'll be sticking with 1600x1200 No AA/AF through all the tests, as we've already tested 1280x1024 and various levels of AA/AF in our ATI X850XT-PE review.

Doom 3 - High Quality

Cards - Resolution - AA/AF	Min	Max	Ave.
HIS X850XT-PE 1600x1200 No AA/AF	42	63	58.29
ATI X850XT-PE 1600x1200 No AA/AF	32	63	57.33
AX800XT 1600x1200 No AA/AF	27	63	56.93

Given that the card is based on ATI's reference design, you won't find any tangible difference between the two cards. Even at 1600x1200, the X800XT still plays quite well in Doom 3.

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