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HIS X700Pro IceQ Turbo VIVO PCI-E


Date
: 01/31/05 – 08:10:33 AM

Author
:

Category
: Video Cards

Page 1 : Introduction

Manufacturer:
Hightech Information Systems

Price:
$200

The latest generation of video cards are here. While the high end chips have been victims of short supply, the mainstream and low-end parts have been easily obtainable for some time now. Since PCI-E emerged, we've been able to bring you looks at a couple of nVidia mainstream parts, the last generation based PCX5700 and the current generations 6600.

Today we would like to give you a look at a card sporting ATi's mainstream PCI-E solution, the
HIS X700Pro IceQ Turbo VIVO 256MB PCI-E
. A long name indeed, but the length is justified by the amount of features this product carries. We'll get to that in detail later, but in the meantime lets begin with a look at the packaging…

Page 2 : Package

HIS's X700Pro comes in easy to spot packaing that displays a portion of the cooler and provides many of the features specific to the card.

Inside the box are many items. Included are a manual, HDTV adapter, S-Video to Composite adapter, VIVO adapter, D-Sub to DVI adapter, S-Video cable, and various software.

The software bundled with this card is what HIS calls their "Platinum Pack". The Platinum Pack includes software that will be useful for utilizing the VIVO functions as well as showing off some of the GPUs features. The eight discs comprise of a DVD containing a full version of Dungeon Siege, Dungeon Siege II demo, ATi Demos, ThemeManager, Keyhole, and OfficeFX. The other discs are an installation disc, iTurbo installation disc, 3D-Album, VideoStudio 7 SE, PowerDVD 5, and Counter-Strike: Condition Zero.

Not sticking with a reference design, this card from HIS features a familiar cooling solution designed by Arctic Cooling. This solution cools only the GPU, but uses a neighboring PCI/PCI-E slot to exhaust air. Additionally, the unit is UV reactive, has a blue LED, and can have it's speed controlled manually or automatically within Windows using HIS's proprietary iTurbo software. The memory chips are cooled with aluminum ramsinks.

Similar to most cards today, this board has DVI, D-Sub, and S-Video output connections. Further, because this card is a VIVO edition it supports S-Video in/out and composite in/out connections via the included adapter. The card requires no extra power connections as it is fed entirely from the PCI-Express interface.

From the back of the card there are only two things to point out: the two ramsinks placed on the 4 FBGA memory chips and the small 2-bit dipswitch. This dipswitch, while I am not sure it will be on shipping boards, is used to switch between PAL/NTSC using one bit and select the source of the video input from front/back connector using the other bit. This internal connector is not on shipping boards and you'll see it more clearly in a picture farther down.

Removing the exotic cooling solution from Artic Cooling is simple and only requires removing a couple screws from the back.

Back to the front of the card and with the heatsink removed and core cleaned off, we can see that the chip is actually an X700 XT. Perhaps there's more potential to this card than HIS has already tapped? Also, there's this yellow 4-pin connector on our sample that allows for internal video-in connection, but HIS says that this connector has since been removed for mass production so it will not be on retail boards.

Removing one of the memory sinks reveals a pair of difficult to read memory chips. These chips, made by Samsung, have printed on them these faint markings that mean are the following:

Possibly some more overclocking potential with these memory chips. Not only are they running below their rated speeds, but they are in the cooler operating FBGA packaging.

Page 3 : Specifications

The following specifications were provided by HIS:

For a mainstream part, the X700 Pro here has a lot more muscle behind it than the last generation of cards designed for this sector of the market. The number of vertex engines from the 9600/X600 has been tripled and the number of pixel pipelines doubled. This card is almost equal competition for the last gens high-end if it weren't for the narrower 128-bit memory bus. Overall, the X700 is a promising card for the casual or economical gamer.

Page 4 : Features

The Radeon X700 GPUs feature what can be viewed as evolutionary improvements to the R3xx architecture. Who better to detail them than the manufacturer:

ATi's lacking feature is Pixel/Vertex Shader 3.0 support, and though it's a questionable decision to have left this support out, they have gone to lengths increasing support for longer, more efficient shader routines as well as supporting geomeotry instancing; technology already utililized in FarCry 1.3.

Overall, performance and features are very competitive with what ATi's competition has to offer.

Page 5 : Installation

Installing a video card is very simple and requires little instruction. The only thing one needs to be sure of is that they have the proper slot available, in this case we need a PCI Express slot. Simply slide in the card, fasten it in, hook up your desired output, and boot. Once you're booted up, you just need to install the drivers to get the most out of the hardware. For this installation, I headed to ATi's site and downloaded their latest (at the time) Catalyst 4.12 drivers to test on. ATi has continued their excellent driver support with montly updates.

Page 6 : Overclocking

This being Overclockers Online, you can assume we are going to tweak and push whatever we can get our hands on. The HIS X700 Pro was no different, and even though HIS's great software utility, iTurbo, limited the frequency control I used the latest version of ATi Tool to go beyond these settings.

My results were less than that of other sites, and I eventually settled on a meager gain of 472/972 without any instability. On video cards, I tend to go 5 MHz below my highest stable setting for added comfort. Stressing was provided nicely by running 3DMark05 loops to watch for even the slightest artifact.

Page 7 : Testing

To test the performance of the HIS X700Pro IceQ Turbo VIVO 256MB , we used some of today's new and popular games as well as some synthetic benchmarks. The line-up of games we tested with were Doom 3, Far Cry, Unreal Tournament 2004, and Half-Life 2. Half-Life 2 is a new benchmark to this review in that it is a demo created from the actual game and not using the stress test that comes with Counter-Strike: Source. The synthetic tests used were Futuremark's 3DMark 2003 and 3DMark 2005. While some may argue the usefulness of synthetic benchmarks such as 3DMark, we feel that they provide an accurate gauge of relative gaming performance among targeted generations. 3DMark 2003 provides a solid indication of performance one can expect compared to other cards in DirectX 7, DirectX 8, and early DirectX 9 games. 3DMark 2005 provides us with an indication of performance one can expect compared to other cards in new and upcoming DirectX 8 and DirectX 9 titles. Just like any benchmark however, results for a single application are not the end-all be-all of performance judgement.

The tests were conducted using the following systems:

For comparisons sake, we have an AGP system:

Acoustically, when in automatic mode I couldn't hear the fan over the system's own noise. With the card running in iTurbo mode, and with the fan at 100% speed, the cooler made a low-pitch hum that I had to listen for in close proximity to the system to hear. While the fan speed can be left to the temperature controller, it's great that HIS includes software so that fan speed can be adjusted to suit your own personal taste.

Page 8 : Performance (Synthetic)

These synthetic results give us an idea of what to expect in terms of game performance. The results give us strong hope for shader intensive gaming and easily surpasses our comparison cards. Lets check out how these results correlate to gaming…

Page 9 : Performance (Standard Gaming)

The benchmarks paint a different picture than what our synthetic benchmarks would lead us to believe. The X700 Pro performs well, beating out the 6600 and 9700 Pro in most cases, and in Far Cry, Half-Life 2, and Unreal Tournament 2k4 scaling better with resolution.

Page 10 : Performance (AF)

With AF enabled, the X700 Pro and 6600 behave similarly as just described on the previous page; the X700 Pro scaling better with resolution in most cases. The 9700 Pro takes more of a hit in performance when enabling AF. The efficiency of these algorithms improves generation after generation.

Page 11 : Performance (AA)

Enabling AA can really hurt performance, especially so for cards that are starved for memory bandwidth. Here we can see a nice drop in performance with this feature enabled in every benchmark except the very CPU dependant Half-Life 2.

Page 12 : Performance (AA-AF)

Page 13 : Conclusion

This card from HIS is a very impressive package. The card is enhanced with a great cooling solution, software, performance, and features. Not only will this X700 Pro serve a gamer, but those seeking extended video features such as video capture will find a solid choice here that gives them both in an afforable package. Users looking for a card with some overclocking potential will find the core and memory ratings kind to their high frequency endeavors and will appreciate the temperature monitor built into HIS's iTurbo utility. This is arguably the best X700 Pro you can find on the market and is a solid choice that I highly recommend if it's in your price range.

Advantages

PCI Express
DirectX 9.0+
Good performance
Great bundle
Flashy and effective cooling
iTurbo utility
VIVO

Disadvantages

Uses more than one expansion slot
No Shader Model 3.0

Overclockers Online would like to thank Hightech Information Systems for providing the video card for testing.