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H.I.S. X1300


Date
: 05/16/06 – 04:01:25 AM

Author
:

Category
: Video Cards

Page 1 : Index

Manufacturer
: H.I.S. Digital

Price
: X1300 512MB Dual DVI-I $119

Price
: X1300 256MB IceQ Turbo $79

Hightech Information System or H.I.S. for short has been in the graphics cards industry for quite some time. We have taken a look at a number of their products and every time a new one arrives it always puts on quite the show. Why you may ask? It's simply because H.I.S. is notorious their high quality and superior performance. Of all the products that they have, the IceQ's have always been a favorite. They offer an awesome replacement stock cooler and arrives at your door already overclocked.

What we have today is another IceQ product. However, it'll be sharing the limelight as we also devote our attention to a Dual DVI-I solution. Both of our cards today will be from the X1300 family. Without further ado, the FedEx packages have arrived and we're ready to roll with the review.

Page 2 : Package

Both cards arrived in their retail form inside one large FedEx shipping package. While there was plenty of room for the two retail packages to move around inside the FedEx box, there was no damage to the packages surface or to the card itself. With H.I.S, you can be sure that your card will not be damaged if you order it online.

First up, we have the
H.I.S. 256MB X1300 IceQ Turbo
.

The package is relatively simple. Instead of using an alien creature or a model to grab your attention, H.I.S. shows off the cooling hardware used on the actual card.

The cooling potential and the noise level of the cooler is noted directly below the large H.I.S. logo to the top right. We see that it is a Half-Life 2 preferred video card.

To the left hand side of the package, H.I.S. uses a number of stickers to indicate the features available.

One thing definitely worth noting is how the GPU and Memory frequencies are already overclocked! The default speed is 600/800 for the IceQ where as it is 450/500 on the standard X1300.

On the back of the box we have an overview of the card, a few pictures and features.

We will be covering all of the specifications in the next page, so I will not be reprinting them here.

On the sides of the package we get a glimpse of some more features. One side indicates the software contents: 3D Album Picture Pro, Power 2Go, Power Director SE+, PowerDVD Copy Trial, Medi@Show 3 Trial, PowerBackup Trial and Dungeon Siege.

Another side breaks down the 3 ATI features: Catalyst, AVIVO, and CrossFire.

A more detailed breakdown of the three features is printed on one edge.

The last remaining side merely shows product logos.

Moving onto the
H.I.S. 512MB X1300 Dual DVI-I
.

This card holds the same core features as the 256MB X1300 IceQ Turbo with a few difference. The package is definitely one of them. H.I.S. has revitalized the Excalibur package for this card as we see a very large sword dead in the middle.

We once again see that this card is the preferred graphics for Half-Life 2.

Shifting our attention to the side of the package, more stickers indicate the specifications and features. One thing about the Dual DVI-I model is that it is completely fan-less. H.I.S. has implemented a large heat sink to dissipate heat from the card.

The back of the package is essentially the same as the one seen on the X1300 IceQ Turbo. The primary difference is the image of the card and the specifications that go along with it.

On the sides, we have essentially identical layouts with the ATI features, specifications, contents and logo on the sides.

Now that we've covered the packages for both cards, we'll whip through the specifications so we can get a good look at the cards and run some test!

Page 3 : Specifications and Features

The specifications for the H.I.S. X1300 IceQ Turbo 256MB and the H.I.S. X1300 Dual DVI 512MB were not hard to locate on the H.I.S. webpage.

H.I.S. X1300 IceQ Turbo 256MB

H.I.S. X1300 Dual DVD-I 512MB

If you want a bit of information VIVO, Jody has whipped up some information about the feature in page 2 of his Power Color X1900XTX Review.

The heart of both cards lie in the processor. Since both are X1300's, I've only decided to reveal the core from the X1300 IceQ Turbo. You should never remove the heatsink unless you plan on replacing it with a different one. There's really no point in looking at the GPU.

Moving over to the memory, H.I.S. has purchased the chips from two different suppliers. The
IceQ Turbo
uses Infineon ICs.

These Infineon HYB18T256161AF-25 have a production week of 0550. The specification sheet can be downloaded here. It's worth noting that the 2.5ns chips should be good too 800 MHz which is what H.I.S. has clocked them at. We'll see how far we can push them when we overclock.

The
Dual DVI-I
uses IC's from Elixir.

These elixir N2TU51216AG-3C have a production week of 0552. Talk about end of the year goods. You can find the specification sheet here. It's worth noting that these are DDR2-667 chips and since H.I.S. is only running them at 500 MHz, we should be able to get some added performance.

Let's move onto the actual package contents.

Page 4 : Package Contents

H.I.S. X1300 256MB IceQ Turbo

The IceQ Turbo is different than most video card packages as you can clearly see part of the card from the exterior of the package. Opening up the box and pulling out the inside container, we see that the IceQ Turbo card is protected by not only two containers but three.

Inside the package we have a digital to analog converter, a S-video to RCA converter, Y-Pr-Pb cables, S-video cable and a PCI bracket.

Also included in the package is a manual and two software CDs.

The card itself is not stored in any anti-static bag, but inside its own little vacuum formed compartment. The card does rest on top of a thin piece of foam to prevent the bottom components from rubbing against the plastic box.

One thing worth pointing out with this card is how it uses one analog and one digital connector. Personally, I would have preferred 2 digital ones since as the prices of digital LCD's have been dropping and are becoming very common.

There's no doubt that this card requires a second PCI slot. To take full advantage of the cooler, you need to remove the expansion slot cover and you can replace it with the provided one.

Flipping the card over we see a large number of components include 4 of the 8 memory chips making up the 256MB. It's no wonder why H.I.S. includes a piece of foam.

Focusing in on the cooler, we see that the cables are kept nice and clean but even with the large piece of aluminum, it does not act as a heatsink for the memory ICs.

The fan used to push air past the fins of the heatsink to the rear of the case is 70mm in size.

By now, you must have realized the IceQ is no doubt an Arctic-Cooling piece of hardware. If weren't sure, this sticker on the bottom side of the fan confirms all suspicions.

H.I.S. X1300 512MB Dual DVI-I

The X1300 512MB Dual DVI-I is definitely different compared to the IceQ Turbo, we don't get to see the card ahead of time and instead of a nice plastic container inside a white cardboard box, we get the generic brown box treatment.

Opening the package up, we have a few components to the left and a few things on top of the card itself.

The components to the left include 2 digital to analog converters, Y-Pr-Pb component cables, an S-Video cable and a S-Video to component converter. A manual and two software CDs is also included in the package.

The video card itself is stored inside an anti-static bag and pulling it out reveals the card and the large heatsink.

I thought for sure there would be more surface area to the card than what is shown, however it appears that is not necessary.

The front of the card sports 2 DVI-I flanking the video out.

A fan header does exist on the card, but unlike previous passively cooled cards I have owned, there are no mounting holes for you to even considered attaching a fan too. If you want active cooling, you will have to design a fan fixture yourself.

The backside of the card is very similar to the IceQ Turbo.

One feature common to both cards is the lack of any additional power connectors despite the cards recommending power supplies of 350 to 450W.

Let's move onto the next page so we can install the cards and begin the overclocking!

Page 5 : Installation & Overclocking

The two X1300 video cards installed with ease. I simply removed my 6600-512 and slid in the new card. With the IceQ Turbo model, I removed the expansion cover below the PCI-e x16 slot to make sure the hot air is properly expelled.

It looks close, but you can still use the PCI slot below the IceQ Turbo if it doesn't have any massively protruding parts. Components like network cards will fit in without a problem.

the Dual DVI Turbo does not hinder the PCI-e X1 slot. This is exactly why H.I.S. stuck with the low profile cooler.

When it came to overclocking, I used the soft-modded Catalyst 6.4 drivers from TechPowerUp and utilized AtiTool to conduct the overclocking and testing. Both cards followed similar overclocking procedures. First, the core was increased until artifacts appeared. I then lowered it until it was stable. I then let the card scan for artifacts for one hour making sure the setting was indeed artifact free. I then lowered it back down to stock and followed the same procedure for the memory. Once the individual frequencies were determined, I paired them together and let ATiTool scan for artifacts. If any showed up, I played with the settings until they disappeared. I deemed the overclock stable if it scanned for 8 hours without any problems.

Starting with the
X1300 512MB Dual DVI
, this card started at 450/500 but ended at
583/621
. This is a gain of
30% gain
on the core and a
24% gain
on the memory

The
X1300 256MB IceQ Turbo
started at 600/800 which is already a stellar overclock over the stock X1300s, but after some overclocking, it ended up at
624/936
. The core gain is pretty insignificant,
a 4% gain
, but the memory frequency
increased by 17%
.

During the artifact scanning, there were no temperature readings shown on ATiTool, however neither card got hot to the touch. A 120mm fan running at 5V was used to direct some airflow from the across my case to the passively cooled X1300 to prevent overheating.

Page 6 : Performance Outline

Let me first begin by giving you the specifications of the system I'll be using.

The suite of synthetic software used included FutureMark 3DMark 2001se, 3DMark 2003, 3DMark 2005 and SpecViewPerf8.1. For games, I ran the card through Half-Life 2, Doom III and Battlefield II at various resolutions and combinations of 6xAA and 16xAF.

Each application was executed three times and the final result calculated as the average of the runs. During the performance evaluations, there was no more than 1-2% variation between run results.

Page 7 : Synthetic Performance

Our FutureMark suite of software should give us a good gage of how the card will perform in DirectX7, DirectX8 and DirectX9 based applications.

Our other synthetic benchmark is SpecViewPerf8.1.

Right from the get go, we see that the faster IceQ Turbo out performs both the 6600-512 and the 512MB X1300 Dual DVI. However, what's interesting is that an overclocked Dual DVI is on par with the IceQ at its stock speed.

Page 8 : Half Life 2

Half Life 2 is very popular for its single-player and multi-player variations. Behind the game is the Source engine that Valve continues to improve upon and license to other developers. The engine in its shipped state is very dependent on the overall system performance (particularly on the CPU) and we can see this as we look at the frame rate results.

Page 9 : Doom III

DOOM III uses an OpenGL engine that is quite dependent on the processing power of your video card. Will the results resemble those found with SpecViewPerf 8.1? It's time to find out!

Page 10 : Battle Field 2

The last game we will be looking at is BattleField 2. It uses a custom engine that and unlike the two previous games, it is not part of the standard Benchemall benchmarking program. I stuck with the original Guru3D benchmarking script that everyone can download.

Page 11 : Conclusion

Without a doubt, both cards performed relatively well. The IceQ is also a card not to overlook if you need a cheap card with ample performance. We see that the 256MB IceQ outperforms the 512MB Dual DVI card because of the higher clock rate. However, the 512MB memory will certainly come in handy with some applications, and if you changed the passive cooler to an Arctic Cooling Silencer, the Dual DVI would become one powerful X1300 with the 512MB of memory and potential for great overclocking as seen in the IceQ model.

One of the great features about the 512MB Dual DVI is the fact that it is fan free. If you're looking for a video card to pop into and don't plan on playing all of the latest games at maximum resolution, this is definitely a card not to overlook.

H.I.S. has once again come up with another diverse family. For anyone on a tight budget, H.I.S. has you covered with a high performance budget card to the fan free model ideal for the home theatre market.

H.I.S. X1300 256MB IceQ Turbo

Advantages

Very affordable
Great performance for X1300

Disadvantages

Lacks power for high resolution start of the art gaming

H.I.S. X1300 512MB Dual DVI

Advantages

Fan-less
Overclocks to stock IceQ performance

Disadvantages

Runs warm due to fan-free design
Lacks power for high resolution start of the art gaming

Overclockers Online would like to thank H.I.S. for making this review possible.