HIS Excalibur X1800 XL 256MB
HIS (Hightech Information Systems) offers a complete range of ATI-based graphics cards for both desktop and mobile usage. HIS, although not as prominent as the multi-product, diversified PC goliath that is ASUS, is a first-tier ATI AIB partner that's been around for nearly 20 years and promotes its cards under the Excalibur banner.
Take another look at the ASUS card a couple of pages back and then compare it with the HIS Excalibur Radeon X1800 XL card above. They differ only in the art used on the cooler plate; all other components are identical. Indeed, remove the plate and stickers and you wouldn't know which was which. Reference design to the letter. So what we've discussed for the ASUS card is equally apt here.
Both cards are CrossFire-ready and both carry heatsinks that use aluminium for the outer sections and copper for both the portion in contact with the GPU and radiating fins. Thermal pads sit in between memory and heatsink, as well.
An identical cooling apparatus dictates that HIS' effort is also a single-slot-taking card that utilises a fan with the same annoying low-high-low fan-speed variation present on the ASUS card. Purely on a personal note, HIS' art makes its card look better.
The connectivity picture isn't a carbon copy of the ASUS', although it might as well be. Dual dual-link DVI transmitters offer you-know-what.
Once you've seen one ATI Radeon X1800 XL 256MB GPU naked, you've pretty much seen them all. The quantity and speed of card RAM matches that of ASUS, and both cards run with memory clocked in at 1GHz. It makes explicit sense for HIS to opt for a reference design because it doesn't have the manufacturing capability to churn out cards itself. Instead, it buys them in from ATI-approved manufacturers such as Foxconn. We wonder how long it will be before we see an overclocked HIS Excalibur Radeon X1800 XL model featuring HIS' funky IceQ cooling.
Whaddya know? Identical to the ASUS reference card. Both are clocked in at 500MHz core and 1GHz memory and both should overclock well, too.
