Card examination and CrossFire musings
HIS X1600 XT IceQ Turbo DL-DVI DVI 256MiB GDDR3 - card examination redux
Refreshing your minds if you haven't seen the card before, here's a quick recap of its attributes.HIS' X1600 XT IceQ Turbo model is clocked at 600MHz and 1404MHz GDDR3 for GPU and memory, respectively. That, on paper at least, gives it a slight advantage over the other ATI Radeon X1600-based XT cards that are clocked in at 587/1386. Incidentally, should you so wish, you can also purchase a regular-clocked HIS X1600 XT GPU, as seen here
The cooler, which thankfully isn't the annoying reference model, has three modes of operation for the user-controlled fan: auto, silent and turbo. In silent mode the fan runs at its quietest which we found was indeed silent (subjectively, any way.) Auto mode is temperature-controlled. With a hotter chip underneath than with, say, the X1600 Pro IceQ, it was still nice and quiet in this mode. Even in turbo it's not all that noisy - around 35dBA, which beats the pants off the reference cooler on the generic X1600 XT cards.
Move along, nothing of interest to see here on the back, folks.
What's telling on the above shot is the fact that the oversized cooling will take up a slot next to the x16 PCIe interface on your motherboard.
A benefit of the X1600 range is the use of a couple of dual-link DVI interfaces, offering 2560x1600 resolution from each port. Now, where did I put that other Dell 3007WFP? Video-editing buffs will be disappointed to learn that there's no VIVO on this model, however.
The card is equipped with 256MiB of onboard memory that, as mentioned, is run a touch faster than a reference card's.
The bundle
There are the two DVI-DSUB adapters, a driver CD, Flatout, the bonus DVD, plus an extra CD containing the iTurbo tools. There's also component and composite/S-Video cables. As mentioned, there's no VIVO, but there are component connections to make up for it in some way.Now for a little gripe with the iTurbo software that tweaks the card's GPU and memory speeds. It's a good tool for overclocking; however it needs to run every system startup to setup the clocks on the card. Perhaps a service-based solution with a front-end would be better?
Warranty and pricing
HIS provides a limited 2-year warranty on its range of cards. If card failure occurs in the two-year period the onus is on the supplier to handle RMA issues. The warranty is transferable, so should you wish to sell it on, no problem. Current pricing for the card falls at around the £96 mark.CrossFire it, baby!
We know that single-card performance is adequate at 1280x1024 4x AA and 8x AF and 1600x1200 0x AA and 8x AF in Quake 4, Far Cry and Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory. How about adding a second card and running in CrossFire mode?That's exactly what we've done, as shown below:
There's no need for a CrossFire dongle connecting the cards with X1600-based SKUs. Simply plug in and configure the driver for some CrossFire lovin',. There's also no need for an external power supply, which keeps your case internals nice and neat.
On to the results.
