Thoughts, awards, right2reply, where2buy
ATI's Radeon X1650 XT SKU is based upon X1950 Pro, an impressive midrange performer that's hard to ignore if you've got £125 or so to spend. As a direct consequence of R570 derivation, X1650 XT is substantially faster and better featured than Radeon X1650 Pro, which it needed to be if it was to square up to NVIDIA's GeForce 7600 GS/GT SKUs.
HIS has worked its IceQ magic and released an overclocked version that increases both core and memory speeds by around 8% over and above the default's. IceQ cooling has the twin benefit of better-than reference cooling and lower noise output, thanks to its larger, slower-spinning fan. However, and this may well be a sample-specific issue, we found it to be reasonably noisy at all times. Linking in with this, we'd also like to see all shipping models supplied with HIS' iTurbo tools for manual configuration of fan speed and temperature monitoring.
The main stumbling block in recommending the HIS card is price. At around £117 including VAT it's priced very near Radeon X1950 Pro and above XFX's GeForce 7900 GS money, with both cards occupying the upper midrange sector and therefore being substantially faster due to a combination of greater pixel-pushing power and far higher memory bandwidth.
Radeon X1650 XT is a reasonable SKU and HIS' pre-overclocked IceQ Turbo version is decent for the most part. However, when judged against the competition in the same price bracket it's found wanting. The simple fix is to release it at the sub-£100 retail mark, pushing its bang4buck metric up. We doubt that will happen, though.
HEXUS Awards
The HIS X1650XT IceQ Turbo Dual DL-DVI 256MB GDDR3 PCIe is awarded the HEXUS Labs. certification for passing our rigorous testing without failure. This is not an buying recommendation, however.
HIS X1650XT IceQ Turbo Dual DL-DVI 256MB GDDR3 PCIe
