The Verdict
Whow .. this card is better than expected isn't it ? What HiS managed to present here today is a card above the rest of the manufacturers by once again presenting a really good package. First off, you get everything you'll need to get this card up and running. Secondly I was honestly surprised by the overclocking results as we (at this point) have not been able to push it to the maximum. Thirdly obviously has to be the integration of ICEQ3 cooling. I have to admit a was a little weary as I expected the solution to cool a tad better. None-the-less the overclock proof that it's working really well and heat is pushed away easily.
If we look purely at the board itself then the layout is 100% similar towards ATI's reference design. You know .. I would LOVE to see a black PCB for a change .. something .. really !
But hey .. obviously this card is a
beast. The performance the card is delivering gaming wise is just breathtaking and image quality fantastic. You should see Lost Coast at 1920x1200 with 4xAA, 16xAF, HDR enabled and with every possible IQ setting at high. Breathtaking stuff, really. The 48 active shader cores the new Radeon X1900 series have ... the idea as it is right now is really clever as I intend to believe that Shaders are so friggin important these days for games. But will it be enough? Suffice to say that complex shaded games now and in the future will definitely form a fantastic symbiosis with the Radeon X1900 XT. Any game we tested was performing ridiculously fast it was spectacular to see yet I do have to admit that the Ghost recon Advanced Warfighter game can bring this card to it's knees for sure.
Some advice if you plan to invest large sum of money into graphics cards like these:
- You need to play games at the highest resolutions.
- You need to have a need for playing with image quality settings enabled
- You need to bare in mind that you need a screamingly fast PC in terms of your processor as a high-end graphics card needs to be bound to a high-end processor. I'm Talking Athlon 3500+ and upwards and Pentium 4 3.6 GHz as a bare minimum.
So although not exactly the cheapest in it's segment
, the HiS Radeon X1900 XT with IceQ cooling is prepared for the future and a card that'll last for a while. The performance and image quality this graphics card is showing of in pretty much any game and is short from spectacular. High end graphics cards come with a robust price tag though and with this cooler expect a tag of 549 USD.
No the package is nearing perfection, although one small negative .. the game bundle. It is great to see that HiS is including a game yet the titles need an update real soon.
Anyway
playing games at 1920x1200 with IQ settings enabled for me was not at all an issue as everything was silky smooth in terms of framerates. You just do not need to compromise on image quality. Stability of the card is perfect as we have had no issues 
whatsoever. So yes that is very nice for sure. Do look a little outside the box though and realize the card is more than just am item to play games with. It's also a media encoder and accelerator as well. This means your CPU does not have to decode a HD movie, nope your graphics card will do that for you and with the new AVIVO functionality you can bet it's at very high quality. The card is H.264 at 1080P ready! Fantastic stuff if you decide to hook up the card to a HD screen for example, that's magic on your screen man.
Much like the Radeon X1900 XTX cards this X1900 XT card offers great features and a solid investment for the upcoming seasons, and being tagged by that HiS label helps the product being really good value. Be sure to drop by in our forums and let us know what you think of this product. I highly recommend this product over the competition if only for the IceQ3 solution as it kills off the factor sound.
The HiS Radeon X1900 XT with IceQ3 cooler is a fantastic card, it offers great and obviously all the latest features but more importantly it offers a hellufalot of fun to play games with. I grant it an editor's choice without a doubt.
** Update - I just heard from HiS that the card will be introduced a hundred bucks lower than suggested at 459 USD !
Product type: 256 MB (GDDR3) high-end graphics card
Manufacturer: HIS
Website: www.HISdigital.com
Estimated MSRP: 459 USD
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