HiS Radeon x800 XL - x850 XT - x850 XT PE
IceQ II (Turbo) (PCX)
Product type: Graphics card
Memory: (256 MB GDDR3)
Manufacturer: HIS
Website: www.HISdigital.com
MSRP: 325-500 USD
Seek best price for products of this type.
Oh my, it's rather hard to get around a HiS product these days isn't it? I just had a peek on some e-tailers' websites and as predicted by us earlier, HiS is growing rapidly. I wonder if our reviews have anything to do with that :) But in all honesty they do deliver the goods in a very professional manner for sure.
A couple of weeks ago we tested their Radeon x800 XL product. Back then we also received their Radeon x850 XT and x850 XT PE (Platinum Edition) products. My Guru's, both the products I mentioned will be tested today and both again will be breathtaking. HiS has listened to the audience, they know exactly what you want. Sure you pay a little more but you get the full software bundle, you get the exceptional cooling, basically anything you seek in a graphics card.
Right then, the products today are top of the crop, best of the best. Two products extremely close to each other in the high-end range. But to make the article a little bit more tasty I decided to include the results of the recently tested Radeon x800 XL from HiS in here also. In this article we'll focus primarily on the x850 XT and XT PE though.
The products were all made for the PCI-Express platform yet expect (bridged) AGP versions out in retail very soon, at CeBIT there were bridged versions everywhere making the market flexible and the products interesting on any platform. I even noticed a Radeon x850 XT AGP version at the HiS stand.
Both products tested today come in an IceQ II package that means a huge yet very silent cooler. For the standard XT model additional iTurbo overclocking software is included, which makes the product run even faster with the click of a mouse button. Of course we'll explain all the features in this review, but I'm trying to round out the introduction here! Now then, it's hard to determine what exactly you are buying these days. To understand where this product exactly is performance wise the best way to explain it is to look at a small overview on the remarkable amount of x800/x850 there currently are on the market versus their primary specifications.
Let's have a look by placing all popular cards in a nice overview:
| |
Chip |
Pixel Pipelines |
Graphics Core
Frequency |
Memory Frequency |
| Radeon X800 |
R430 |
12 |
400 MHz |
350 MHz |
| Radeon X800 Pro |
R423 |
12 |
475 MHz |
450 MHz |
| Radeon X800 XL |
R430 |
16 |
400 MHz |
500 MHz |
| Radeon X800 XT |
R423 |
16 |
500 MHz |
500 MHz |
| Radeon X800 XT Platinum Edition |
R423 |
16 |
520 MHz |
560 MHz |
| Radeon X850 Pro |
R480 |
12 |
520 MHz |
540 MHz |
| Radeon X850 XT |
R480 |
16 |
520 MHz |
540 MHz |
| Radeon X850 XT Platinum Edition |
R480 |
16 |
540 MHz |
590 MHz |
Now then, prior to diving into the article with a nice collection of tests and benchmarks first a little technological stuff. I have to state this. This article might look similar to previous Radeon articles. Why? Well, ever since the release of Radeon 9700 from the most simplistic view nothing really groundbreaking has changed besides the paradoxal effect called performance. This is probably also why the 9700 series was such a tremendous success, it was way ahead of its time and even today offers good value for the money.
Today's test subjects, the x800 XL, X850 XT and x850 XT PE PCI-Express versions.
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