Board Design
Taking a closer look at the board, again we can tell that HiS used the standard clean reference design PCB so do not expect miracles in tweaking thanks to board design. But, the graphics core is cooled with that fantastic cooling solution. Everything has been taken care off.
Cooling then... IceQ-II. The II of course refers to the new model IceQ technology compared to the 9800 series. The cooling solution itself comes from Artic cooling, that's not exactly a secret. IceQ-II is based on the same cooling dynamics as its older brother and people despite its sheer size, it rocks. The IceQ-II cooling system uses the air inside your PC case and exhausts warm air outside the case, this is a huge plus as the x800 series gets quite hot. If you get a reference design x800 with stock cooling then you better be sure that your PC is cooled sufficiently as all that heat will warm up the ambient temperature of your PC's inside and cascade the effect by warming up other components. The IceQ technology helps prevent this.
According to HiS, IceQ-II cooling will bring you an 11 °C lower cooling temperature compared to the reference cooling solution. I dare to state it's even better then 11 Degrees C. When measuring the temperature at the back of the card on this x800 PRo GPU remained at sub 50 Degrees C at 100% GPU utilization.
Next to that, I truly have to compliment the noise level. Why? Well you just won't hear the bloody thing, not even a soft pur. My HD's make a lot more noise then the IceQ-II does, then again, I got like 5 of them in the main rig :) The silence is partly due to a function called iTurbo (you have to love the marketing names), which simplly adjusts rotational fan speed higher or lower depending on the GPU temperature. In guru wording, it's just a smart fan monitored by a thermal sensor :)
Oh before I forget, the memory on the backside has been equipped with ramsinks which is rare to see these days, a nice touch there. As stated before, everything is thought through quite well, we stated that with the XT model and we do the same with the x800 Pro.
![[Guru3D.com]](/imageview.php?image=3361)
X800 Pro IceQ II VIVO Limited Edition
Bundled Items
In the box we find the same stuff as in the XT model we reviewed, we can take note of the fact that where others go cheap and include hardly any software, HiS is paying attention to the total package, we see a lot of software bundled as this is a seriously impressive package. That does translate a tad on the pricing though. Let's have a look:
- VideoStudio 7 SE
- Games Demo CD's
- Cyberlink PowerDVD 5
- PictureEZ Digital photo software (only for the limited edition)
- Arx Fatalis Game
- Counter Strike Condition Zero Full 2 Cd's
![[Guru3D.com]](/imageview.php?image=3378)
![[Guru3D.com]](/imageview.php?image=3360)
So everything you need to get started is present. Next to the card itself we see a plethora of cables in the form of nice long Molex power supply cable, a bracket for the fan exhaust, S-Video VIVO cable, DVI to CRT/VGA adapter so that you are able to hook up 2 CRT VGA monitors to your card. Lastly what seems to be a HDTV cable, grrrr we need HDTV here in Europe!
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