Overclocker Cafe - HIS Radeon X1650XT Turbo Review

Back to the IceQ Cooler. The unit on the HIS X1650XT is an Arctic Cooling VGA Silencer. A seven bladed 70mm fan pulls air in and channels it over aluminum convection fins running the length of the card. Air is then exhausted out of the rear of the case. This keeps case temperatures down by making the VGA card blow the majority of the heat it produces outside of the case while helping to circulate the ambient case air as well. The second pic below is a shot of the HIS X1650XT's fan next to the multi bladed unit on their IceQ3 cooler strapped on to an X1950XT.

The IceQ cooler differs from the normal HIS design in that air only enters on one side of the fan. Other IceQ3 units draw air from both sides. Below is a cross angle shot of the fan housing where you can see the aluminum BGA memory sinks. One thing you won't see here is a 6-pin PCI-E power plug. No external power needed here.

Looking at the face of the HIS Radeon X1650XT IceQ we find two DVI ports and a VIVO plug. The expansion slot cover you saw in the shot of the bundle installs over the IceQ exhaust area for a clean well balanced look.

Performance

Testing will be with real world gameplay frame rates as recorded by the FRAPS program. Our results will be three minute segments of play from Battlefield 2, Need For Speed: Most Wanted and Quake 4. Within each game, we have saved spots or points where we can record gameplay from a set location making the course of action easier to duplicate between test products. With the HIS Radeon X1650XT being a solidly midrange product, testing will be at a screen resolution of 1024 x768 with full screen anti aliasing and anioscopic filtering set at mid level points identified for each game bench.

The Radeon X1650XT is designed to be a direct head to head competitor to the GeForce 7600GT. Unfortunately, we do not have a 7600GT in the shop at present but we do have an Inno3D 7600GST. The 7600 GST is basically a 7600GT's PCB and memory with a 7600GS core. So for comparison purposes it is important to keep in mind that our comparison card is a few ponies down in the engine compartment giving the X1650XT an edge. But this is not a drag race, this is something to give you perspective on our benchmarking results for easier comparison later.

Test Bed

AMD Athlon 64 4000+ (Clawhammer)

Foxconn NF4SK8AA mainboard

Thermaltake Mini Typhoon Cooler

(2) 1024 MB DIMM of OCZ PC4000 Platinum GX XTC

Maxtor DiamondMax 9 100GB SATA HDD

Lite-On Dual Layer 16x DVD Burner

Kingwin Absolute Power 600w PSU

Windows XP Pro SP2

BACK NEXT

Pg 1 - Introduction
Pg 2 - What you get / The Card
Pg 3 - The Card / Performance
Pg 4 - Performance Graphs
Pg 5 - Image Quality / Overclocking / Conclusion