HIS Radeon X1800 GTO IceQ3 Turbo

Manufacturer: Hightech Information System
Supplied by: Hightech Information System
Estimated Street Price: $250.00

by Dean Barker  (6/03/2006)

Introduction

For many of us, $500 just isn’t an option for a video card upgrade.  What options are out there for the mainstream user?  What’s a gamer to do?  Don’t be fooled into thinking the midrange cards don’t pack a punch because they do and it’s a sizeable one.  This is the reason why so many manufacturers are focusing their attention in the midrange arena.  The midrange VGA market represents the lion’s share of where end users spend their upgrade dollar.  The subsequent increased competition between manufactures benefits us all, with each maker trying to offer a better product bundle/feature set than the rest of the field to get the end user’s attention.   

Hightech Information Systems’ entry, the HIS Radeon X1800 GTO IceQ3 Turbo enters this fray with their IceQ advanced cooling technology, now in its third generation that offers a blend of raw cooling power and lower sound levels.  HIS has also released their Radeon X1800 GTO in ‘Turbo’ trim.  ‘Turbo’ meaning that the HIS card hits the street as factory overclocked.  Factory overclocked as in hardware overclocked from the start and not overclocked from a software program.  These two additions coupled with HIS’s customer support and bundle put this card at a nice advantage over the rest of the field.  Today, thanks to our friends at Hightech Information Systems we have a sample of their Radeon X1800 GTO IceQ3 Turbo graphics card on the bench.  Let’s get to it.

Specifications

• Graphics Engine: Radeon X1800 GTO (R520 Core)

• Interface: PCI-Express

• Engine Clock: 520MHz

• Memory Clock: 1000MHz

• Memory Type/Size: GDDR3/256MB

• Memory Bus: 512-bit Ring Bus Controller

• Memory Interface: 256-bit

• Pixel Shaders: 12

• Vertex Shades: 8

• Max Resolution: 2560x1600

• VGA Output: Yes with adapter

• TV Tuner: No

• TV-Out: HDTV/S-Video/Composite Out

• VIVO: Yes (Advanced Video In Video Out)

• DVI: two ports

• Crossfire support: Yes