HIS Radeon X1950XT IceQ3 Turbo

Image Quality

Below is a rain shot from within Need For Speed: Most Wanted.  All settings (to include FSAA) were set to max at 1600 x 1200 resolution here.  Gameplay was like silk.  The shot below shows off some rain effects, glass reflections as well as edging.  Things looked very good to us but as we are shifting subjective opinions to the end user as much as possible with image quality, take a look below and you be the judge.

Overclocking

We mentioned the HIS overclocking program which allows control of core, memory and fan speed.  Fan speed can be set at any level or simply set to auto where it increases with the amount of heat detected. While the program is very nice, it does cap out the max overclock speed for the core at 675MHz.  With this in mind, we used the ATi Catalyst Control Panel to overclock our test card which maxs out at 690MHz for a ceiling.  HIS's X1950XT IceQ3 Turbo card is overclocked out of the box.  The base card runs at 625MHz/1800MHz on the core and memory respectively.  So with the HIS card running at 650MHz/1800MHz to begin with we weren't expecting much.  Never a dull moment, the HIS X1950XT card found its highest mark providing a sharp and clean image at 688MHz/1890Mhz.  In testing this translated into a 0-3 FPS advantage.  As we've said before, a card's "sweet spot" may not necessarily be balls to the max wall MHz.

Conclusion

The Radeon X1950XT IceQ3 Turbo represents a nice well rounded package from HIS.  Excellent performance and image quality that guarantees pixel pushing power to play the most current titles silky smooth.  But back to our original question offered in the beginning of this review.  The HIS Radeon X1950XT IceQ3 Turbo demonstrates very well the spectrum of performance on retail shelves.  With the exception of NFS: Most Wanted, the X1950 Pro showed all the glory of our test card.  However, as we saw in NFS: MW, the extra $40 you pay for this card's performance over the X1950 Pro are indeed present but are relative to the games the end user prefers. 

If you are on a budget, the X1950 Pro card is a no brainer.  Also with the X1950 Pro you get the new style CrossFire connection posts making CrossFire that much more user friendly.  The $40 saved if you went with the smaller brother would be a nice start in saving for a second Pro card to run CrossFire with.

Focusing in on the HIS X1950XT IceQ3 Turbo itself, it brings a lot to the table and would certainly disappoint no one.  It is an easy card to recommend to you in its own right but HIS has set the bar quite high with their X1950 Pro.  To answer if the XT surpasses this bar for you will depend on your future upgrade plans and game preferences.

Pros

• Excellent Performance

• IceQ3 Cooler is quiet and efficient

• Factory overclocked with a warranty

• Excellent image quality

• Cooler is UV reactive

• Pick your game bundle (well one full version anyway) with free shipping

• CrossFire ready

• Quiet operation

Cons

• Not quite the same bang for the buck as the X1950 Pro

• Doesn't utilize the newer CrossFire bridge as we've seen elsewhere in the Radeon line

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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