The Radeon X850XT, like most other high end cards requires lots of power the AGP slot simply cannot provide, hence the extra Molex connector on the card's rear.  The yellow plug you see to the left of the Molex is an additional video connection.  To be honest, I'm not sure what this is for with all the other connection types it can serve but now that I've said that I fully expect to get a few hundred e-mails explaining it.  :-) 

The HIS Radeon X850XT iTurbo is a 256mb card.  Half of this memory is on the underside of the PCB.  The large aluminum plate you see doubles as a holding bracket for the IceQ II assembly and to function as a heatsink for the memory on the underside of the card.  The only disappointment we found ANYwhere with ANYthing with this card was with one of the cooling plate's memory contact points.  As you can see below, about a quarter of the memory chip wasn't in contact with the cooling plate.  Since three-quarters of it mates just fine, it is no huge deal but still noteworthy all the same.

Also on the underside of the HIS X850XT iTurbo is the ATi Rage Theater Chip.  All of us HTPC folks need to remember to say thanks for the VIVO, NTSC and PAL functions delivered by this baby.

Under the hood

Here we see the under side of the top and bottom sections of the IceQ II assembly.  Some reasonably thick thermal pads ensure excellent contact.  The top layer has a 2mm thick copper base plate to better transfer the heat off the upper side's memory and VPU and to the convection fins.

For grins and giggles, here are some shots of the X850XT AGP VPU and of one of the Samsung memory chips.  These memory chips are rated by Samsung at 1200MHz DDR.  With that said, I'm expecting some nice overclocks out of the quality components HIS has provided on the X850XT iTurbo.

One last thing about the physical presentation of the card; did I mention that the entire plastic assembly is UV reactive?