HIS' X800 IceQIIs Cometh

The IceQ II Cooling Solution, Continued

The quality of this cooling solution is excellent. The only thing we had trouble with was connecting the power cable to the card, since the large fan covers most of the power connector. Aside from this minor gripe, the IceQ II made a very solid and positive impression.

Since the card's power connector is covered by the large fan, installation is a bit of a hassle.

On some motherboards, the chipset coolers may find themselves competing for space with these protruding screws if they are too close to the AGP slot.

Excalibur X800 Pro IceQ II VIVO

The PCB of the Excalibur X800 Pro with its 12 pixel-pipeline design is produced in China and follows ATi's reference design. With the video processor's core clocked at 475 MHz and the GDDR3 memory running at 900 MHz, HIS is sticking right to ATi's recommendation. Featuring one VGA and one DVI connector, the X800 Pro allows the user to attach two monitors simultaneously. Thanks to the DVI->VGA connector that is part of the bundle, a second CRT can be used as well. In addition to the TV-out connector that is standard fare nowadays, an additional Rage Theater chip accepts Video-In signals from a composite or an S-Video source. The bundle even includes an HDTV-out cable that allows RGB output and which usually has to be bought separately for an extra $20. We liked the fact that HIS thought to ship the card with a Y-adapter, which makes for an easy installation, thanks to its long power cable.

We were disappointed to note the absence of ATi's Overdrive feature, though, which didn't show up in the graphics control panel after installing ATi's Catalyst 4.7 drivers.