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Review: Complete ATI Radeon X1600 Roundup - Got £100 for a card? Read this!

by Steve Kerrison on 28 June 2006, 10:24

Tags: ATi Technologies (NYSE:AMD)

Quick Link: HEXUS.net/qaf4v

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HIS X1600XT IceQ Turbo DL-DVI DVI 256MB GDDR3

The second HIS card is equipped with a X1600 XT GPU. However, with HIS's iTurbo tools used, the card is clocked up to 600MHz and 1404MHz DDR for GPU and memory, respectively. That, on paper at least, gives the HIS X1600XT IceQ Turbo an advantage over the other X1600 XT cards. Incidentally, you can also purchase a regular-clocked HIS X1600 XT GPU, as seen here

HIS_X16XT_IceQ_Turbo Front

We have the same cooler as with the X1600Pro IceQ, so time for a little more info. The cooler has three modes of operation for the fan: auto, silent and turbo. In silent mode the fan runs at its quietest (duh) which we found was indeed silent (subjectively, anyway.) Auto mode is temperature controlled. With a hotter chip underneath than with the X1600Pro IceQ, it was still nice and quiet in this mode. Even in turbo, it's not all that noisy - around 35dBA, which beats the pants off the reference cooler on the generic X1600 XT cards.

HIS_X16XT_IceQ_Turbo Back

Not wanting to sound like a broken record, everything's the same around the back as the X1600Pro IceQ. Lovely.

HIS_X16XT_IceQ_Turbo Outputs

Same story around the front, with two DVI ports, yay.

HIS_X16XT_IceQ_Turbo Bundle

The bundle is identical too, plus one item. There's the two DVI-DSUB adapters, a driver CD, Flatout, the bonus DVD, plus an extra CD containing the iTurbo tools. Again, there's component and composite/S-Video cables. Once again no VIVO, but there are component connections to make up for it in some way

Now for a little gripe with the iTurbo software. It's a good tool for overclocking, however it needs to run every system startup to setup the clocks on the card. Perhaps a service-based solution with a front-end would be better?