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The Verdict.

Well I think you already got the generic idea behind this particular product. The entire overview and tests we where able to present you only show positives and no real negatives at all. Whether it's the product itself, the cooling, software bundle does not matter. In its current form the product is nearly perfect. Boy would it have been fun to see a SLI connector on that baby huh? What a real shame that the product was not released before Christmas as it would have been a major hit. This is one of the value for money products that I'm often rambling about, you'd almost call it Neo that we know from a certain movie.

So, stating that this is value for money you should not get me wrong here. At roughly 300 bucks the product still requires you to cough up a very steep amount of money for you to be able to play games. But this product is performing in the high-end range yet is 250 USD cheaper then that Radeon x850 XT PE and next to that it's guarranteed to last for a while. Next to that have a look at the included software bundle, the IceQ-II cooling technology and of course it's fantastic tweaking potential. The sum of all these factors make this a product that I can recommend from the heart, if your budget suits that of course.

The card will play any game to date with all gadgets enabled very well in acceptable resolutions. I mean even the NVIDIA favored Doom 3 at 1600x1200x32 with an average framerate of 49 FPS is quite alright. When we enable 4x Antialiasing and 8 levels of anisotropic filtering then at 1280x1024 we still have a FPS of 43. Compared to the ATI's green colored friends this card is competing directly with the standard 12-pipe GeForce 6800. That card does have two advantages though, the first being Shader Model 3.0 and secondly, scalability thanks to it's SLI interface.

Furthermore standard stuff, the card performed absolutely stable at very good temperatures. When we look at tweak ability then I have to give it two thumbs up, a third if I'd have one.

In retrospect, other then the points mentioned there's nothing I can find wrong with this product. If I had to buy an ATI x800 series product right now, this would be it. It's as simple as that.

Last one-liner: HiS is offering an amazing package here, jawbreaking performance. The HiS Radeon x800 XL likely offers the most bang for it's bucks compared to all products in the Radeon x800/x850 range. Two thumbs up and a really highly recommended buy.

The HiS Radeon x800 XL IceQ II Turbo receives our Editor's Choice award, without a single doubt well deserved.

+++ ATH

HiS Radeon x800 XL IceQ II Turbo (PCX)
Product type: Graphics card
Memory: (256 MB GDDR3)
Manufacturer: HIS
Website: www.HISdigital.com
MSRP:  325-350 USD
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