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HiS Radeon x700 Pro with IceQ Turbo (VIVO)
(256 MB GDDR3)
Product type: Graphics card
Full Product name: HIS X700Pro IceQ TURBO
Manufacturer: HIS
Website: www.HISdigital.com
Hello everyone and welcome to the first review of 2005! First let me wish you all a fantastic new year.
Well, it took us a while but we finally have a retail sample in our labs of the Radeon x700 Pro from none other then HiS. The products are slowly getting available in re- and etail. HiS my friends is short for Hightech Information System, a Hong Kong company that has been growing swiftly here in Europe. They offer products with a reputation, products that set themselves aside from the competition and for me personally they are one of the best Radeon brand products here in the Netherlands.
We've reviewed quite a number of HiS products in the past already, it all started with their really nice 9800 Pro IceQ model roughly a year and a half ago, it had a revolutionary cooling design that many of us simply love so much. They are managing that same trick again with the x800 Pro/XT series, and yes it has happened again. HiS is equipping (offering) the Radeon x700 Pro IceQ Turbo cooling solution making it one very interesting buy.
Let's talk x700 as this is what the product is all about. ATI developed the x700 series under codename RV410, a product line that has been targeted at the mid-range segment of the graphics card market meaning prices versus the available models will be in the 200 USD range. Both ATI and NVIDIA now have really solid line of mid-range products for which both will sell for sure. Why? Architectural changes with most importantly the increase tos 8 pixel pipes on this TSMC's 110nm process fabricated graphics core, that itself doubled performance over the previous generation graphics cards. I just stated increase, but I honestly should use use the wording decrease as the x700 basically is a side-dish of the product we all know and love so much, the Radeon x800 series. Since it is the little brother of the x800 series ATI decide to leave the 6 vertex pipes in there giving it, on this level, an edge over the nVIDIA's Series 6600, which on it's end has support for Shader Model 3.0.
Well, now that we know slightly more about the x700 product line let's go have a look at the features, bundle, photo's and of course test run.
Now that's an impressive card right there ..
