Date: |
May 24th 2006 |
Price: |
110.00 USD (New Egg) |
Sponsors: |
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Author: |
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Editor: |
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Score: |
9/10 |
HIS X1300 IceQ Turbo 256MB DDR2 AGP Impressions and Testing First Impressions and Thoughts
So, here I am getting my package from Fedex. It was a rather large box, but I
can understand why. They didn't want it to be damaged in shipping, and, frankly,
neither did I. What a pain that would of been!. So, giddy with enjoyment, I got
the box home and started to rip into it, finally able to pull out my new toy.
When first made aware of the review, I was not aware that it was going to be the
Turbo Edition, so I was like a kid in a candy store.
Slowly unpacking it, taking the time to look at all the goodies inside the
nice outer box, I put each piece aside and went onto the next. I think that
visually, I think the heatsink cover and fan are probably one of the nicer that
I have seen, and I wish I had a UV light in my case right about now. That might
have to be a thing I look at getting, since it is all UV Reactive. Also, by the
position, I could believe when they say that it should be quieter.
The card itself is of course on red PCB and fits snuggly into my case, with
no real issues getting it in, or out for that matter. It has a DVI and an Analog
output on the card, as is standard for most cards these days, but does come with
an adapter, which is also pretty standard these days. It also has the cables and
port for TV out.
All in all, my first impression was a good one with this product. Good job
thus far, HIS.
Testing
So, as I said before, I am going to run some 3dMark05 on this card, and
compare it to the MSI 6600GT that I had installed in the system. Let's see where
we stand, at least for this benchmarking utility. Test
System
CPU: AMD Athloon64 2800+ socket 754, running at 1.8GHz
RAM: 1024MBs
Motherboard: Asus K8N
HDD: Western Digital 2500KS SATA
II 16MB cache
OS: Windows XP Pro Service Pack 2
Drivers: Latest
optimized drivers from ngo
3DMark05
HIS
X1300
1024x768:2214 3DMarks
GT1 - Return To Proxycon 11.2 FPS
GT2 - Firefly Forest 6.2 FPS
GT3 - Canyon Flight 10.0 FPS
800x600:2567 3DMarks
GT1 - Return To Proxycon 13.5 FPS
GT2 - Firefly Forest 6.8 FPS
GT3 - Canyon Flight 11.8 FPS
MSI
6600 GT
1024x768:716 3DMarks
GT1 - Return To Proxycon 2.7 FPS
GT2 - Firefly Forest 2.0 FPS
GT3 - Canyon Flight 4.3 FPS
800x600:775 3DMarks
GT1 - Return To Proxycon 3.7 FPS
GT2
- Firefly Forest 2.6 FPS
GT3 - Canyon Flight 5.1 FPS
So, much like their 512MB PCIe version that Brandon reviewed, this card holds
it own in the 3DMark05 tests and scored suprisingly 3 times more marks then the
6600GT that I had in the system, even though it has only half as many pipelines.
So we move on to some real tests... the games.
I have been mostly been playing some Need For Speed Most Wanted, but, to be
fair, I also fired up some Doom3. I was going to do Quake 4, but I just found my
time devoured between those two games. I think that between the two we did have
some good results. I found that between the two cards, there was only about... a
few frame rate difference, and it wasn't always with the 6600GT or the X1300, as
I did some benchmarks throughout my time playing.
I am not sure what exactly HIS has done with this card to make it perform so
well with only half the pipelines as the 6600GT but I am quite impressed,
espically given the fact that the card only goes for about $110US on newegg. It
is a great deal for people whom would like to play these games, but don't have
the ability to pay for the really expensive cards out there.
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