The HIS (Hightech Information Systems) Excalibur 9800 Pro IceQ has one of the more original boxes on offer, featuring neither fairies nor demons. The words “IceQ” dominate the package, and for good reason as you are about to find out. One of the first things I noticed was that the HIS Excalibur 9800 Pro was by far the heaviest of the normal 9800 Pro packages on test. The mandatory s-video Lead, composite cable, DVI-VGA adaptor and PowerDVD are all present and correct, and HIS kindly go a step further by providing a full copy of Cyberlink Power Director 2.5 (movie creation software), six Direct X 8 game demos, a full copy of the adventure game “Zanzarah”, as well as a full copy of the racing game “Ballistics”.
What really sets the Excalibur apart however, and gives the package its weight, is the truly monstrous IceQ cooling system. Similar in concept the Abit OTES cooling system found on their Ti-4200 (reviewed here), the IceQ works by funnelling the hot air from the core across a vast heatsink, eventually exhausting it out of a port on the back of the card. The size of the card means the Excalibur 2 will obviously take up the PCI slot adjacent to the AGP slot.
Firing up the card, I was expecting an OTES-style hairdryer type noise to attack my eardrums, but I was pleasently surprised by almost complete silence.
On the back of the card you will find a switch which allows users to select between silent mode, and full power. At this point I think it is important to point out that even at full power, the iceQ is significantly quieter than the stock cooling solution from ATi. Like Hercules, HIS have fully decked out the Excalibur with ramsinks which once again hide 2.8ns Samsung memory chips.
Performance was a dead heat with the previous two cards, with any variation being as a result of tiny anomalies during benchmarking, or a small variation in stock speed. Overclocking the IceQ however obtained staggering results. In silent mode we were able to get the core of the Excalibur up to an impressive 462MHz. This is already some 21MHz quicker than the previous leader. Jacking the fan speed up to full allowed us to push the core yet further to 474 MHz without any visible anomalies being evident. This is the highest stock speed we have seen from a 9800 Pro without water or phase-change cooling, a staggering 94MHz quicker than the stock card. The memory was no slouch either, maxing out at a very respectable 384MHz.
The HIS Excalibur 9800 Pro IceQ should be easy to find around Europe and Asia, although availability is somewhat limited in the UK – the product has only just been released – although they should be available to buy by the end of next week.
