The Card itself sports a red PCB which matches the ATi reference design, and also other cards made by Sapphire and Connect3D. The cooling solution, although the same shape as the ATi reference cooler has custom Excalibur transfers, so you know exactly what brand you are getting.
The fan on the 9800XT is adaptive, which means that as temperature increases, the fan speed increases as well. We have seen this as a contuing trend across the whole PC industry recently, with everyone from Intel – who now provide their higher-end retail Pentium 4s with temperature controlled fans to nVIDIA and ATi, who’s cards both feature rpm controlling. This is a great idea, as it means your PC sits at as quiet an idle sound level as possible, only speeding up the fans when required. At idle the HIS’s fan is very quiet indeed, although at top speed it is somewhat louder, although it is still light years away from the hair-dryer equipped FX5800 from nvidia, I think nVIDIA’s 5900 solution is quieter, as is the “IceQ” system employed on HIS’s 9800 pro card.
As with all 9800XTs, the HIS requires a molex connector for extra juice. This is consistent with all high end graphics cards currently on the market. Failure to connect the molex connector results in an alarm from the PC speaker sounding and a message displayed on the monitor to connect the auxiliary power. On the back of the card, the HIS features a single DVI port (which can be converted to VGA), a standard VGA port and the now mandatory TV-out. It would have been nice to see VIVO functionality like the Asus, but I believe they are the only company to make a 9800XT with this solution on board.
