Both HIS X850 XT AGP cards replace the noisy retail cooler, which seems to be a backwards step for ATI in terms of their traditionally very quiet coolers. Considerably larger than the stock cooler, the IceQ II nonetheless still takes up the same number of PCI slots. With a large copper base and dozens of aluminium fins, the IceQ II cooler can run as much as 9 degrees cooler than the Sapphire card we also had in the labs for comparison.
The IceQ-II heat sink also cools the memory. Whilst DDR-3 is much cooler than DDR-2 at the same clock speed, the addition of this can only serve to improve overclocking. The RAM is also cooled on the back of the card by huge heat spreaders that are attached to the chips by thermal paste.
Both of these X850 cards are the VIVO models. This means that you can capture video from analogue video recorders, VHS tapes and other sources via the ATI Rage Theatre chip found on the top side of the board.
The X850 XT PE PCI-E came with dual-DVI slots, but unfortunately both of these AGP versions have the more conventional VGA/DVI combination. Aside from the stickers, both of these cards are physically identical. Naturally the cores and memory chips are rated for different speeds, but you cannot tell the difference by eye alone.
