The X1800GTO is ATi’s recent answer to the rather excellent nVIDIA 7600GT in the upper mid-range. As with its competition, the X1800GTO is a 12 pixel pipeline product, but has the advantage of a full 256 bit memory interface. Today we are looking at the HIS variant, which as usual brings more to the table than your normal reference card copy.
With this product HIS has replaced the tried and tested pale blue background box with a new design; a black minimalist look with “IceQ 3” emblazoned on the front. It certainly looks stylish, and has a window in the back to see the card. All of the relevant specs, facts and figures on the side.
Opening up the box and you will be greeted by the rather huge card itself, as well as a plethora of goodies, including video out cables for Composite, HDTV Component and S-Video, VIVO cables, a PCIe power adaptor lead, 2 DVI-VGA Adaptors, and full copies of the game Flat Out and Power DVD 6. HIS also includes a manual, driver disk and ATI bonus demo disk into the mix as well.
As you can see this is an extremely good bundle, right up there with the best we have seen here at BSR. When you consider the card costs £140 inc VAT, this is exceptional value.
The Card
The card itself is really massive as previously mentioned, and uses the same PCB as the X1800XL. This is not true for X1800GTOs from other manufacturers which have one less mosfets on the PCB. This made us think that the X1800GTO from HIS could possibly be unlocked to all 16 pipelines without too much difficulty – more on this later. The IceQ cooler makes a welcome return, though this version is considerably weightier than previous models, with more copper and an impressive heat pipe derived design. Clock speeds are 500MHz for the core and 1GHz for the DDR3 memory, though HIS guarantees a clock speed of 520MHz for this IceQ Turbo model.
