SUMMARY: HIS are back in the labs again this month with their latest generation of cards, the PCI Express versions of the ATI Radeon X850XT and X800XL. Both cards are part of the HIS IceQ II series which claim (and do) to offer better cooling than ATI reference cards as well as not exceeding 20db in the noise department. Both cards support iTURBO and the X850XT version even has a standard iTURBO overclocked setting which matches the clock speeds of the more expensive X850XT PE. That means you’ll get the performance of the ultra high-end X850XT PE for the price of the high-end X850XT. Read on as we take a close look at both cards!
Overclocking both these graphics cards is made easy (and safe) with HIS iTURBO. The piece of software is something we first saw back late last year when HIS sent us their X700 PRO which was capable of reaching X700XT speeds while providing the piece of mind of not loosing your warranty. HIS iTURBO is back again in our labs with the X800XL and X850XT. So what is iTURBO exactly? It is a simple piece of Windows software which allows you to overclock the core and memory within Windows and on-the-fly (no rebooting required). You are also able to monitor temperatures and fan speeds and also adjust fan speed.
With one click of the iTURBO button, the graphics card is overclocked to a pre-determined speed by HIS. For the HIS X850XT, the default clock speeds are 520MHz on the core and 1080MHz on the memory. The overclocked iTURBO speeds are 540MHz on the core and 1180MHz on the memory. For anyone who follows new chips, these speeds match the performance of the more expensive X850XT PE. For the HIS X800XL, the default clock speeds are 400MHz on the core and 980MHz on the memory. The overclocked iTURBO speeds are 432MHz on the core and 1000MHz on the memory.
The HIS X850XT probably receives the most beneficial clock speed increase with 100MHz extra on the memory but the X800XL receives a higher clock speed increase by 13MHz on the core. The reason the X800XL only receives a 20MHz speed increase on the memory is due to the fact that the X800XL uses cheaper (and hence less overclockable) memory than the X850XT.
The thing to remember here is that when you overclock via iTURBO, you aren’t voiding your warranty like you would manually overclocking another brand. HIS are one of the first to push this type of thing and we’d love to see more companies follow and provide similar features so users can get more for their buck. On the next few pages we’ll provide performance comparisons of the cards at their stock speeds and overclocked speeds.
