O
ur enthusiasm for ATI’s new X1950 Pro GPU is tempered by the fact that the
chip is incompatible with DirectX 10. And our enthusiasm for the clock-speed
boost and advanced cooling that HIS graced this card with is tempered by the fact
that it’s street-priced $60 higher than other third-party X1950 Pro cards.
If the fancy cooling and the overclocking it enables (HIS runs the core at
620MHz, compared with 575MHz stock; the 256MB of memory runs at 740MHz,
compared with 690MHz stock) delivered significantly improved performance, we’d
be all over it. But we achieved only mildly stronger benchmarks results with the
IceQ3 than we did with ATI’s reference design.
As with HIS’ earlier X1900 XTX IceQ3, the copper heatsink covering the GPU
is physically separated from the one attached to the memory. This prevents heat
from transferring from one component to the
other. And the bi-directional fan, set far backon the card, draws air from both sides and exhausts warm air out the chassis. The
trade-off, however, is that this apparatus consumes two slots. ATI’s reference-design
cards are svelte single-slotters, and we found them to be only slightly louder.
We were going to try ATI’s Overdrive feature to see if we could take the card
even further, but we discovered that Overdrive does not appear in the Catalyst tool-
bar when the HIS card is installed. Catalyst Control Center automatically shuts off
access to Overdrive if the card manufacturer departs from ATI’s reference design.
In this case, HIS apparently uses a thermal ASIC that the driver doesn’t recognize.
HIS sent us only one card, so we paired it with a ref-design X1950 Pro to
test CrossFire. The internal CrossFire connections are a huge improvement over
the previous dongle design, but performance was the same as or slightly slower
than what we saw running two stock X1950 Pro cards. Bottom line:
We’re not impressed.
—Michael BrownHIS X1950 Pro IceQ3 Turbo
Overclocked—and overpriced
P
ower users contemplating the purchase of BFG’s GeForce 8800 GTS face the
same conundrum as those purchasing a card based on the 8800 GTX: No one
knows how either product will perform with DirectX 10. As we observed with the
GTX, however, the GTS is a flat-out screamer when it comes to DX9 software.
The GTS is outfitted with fewer stream-processor units (96 versus 128),
less memory (384MB versus 768MB), and a narrower memory interface (320-
versus 384-bit) than the GTX. But the price tag on this card brings it slightly
out of the stratospheric heights of cards based on Nvidia’s more powerful
8800 GTX. That’s not to say it’s inexpensive—unless you consider $500 pocket
change. Still, if you bought one of these today and a second one to run in SLI
after prices drop, you could outrun a single 8800 GTX card.
The 8800 GTS delivers all the image-
quality benefits that the GTX lards on—
most of which are
unobtainable with
Nvidia’s 7-series:
You can turn on AA
and HDR lighting at
the same time, you
can enable noise
reduction and edge
enhancement while
playing back video,
and anisotropicfiltering is much improved over Nvidia’s previous-generation parts.
Turning all these features on does entail a frame rate hit, but it’s not
enough to impact gameplay. BFG’s GTS card ran FEAR, for instance, at a per-
fectly playable 32fps at a widescreen resolution of 1920x1200 with soft shad-
ows turned on, 4x AA, and 16x aniso. Add a second card and you’ll get about
the same frame rate at 2560x1600. Frame-rate junkies can turn off AA and dial
back aniso to 8x to play the game at 55fps with a single card.
Yes, Nvidia has a winner on its hands. We can’t wait to see how
ATI responds.
—Michael BrownBFG GeForce 8800 GTS
As close as you’ll get to a midrange DX10 videocard, for now
reviews Tes Ted. Reviewed. veRdic Tized
MAXIMUMPC january 2007
higher clock speeds don’t translate into the stellar benchmark
results that would justify the 30-percent price premium hiS
expects this card to fetch.anyone looking for a midrange DX10 videocard will have to wait
until nvidia recoups a portion of its four-year r&D investment:
cards based on the second-tier 8800 GTS are fetching $500.bfg geforce 8800 gts
$500, http://www.bfg.com6
HIs X1950 Pro IceQ3
$260, http://www.hisdigital.com3DMARK06 GAME 1 (fps) 14.0 10.0 24.6 18.2
3DMARK06 GAME 2 (fps) 15.3 14.5 27.8 32.3
QUAKE 4 (fps) 45.3 44.0 77.8 81.6
COMpANY Of HEROEs (fps) 24.0 24.5 17.7 25.0
fEAR (fps) 25.0 27.0 36.0 53.0
Best scores are bolded. Videocard benchmarks obtained with A8R32-MVP Deluxe and Asus A8N32-SLI Deluxe motherboards, respectively, using the native resolution of a 23-inch ViewSonic VP2330wb display (1920x1200). 3DMark06 HDR Games: Tested
with antialiasing turned off and anisotropic filtering set to 8x. Tested with AA off and all other values set to high. FEAR: AA off, 8x aniso, soft shadows on. Quake 4: Tested with 4x AA and 8x aniso. Company of Heroes:bencHMarkS
HIS X1950 EVGA 7900 GS HIS X1950 Pro In CroSS FIrE EVGA 7900 GS In SLI3DMARK06 GAME1 (fps) 18.5 33.8
3DMARK06 GAME1 (fps) 17.2 32.4
COMpANY Of HEROEs (fps) 56.3 104.4
fEAR (fps) 32.0 51.0
HQV ViDEO 113 113
3DMark06 benchmarks run with 4x AA and 16x aniso; FEAR run with soft shadows on, 4x AA, and 16x aniso; Company of Heroes run with all settings at max and AA enabled. Tested
with an EVGA nForce 680i SLI motherboard with a 2.93GHz Intel Core 2 Extreme X6800 CPU and 2GB of Corsair DDR2 RAM.bencHMarkS
bFG GEF(1920 X 1200)orECE 8800 GtS bFG GEFSLI (2560 orX 1600)CE 8800 GtS9
MAXIMUMPC
KICKASS