Radeon X800 GTO is the latest graphics chip released by ATI targeted to the mid-range market, located between Radeon X800 Pro and Radeon X800 GT and competing with GeForce 6600 GT from nVidia. This new chip officially runs at 400 MHz, while both Radeon X800 Pro and Radeon X800 GT run at 475 MHz. However, both Radeon X800 GTO and Radeon X800 Pro process 12 pixels per clock, while Radeon X800 GT processes only eight (the same amount as Radeon X800 SE). Radeon X800 XT can process up to 16.

As you can see on Figure 1, the greatest advantage of HIS IceQ II model over its competitors is its huge cooler. Its fan is big, so it produces greater airflow with less noise, and also the plastic used is UV sensitive, so it glows when a black light is installed inside your case. Also, it blows the hot air produced by the video card to outside the computer case, preventing your computer from overheating.

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Figure 1: HIS Radeon X800 GTO IceQ II.

You can see in our tutorial “ATI Chips Comparison table” the difference between this new chip and the other chips from ATI, while on our tutorial “nVidia Chips Comparison Table” you can compare it to its competitors from nVidia. It is very important to keep in mind that nVidia chips from series 6 and 7 use a Shader 3.0 engine (DirectX 9.0c), while ATI chips still use Shader 2.0 (DirectX 9.0).

It is always important to remember that the “memory clock” column from these tables informs the chip manufacturer (ATI or nVidia) recommended clock. In some cases, specially on cheaper video cards, the card manufacturer uses simpler memory chips (in order to cut the board price) and lower memory clocks (compatible with the memory chip used), making the board to achieve a lower performance compared to boards that use the same graphics chip but with their memory chips running at the chip manufacturer recommended clock. Because of that, we always run <a href=http://www.entechtaiwan.com/ target=_blank>PowerStrip</a> software in order to check if the video card memory is running at the standard clock set by the chip manufacturer or running at a lower clock rate.

The reviewed Radeon X800 GT model from HIS runs at 400 MHz for the chip and 1 GHz for the memory.

This video card is targeted to the PCI Express bus, so in our review we will compare it only to other PCI Express video cards.