Officially called Radeon X1300 XT IceQ Turbo, this entry-level video card from HIS comes overclocked and featuring a good cooling solution from Arctic Cooling. We know that Radeon HD 2400 is around the corner, but let’s take a look on this entry-level video card from HIS and compare it with other entry-level and mid-range cards from both ATI and nVidia.
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Figure 1: HIS Radeon X1300 XT IceQ Turbo.
This video card can be classified as a top entry-level video card or as a low mid-range card, you choose. The truth is that the standard Radeon X1300 XT is a renamed Radeon X1600 Pro running with a higher memory clock rate.
Radeon X1300 XT runs at 500 MHz and it is interesting to note that it can be found with two memory clock rates. If your Radeon X1300 XT has DDR2 chips then they run at 800 MHz (400 MHz transferring two data per clock cycle), and if your Radeon X1300 XT has GDDR3 chips then they run at 1 GHz (500 MHz x 2). In both cases the memory chip accesses the memory thru a 128-bit memory interface.
This card from HIS runs at 587 MHz and accesses its 256 MB GDDR3 memory at 1.37 GHz (688.5 MHz x 2), so it runs at a clock rate 17% higher than the standard model and accesses its memory at a rate 37% higher than the standard model. That is really interesting.
Radeon X1300 XT competes in price with GeForce 8500 GT, even though Radeon X1300 XT is a DirectX 9.0c (Shader 3.0) product, while GeForce 8500 GT is a DirectX 10 (Shader 4.0) product. Radeon HD 2400 is the new family that will be released by AMD during this month to replace Radeon X1300 series.
For a full comparison between Radeon X1300 XT and other chips from AMD/ATI, please read our ATI Chips Comparison Table tutorial. On nVidiaChips Comparison Table you can compare them to competitors from nVidia.
This video card features the traditional cooler used by HIS, IceQ, that blows the hot air produced by the video card to outside the computer. This cooler is in fact manufactured by Arctic Cooling and called “VGA Silencer Rev. 3”.
On Figures 2 and 3 you can see the reviewed card from HIS.
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Figure 2: HIS Radeon X1300 XT IceQ Turbo.
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Figure 3: HIS Radeon X1300 XT IceQ Turbo, back view.
