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HIS Radeon X1600 PRO IceQ Turbo 128MB Review |
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Written by Mavke
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Wednesday, 19 April 2006 |
Hardware Secrets shares with us a review on the HIS Radeon X1600 PRO IceQ Turbo 128MB PCIe graphics card. The Radeon X1600 PRO is a mid-range graphics chip from ATI, and HIS has launched a factory overclocked model using this chip, dubbed Radeon X1600 PRO IceQ Turbo. While Turbo goes for the factory set overclocking function, IceQ goes for the big fan that video cards from this series from HIS uses, which helps removing hot air from inside your PC. The Radeon X1600 PRO runs originally at 500MHz accessing its video memory at 780MHz. Let's see how is the performance of this factory overclocked Radeon X1600 PRO from HIS.
 HIS Radeon X1600 PRO IceQ Turbo 128MB Review
This Turbo model from HIS runs at 587MHz with its memory being accessed at 1.38GHz. This video card has a sticker on its box stating these values. We ran PowerStrip software to check the video card clocks and it was really running at the announced clock rates. The funny thing is that this factory overclocked Radeon X1600 PRO runs at the very same clock rate as the XT. So it should achieve the same performance of the Radeon X1600 XT, given that there is no other technical difference between Radeon X1600 XT and PRO version. Is that really so?
The factory overclocked Radeon X1600 PRO from HIS runs at the very same clock rates as the Radeon X1600 XT. Since both chips have identical technical specifications, we though that both would achieve a similar performance on our tests. This would be correct if they both had the same amount of video memory. With the overclocked Radeon X1600 PRO carrying 128MB and the Radeon X1600 XT, 256MB, the later achieved a performance up to 167% higher. While on old games with no image quality settings enable the performance difference is very small (up to 8%).
On newer games and/or increasing image quality settings, the original Radeon X1600 XT 256MB achieved a performance far higher. But there is a huge price difference between them, though. While the 128MB factory overclocked Radeon X1600 PRO from HIS can be found by $127, 256MB Radeon X1600 XT from other brands is found on the $167-200 range. This puts the Radeon X1600 PRO Turbo from HIS competing with cards based on the GeForce 6600 GT, and it was up to 91% faster than this model from NVIDIA, except in Doom 3. If you want only to play Doom 3, go for a NVIDIA based solution.
It is also very interesting to note that PowerColor has a Radeon X800 GTO with 128MB model being sold at the same price range of the reviewed video card from HIS. On our benchmark Radeon X800 GTO was up to 139% faster than the overclocked Radeon X1600 PRO, however it had 256MB of video memory. So, if you are looking for an ATI solution to counter the GeForce 6600 GT, this model from HIS won't let you down. However, we would seriously consider buying a Radeon X800 GTO 128MB instead, if we had up to $130 to spend on a video card.
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