The HIS X700Pro IceQ Turbo is a very small graphics card when compared to the GeForce PCX 5900. Built on a red PCB, the board boasts a rather elaborate cooling setup. The GPU is designed on a 0.13-micron process and therefore generates very little heat. This has allowed HIS to design a quiet cooling setup for the GPU, that will still allow for a tremendous amount of overclocking headroom. The IceQ Turbo cooling setup is impressive to say the least and has certainly made this Radeon X700 Pro product unlike any other.
The HIS X700Pro IceQ Turbo is cooled by an outrageously large aluminum heatsink which is fixed firmly to the core via two screws. This design is so big that it will sacrifice at least one PCI slot with the possibility of another, depending on how big the second PCI device is. The heatsink is cooled by a large blue fan which is designed to draw the air in, dispersing it through the rear of the card. The fan also features four bright LED lights which make the card look even more impressive.
HIS is shipping their Radeon X700 Pro with Samsung IC抯 onboard; they have used the K4J55323QF-GC20 parts. While they are clocked at 860MHz, Samsung rate their operating frequency at 500MHz (DDR1000). This means there should be a fair amount of head room when it comes to overclocking the memory. The card features 256MB of GDD3 memory utilizing the 128-bit memory bus. It should be noted that when using the HIS iTURBO setting, the card will operate at a 460MHz core and 960MHz memory clock with a slightly faster fan speed.
Another factor that helps keep the Radeon X700 Pro core so cool is its low power consumption. Unlike some of the NVIDIA GeForceFX cards, this ATi solution does not require additional power. All these factors have helped HIS produce a very overclockable product. The fact that Samsung rate this memory over 100MHz higher than HIS is shipping it at, indicates great overclocking potential to me. This graphics card is designed for the sole purpose of being overclocked and is designed to operate with a 460MHz core and 960MHz memory clock all day everyday.
At the rear of the HIS Radeon X700 Pro there are the standard VGA, S-Video, and DVI outputs. There are also a number of cables supplied with the card which will help the user utilize some of these features. However I will talk about these cables in an upcoming section of this review. The S-Video connection certainly is a standard feature amongst today抯 graphics cards, though the HIS Radeon X700 Pro utilizes this feature a little better than most with the ATi Rage Theater.
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