HIS Excalibur X800 Pro - VIVO Edition with IceQ II

The HIS Excalibur X800 Pro - VIVO Edition with IceQ II My, How Big it is.

At first glance, it's safe to say the Excalibur X800 Pro Platinum VIVO has a look all its own.  With the IceQ II cooler straddling both sides of the GPU and Memory, the X800 Pro appears well protected from any excessive temperatures.  The card is powered by ATI's X800 Pro VPU with 12 Pixel Pipelines.  The core speed is 475MHz, coupled with 256MB of GDDR3 memory clocked at a brisk 900MHz.  The interface is AGP4x/8x compliant, although PCI Express variations are available from HIS.  

The IceQ II cooler is a big one, forcing two slots to be occupied when the card is installed.  The oversized fan draws air from the case and forces our the rear of the card through a perforated PCI bracket.  Overall the system was quieter than we would have expected.   In fact, HIS claims the cooler is 40% quieter than standard cooling while reducing operating temperatures by 30%.  Granted, the temperature claims rely heavily on the ambient temperatures of the computer system, but when we look at the oversized fan, all copper base and thermal paste application to both the VPU and memory, there is no doubt the cooler is a major improvement over standard cooling.  The true test will be when we attempt to overclock the card, revealing any additional power and performance potential.

The back of the card has both a DVI and VGA output powered by individual 10-bit, 400MHz DACs.  The included DVI-to-VGA adapter can convert the card to connect to two standard VGA monitors, adding to the versatility of the card.  The center port supports a 4 head input/output adapter for TV-Out using the provided S-Video or Composite cabling and offers as well.  The TV-Out resolution peaks at 1024x768.