|
 |
| Quality
and Design of the X-Micro Impact 4 Ultra |
| Looks
familiar... |
|
If
you are an avid reader of the reviews at H.H. then
I?m sure you?ll swear that you?ve seen this
card before. If you take the Elsa Gladiac that we
recently reviewed, you?d be hard pressed to tell
the two apart except for the purple X-Micro
sticker on the Impact 4.
Now this doesn?t make X-Micro a bad
company, I?m sure that the sticker was a whole
lot cheaper than the other types of bells and
whistles we?ve seen in the past.
Remember, all the cost saving measures will
be seen ultimately in the MSRP.
This
card comes with the basic reference cooling
hardware. From
the heat sinks on the RAM to the heat sink and fan
on the GPU, it is all based on the original
reference design.
This may not make you go ?wow? when you
see it but it is a design that has proven to be
more than adequate for the card.
If
there is one thing that will get us on our soap
box, it is the use of thermal tape or the dreaded
thermal epoxy.
Although these products do help improve
heat transfer, usually when we take them apart we
find poor contact between the chip and heat sink.
This time around however, we have to say
that although we?re not crazy about it, this
application was making excellent contact.
Nonetheless, since we had it apart, we
cleaned it up and applied the preferred Artic
Silver Thermal compound.
This
version has the standard analog monitor and TV-OUT
connections as well as a port to connect a digital
flat-panel display.
Although we didn?t have the goods to test
the flat-panel display, the TV-OUT worked exactly
as it should.
We loaded up the Matrix on DVD and found
the output quality excellent.
It only took a second to switch between the
monitor and TV and we were ready to roll.
Although
this is a standard reference design, its
reputation speaks for itself.
With that said, the quality and design of
the card is excellent and gets a well deserved 9.
Installation
and Drivers
| 
