HIS Excalibur X800 XT IceQ II VIVO LIMITED EDITION

Introduction

I always admire companies that try to do something special with their products. HIS is one of those companies. With their IceQ line of ATI cards, they have gained a very good reputation. Today, I am looking at the king of their cards, the HIS Excalibur X800 XT IceQ II VIVO LIMITED EDITION. Yes, a long and complicated name, but somehow it does fit with this card since it is anything but simple.

So what is special with this card? As the image shows, this isn’t a common reference ATI card.

The first thing that is apparent is that this card uses a really cool (pun intended) cooler. It is called the Arctic ATI Silencer 4. The IceQ II cooling system draws cool air from inside the case and exhausts warm air outwards. This prevents the fan from recycling warm air to cool the VPU, which increases cooling performance and lowers the air temperature inside the case significantly. HIS claims that the cooler not only lowers the temperature around 11 degrees compared to the stock cooler but also is much more silent. The downside of course is that this card is a 2-slot solution compared to the reference X800 XT that is a 1-slot solution.