HIS X1600XT IceQ Turbo DL-DVI, DVI 256MB

Introduction


We all know the real money in the videocard industry is in the low and mid-end cards. True, the high-end cards get all the attention but their main purpose seems to be to be able to boast about having the fastest card and get the attention from prospective buyers.,

While we have followed, and still are following, the battle for the high-end between NVIDIA and ATI sometimes it seems we forget the real important battle ‘below’, the fight about the mid-end. When the X1600XT was announced there were some concerns that it wasn’t priced correctly when you compared it to similar NVIDIA cards. ATI responded by lowering the price and today the X1600XT is a chipset that offers a lot of features and performance for its price.

Today it is my turn to test the HIS - Radeon X1600 XT ICEQ ITURBO.

Specifications


The X1600 VPU is similar to the X1800 with some small but important differences.

Memory-bus
The memory bus of the X1600 is 128-bit compared to 256-bit for the X1800. The internal Ringbus memory controller is 256-bit compared to 512-bit on the X1800.

Pixel and Vertex shaders
The X1600 has 12 pixel shader processors and 5 vertex shader processors compared to the 16 and 8 the X1800 has. It also ‘only’ manages 128 simultaneous pixel threads compared to the X1800’s 512 threads.

The X1600XT however also shares a lot of features with the X1800.

Support for Shader Model 3.0
While NVIDIA have been supporting Shader Model 3.0 for a few generations, the X1 K family is the first VPU-family from ATI with SM3.0 support.

Advanced Image Quality Features
- 64-bit floating point HDR rendering supported throughout the pipeline

- Includes support for blending and multi-sample anti-aliasing

- 32-bit integer HDR (10:10:10:2) format supported throughout the pipeline 
       Includes support for blending and multi-sample anti-aliasing

- 2x/4x/6x Anti-Aliasing modes 
       Multi-sample algorithm with gamma correction, programmable sparse sample patterns, and centroid sampling
       New Adaptive Anti-Aliasing feature with Performance and Quality modes
       Temporal Anti-Aliasing mode
       Lossless Color Compression (up to 6:1) at all resolutions, including widescreen HDTV resolutions

- 2x/4x/8x/16x Anisotropic Filtering modes
       Up to 128-tap texture filtering
       Adaptive algorithm with Performance and Quality options

- High resolution texture support (up to 4k x 4k)

Avivo™ Video and Display Platform
- High performance programmable video processor
      Accelerated MPEG-2, MPEG-4, DivX, WMV9, VC-1, and H.264 decoding and transcoding
      DXVA support
      De-blocking and noise reduction filtering
      Motion compensation, IDCT, DCT and color space conversion
      Vector adaptive per-pixel de-interlacing
      3:2 pulldown (frame rate conversion)

- Seamless integration of pixel shaders with video in real time

- HDR tone mapping acceleration
     Maps any input format to 10 bit per channel output

- Flexible display support
     DVI 1.0 compliant / HDMI interoperable and HDCP ready
     Dual integrated 10 bit per channel 400 MHz DACs
     16 bit per channel floating point HDR and 10 bit per channel DVI output
     Programmable piecewise linear gamma correction, color correction, and color space conversion (10 bits per color)
     Complete, independent color controls and video overlays for each display
     High quality pre- and post-scaling engines, with underscan support for all outputs 
     Content-adaptive de-flicker filtering for interlaced displays 
     Xilleon™ TV encoder for high quality analog output 
     YPrPb component output for direct drive of HDTV displays* 
     Spatial/temporal dithering enables 10-bit color quality on 8-bit and 6-bit displays 
     Fast, glitch-free mode switching 
     VGA mode support on all outputs 
     Drive two displays simultaneously with independent resolutions and refresh rates

- Compatible with ATI TV/Video encoder products, including Theater 550

CrossFire™ Multi-GPU technology

- Four modes of operation: 
     Alternate Frame Rendering (maximum performance) 
     Supertiling (optimal load-balancing) 
     Scissor (compatibility)

- Super AA 8x/10x/12x/14x (maximum image quality)