Date: September 19th, 2004
Article by: Nathan Glentworth (Owner, Head Editor & Hardware Reviewer)
Product was donated by: H.I.S.
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PRODUCT WALKTHROUGH & PICTORIAL (cont'd)
Now this is something I really like to see. Not only have they passively cooled heatsinks on the top memory modules, they have also attached heatsinks onto the bottom modules as well. One of my biggest videocard cooling pet peeves is why a company only cools the memory on one side of the card? Really, where do these engineers get their degrees? A crackerjack box? Other than just cooling a videocard properly during stock speeds, ramsinks like you see on all the modules on this particular card will allow for a better and more stable overclock as well.
HIS's VPU cooling is through their branded iCooler cooling solution. With a large amount of surface area and a quiet (<24db) and efficient LED illuminated fan, I have yet to personally notice a temperature anything over mildly warm when benchmarking and even overclocking.
The bright illumination does really help with the videocard's already good aesthetics and it will nicely compliment any windowed custom case. But does this cooling solution help in the overclocking department?
I will tell all in the next section.....
VIDEOCARD OVERCLOCKING ABILITY
Using ATITool available here, some cautious patience and 5 hours worth of stability testing I finally was able to find a good overclock that was completely stable.
Here are the results:
Core Frequency
Stock : 500Mhz
Overclock: 565.20Mhz
Net Core Overclock: 65.2Mhz
Memory Frequency
Stock: 378Mhz (756Mhz DDR)
Overclock: 425Mhz (850Mhz DDR)
Net Memory Overclock: 47Mhz (94Mhz DDR)
As you can see, the overclocking to say the least is very good for a mainstream videocard. I will be including the overclocked settings during the benchmarking to show just how much of a performance increase an overclock of this size can bring to your gaming machine.
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