Date: February 9th, 2005
Article by: Nathan Glentworth (Owner, Head Editor & Hardware Reviewer)
Product Submitted by: HIS
<--SHOP FOR A HIGH PERFORMANCE COMPUTER VIDEOCARD HERE

PRODUCT SPECIFICATIONS

-Powered by ATI Radeon X700 PRO VPU
-ATI RAGE THEATER - VIVO
-256MB-128bit GDDR3 memory
-Eight parallel pixel pipelines
-Six vertex shader pipelines
-SMARTSHADER™ HD
-SMOOTHVISION™ HD
-3Dc™
-HYPER Z™ HD
-VIDEOSHADER™ HD
-Native x16 lane PCI Express
-DirectX® 9 and ® supported
-VGA, TV-Out and DVI-I supported
-VIVO Video Capture

-Fast: iTURBO mode: Simply press the iTURBO button to boost your graphic card to 460MHz core / 960MHz memory

-Quite: Silence mode: Adjusts fan speed to silence mode and achieve less than 20dB noise level

-Cool: TURBO Fan speed provides maximum cooling power

-ALL Cool: A.I. Cooling technology: Automatically adjusts the fan speed base on VPU temperature to achieve the best -cooling effect

-Platinum packing with software bundle

-Professional customer service and technical support

PRODUCT COMPOSITION

Let's see what you will receive.

HIS lately have had one of the best included hardware bundles in the industry.

Moving from left to right you will see the following above:

HDTV Output Dongle: For outputting a HDTV video signal to your HDTV or equally equipped device.

Video In/Video Out (VIVO) Dongle: For S-Video or composite video input or output connections.

S-Video to Composite Video Convertor: Self Explanatory

S-Video Cable: Total length is six feet long.

DVI to VGA Convertor: For use when you need dual analog output capability from the videocard for dual display.

As you can see, you shouldn't have any problems getting your multimedia capable videocard hooked up and ready to go. Nothing is more frustrating then getting a VIVO card such as this and see that to use it, you have to take a trip to the local electronics store for cables and convertors.

Turning our attention to the documentation and software, you will have the standard user's manual along with the following software:

- Counter Strike: Condition Zero Full Version Game (Excellent Addition)
- Demo Software CD
- Cyberlink PowerDVD 5
- 3D Album (Photo Software
- iTurbo Overclocking Utility
- Video Studio 7SE (For VIVO Capabilities and Video Editing)
- Standard Driver CD (Best to go get the latest drivers from ATI.com)

Saying this is a great software bundle is an understatement. You get practically EVERYTHING needed to get yourself gaming, video/photo editing, DVD viewing and videocard overclocking. I can see why they call it the platinum pack. The value alone for these games and tools is well over US$150 by themselves. Also, it is great to see a decent video game included instead of a demo CD full of old tired gaming program samples that went the way off the dodo bird two years ago.

I love it when a decent game is included and Counterstrike: Condition Zero is a very good game.

And finally we are allowed to take a look at this rather unique looking videocard. What makes it interesting is not the actual card itself, but the HUGE Arctic Cooling based cooling solution strapped onto the core. But I will keep you in suspense and talk about the videocard more in the next section.