Legit Video Card Reviews

HIS Radeon 9600XT Video Card

Manufacturer: HIS
Product: Excalibur 9600XT Turbo Version Platinum Pack
Date: Tue, Jan 13, 2004 - 09:00 AM
Written By: Justin West -
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Image Quality:

Testing Procedure:

To test Image Quality, we used the Image Quality tool built in to 3dMark2003. We ran at 1024x768 resolution with 4xAA and ran the test on the Wings of Fury and Mother Nature game tests. We also took screenshots through FRAPS of a scene in Call of Duty (2xAA/8xAF) and Halo (NoAA/NoAF). We then used Photoshop 7 but did not reduce the quality of the image at all. You can click on the thumbnails to see the full image.


Wings of Fury		  
Mother Nature		  
Stalingrad Intro		  
Halo Timedemo

The image quality of the HIS 9600 XT is pretty impressive. Call of Duty is the only game that I saw noticeable jagged edges. The 3dMark IQ tests and Halo seemed to show that this card puts out some nice quality.

Overclocking:

To overclock this video card, I used the Rage3D tweak. First I found the max of the core with the memory left at default. Then I found the max of the memory with the core at default. Once I have these two reference points, I then found the max of the video card while overclocking the core and memory. Each time I changed the clock frequency, I ran 3dMark2003 to find any obvious instability issues. Once I found the max of the video card, I ran UT2003 and Halo.


Max Overclock

Using the strategy described above, I first found the max of the core to be 567MHz (up from 500MHz). After resetting the core frequency, I then found the max of the memory to be 348MHz / 696MHz DDR (up from 325MHz). Finally, when I overclocked the core and the memory, the max of our sample card was 567MHz on the core and 337.5MHz / 675MHz DDR on the memory. So we ended up with a 67MHz increase on the core and only a 25MHz increase on the memory. I was surprised that I had to drop the memory so much when obtaining the max of the card since the memory used is rated at 700MHz DDR.

The benchmark result from running 3DMark2003 overclocked was 4230 (unoverclocked result was 3921), UT2003 Average FPS was 75.70 (unoverclocked result was 75.62), and Halo Average FPS was 28.40 (unoverclocked result was 28.03). So the synthetic test shows the potential performance gain from overclocking this card, but the game tests I ran showed no performance increase.

Conclusion:

This is the first 9600XT video card we have tested. I must say that I was very pleased with its performance. I would definitely advise this card to the mainstream gamer who wants the most performance in their price-point. I would have trouble recommending a card any slower than this one due to the wear we started noticing on this card on games like Call of Duty and Halo.

For the 'light' gamers out there, or anyone else in the market for a video card upgrade, this card has all the power you need in todays market. I would definitely go for this 9600 XT card if I were looking to upgrade for almost any reason.

I would like to give HIS some kudos for creating a graphics card using the 9600 XT graphics core because it really does hit a big market since not everyone can afford a $300-$400 video card. This card performs just as it said it would and with our "out of the box" testing strategy, we found no issues and were very impressed. I would recommend this card to almost anyone in the market for a mainstream video card!

Legit Bottom Line:

The HIS Excalibur Radeon 9600XT Turbo graphics card provides sufficient performance for gamers and provides maximum performance for non-gamers.

For more information on HIS and their product lines, visit their website.

Update: I have received a few emails from our readers asking where they can actually purchase this product. I went to our contact at HIS in Hong Kong, and here was his reply:

Dear Justin,

Please kindly have them to contact following in the mean time. They can send their request by e-mail and the sales will follow up with the end user accordingly.

Daiwa Distribution Inc.
Ontario, Canada
+1 (905) 940-2889
Fax: +1 (905) 474-0954
mailto: daiwa@daiwa.net

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Page 2 - The Card:
Page 3 - Performance:
Page 4 - Game Tests:
Page 5 - Image Quality: