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[nextpage title=”Introduction”]
With VGA manufacturers releasing only PCI Express-based video cards, owners of AGP-based PCs were simply forgotten. Even though you can find quite easily AGP VGAs on the market, AGP users cannot find the latest releases for the AGP platform. And there are a huge crowd out there willing to upgrade their VGA to newer models without having to replace the whole computer. Thinking about this crowd, HIS released an AGP-based Radeon X700, which should satisfy owners of AGP-based PCs that are anxious to see new VGA models being released for this platform. Let’s see how the performance of this Radeon X700 AGP from HIS is.
Figure 1: HIS Radeon X700 AGP.
As you can see in Figure 1, this model is part of IceQ series from HIS, where the video card uses a special cooler that pulls hot air from inside the computer case to the outside.
Radeon X700 is a mid-range graphics chip and its official specs include a 400 MHz clock rate, a 600 MHz memory clock rate, a 128-bit memory interface and eight pixel shader units – by the way, this chip still uses Shader 2.0 programming model, while chips from Radeon X1000 family and GeForce 6 and 7 families are Shader 3.0.
We ran PowerStrip software to check what clock rates this video card was using, and we discovered that its memory was running at 700 MHz and not at 600 MHz. So, its specs are the same as Radeon X700 LE and not of the regular Radeon X700. Funny enough there was no clue on the box about this. It should.
You can see in our tutorial “ATI Chips Comparison Table” the difference between this chip and the other chips from ATI, while on our tutorial “NVIDIA Chips Comparison Table” you can compare it to its competitors from NVIDIA.
Radeon X700 is a PCI Express chip. So to connect it to AGP bus it is necessary a bridge chip, shown in Figure 2.
Figure 2: Bridge chip used on HIS Radeon X700 AGP.
Let’s now take a closer look at the Radeon X700 IceQ AGP from HIS.
[nextpage title=”HIS Radeon X700 IceQ AGP “]
You can check HIS Radeon X700 IceQ AGP on Figures 3 and 4.
Figure 3: HIS Radeon X700 IceQ AGP.
Figure 4: HIS Radeon X700 IceQ AGP, back view.
The main advantage of HIS IceQ models is the design of their cooler, which blows hot air produced by the video card out the computer case – and later copied by Sapphire. Also, it is sensitive to UV light, so it will grow if you have an UV lamp inside your case. This cooler is entirely made of aluminum and it is actually made by Arctic Cooling (https://www.arctic.ac).
This time we couldn’t disassemble the cooler to take a look because it was using tamper resistant Torx screws and we didn’t have this kind of screwdriver in our lab. However, as you can see in Figure 5, it is all aluminum-made and it doesn’t touch the memory chips. All memory chips use an aluminum passive heatsink. We couldn’t remove the passive heatsink from the memory chips, but it uses four GDDR3 chips.
Figure 5: Side view of HIS Radeon X700 IceQ AGP.
This board also comes with one S-Video cable, one Composite Video to S-Video adapter, one Component Video adapter and one DVI to VGA adapters.
Figure 6: Cables and adapters that come with this video card.
[nextpage title=”Main Specifications”]
- Graphics chip: Radeon X700 running at 400 MHz.
- Memory: 128-bit 128 MB GDDR3 memory, running at 700 MHz.
- Bus type: AGP.
- Connectors: One DVI, one VGA and one mini-DIN for S-Video and Component Video output.
- Number of CDs that come with this board: 2.
- Games that come with this board: Dungeon Siege 1.1 (full), Flat Out (full), Act of War: Direct Action (demo), Axis&Allies (demo), Half-Life 2 (demo), RollerCoaster Tycoon 3 (demo) and Tribes: Vengeance Single (demo).
- Programs that come with this board: PowerDirector 3 SE Plus, Power2Go 4 and other trial software.
- More Information: https://www.hisdigital.com
- Average Price in the US*: USD 140.00
* Researched on Shopping.com on the day we published this review.
[nextpage title=”How We Tested”]
During our benchmarking sessions, we used the configuration listed below. Between our benchmarking sessions the only variable was the video card being tested.
Hardware Configuration
- Motherboard: Biostar K8VHA Pro (VIA K8T800, July 12th 2004 BIOS)
- CPU: Athlon 64 3200+
- Memory: Two 256 MB DDR400/PC3200 memory modules from TwinMOS
- Hard Drive: Maxtor DiamondMax 9 Plus (40 GB, ATA-133)
- Screen resolution: [email protected] Hz
Software Configuration
- Windows XP Professional installed using NTFS
- Service Pack 1A
- Direct X 9.0c
- ATI video driver version: 4.8
- ATI video driver version: 6.4 (Radeon X700 AGP)
- NVIDIA video driver version: 61.77
- VIA Hyperion driver version: 4.53
Used Software
We adopted a 3% error margin; thus, differences below 3% cannot be considered relevant. In other words, products with a performance difference below 3% should be considered as having similar performance.
[nextpage title=”3DMark2001 SE”]
3DMark2001 SE measures video card performance simulating DirectX 8.1 games. It is very effective software for evaluating the performance from previous-generation games, programmed using DirectX 8. In this software we run six tests. We run the software in three resolutions, 1024x768x32, 1280x1024x32 and 1600x1200x32, first without antialising and with no frame buffer, then we put the antialising at 4 samples and the frame buffer at triple-buffering. This improves the video quality but lowers the performance. We were willing to see how much performance we lost by putting the VGA to run at the maximum possible image quality. It is important to note that ATI chips can run at 6x antialising. Since NVIDIA chips cannot run at this configuration, we had to use 4x antialising to use a configuration that is valid to all video cards included in our bechmarks, allowing direct comparison between them.
You may be asking yourself why we added an old program in a review of a latest generation video card. To us, it is as important to know the performance of a video card with the latest games as it is to know its performance in an older game. That’s why we kept this software in our methodology.
At a resolution of 1024×768 without any image quality enhancement, HIS Radeon X700 was beaten by ATI Radeon X850 XT Platinum Edition, which was 51.13% faster, ATI Radeon X800 XT Platinum Edition, which was 49.37% faster, Sapphire Radeon X800 Pro, which was 41.95% faster, XFX GeForce 6800 Ultra, which was 39.22% faster, ATI Radeon 9800 XT, which was 27.71% faster, Gigabyte GeForce FX 5950 Ultra, which was 11.90% faster and Leadtek GeForce 6600 GT AGP, which was 11.85% faster.
At a resolution of 1280×1024 without any image quality enhancement, HIS Radeon X700 was beaten by ATI Radeon X800 XT Platinum Edition, which was 66.36% faster, ATI Radeon X850 XT Platinum Edition, which was 65.54% faster, XFX GeForce 6800 Ultra, which was 56.33% faster, Sapphire Radeon X800 Pro, which was 53.94% faster, ATI Radeon 9800 XT, which was 31.56% faster, Leadtek GeForce 6600 GT AGP, which was 17.12% faster and Gigabyte GeForce FX 5950 Ultra, which was 16.66% faster.
At a resolution of 1600×1200 without any image quality enhancement, HIS Radeon X700 was beaten by ATI Radeon X800 XT Platinum Edition, which was 94.34% faster, ATI Radeon X850 XT Platinum Edition, which was 91.99% faster, XFX GeForce 6800 Ultra, which was 85.62% faster, Sapphire Radeon X800 Pro, which was 74.48% faster, ATI Radeon 9800 XT, which was 39.54% faster, Leadtek GeForce 6600 GT AGP, which was 29.69% faster and Gigabyte GeForce FX 5950 Ultra, which was 28.37% faster.
At a resolution of 1024×768 enabling image quality enhancements, HIS Radeon X700 was beaten by ATI Radeon X850 XT Platinum Edition, which was 73.36% faster, ATI Radeon X800 XT Platinum Edition, which was 67.12% faster, XFX GeForce 6800 Ultra, which was 58.18% faster, Sapphire Radeon X800 Pro, which was 56.53% faster, ATI Radeon 9800 XT, which was 28.21% faster, Gigabyte GeForce FX 5950 Ultra, which was 24.39% faster and Leadtek GeForce 6600 GT AGP, which was 8.08% faster.
At a resolution of 1280×1024 enabling image quality enhancements, HIS Radeon X700 was beaten by ATI Radeon X850 XT Platinum Edition, which was 105.41% faster, ATI Radeon X800 XT Platinum Edition, which was 93.65% faster, XFX GeForce 6800 Ultra, which was 86.38% faster, Sapphire Radeon X800 Pro, which was 77.39% faster, ATI Radeon 9800 XT, which was 35.36% faster, Gigabyte GeForce FX 5950 Ultra, which was 32.75% faster and Leadtek GeForce 6600 GT AGP, which was 9.13% faster.
At a resolution of 1600×1200 enabling image quality enhancements, HIS Radeon X700 was 10.75% faster than Leadtek GeForce 6600 GT AGP, and it was beaten by ATI Radeon X850 XT Platinum Edition, which was 141.99% faster, ATI Radeon X800 XT Platinum Edition, which was 118.26% faster, Sapphire Radeon X800 Pro, which was 98.34% faster, XFX GeForce 6800 Ultra, which was 93.96% faster, ATI Radeon 9800 XT, which was 38.18% faster and Gigabyte GeForce FX 5950 Ultra, which was 31.27% faster.
[nextpage title=”3DMark03″]
3DMark03 measures performance by simulating games written to DirectX 9, which are contemporary games. We run this program in three resolutions, 1024x768x32, 1280x1024x32 and 1600x1200x32, first without antialising and anisotropic filtering, and then configuring antialising at 4x and anisotropic filtering also at 4x. This improves the video quality but lowers the performance. We were willing to see how much performance we lost by putting the VGA to run at the maximum possible image quality. It is important to note that ATI chips can run at 6x antialising. Since NVIDIA chips cannot run at this configuration, we had to use 4x antialising to use a configuration that is valid to all video cards included in our bechmarks, allowing direct comparison between them.
At a resolution of 1024×768 without any image quality enhancement, HIS Radeon X700 achieved a performance similar to Gigabyte GeForce FX 5950 Ultra, and it was beaten by XFX GeForce 6800 Ultra, which was 103.07% faster, ATI Radeon X850 XT Platinum Edition, which was 101.58% faster, ATI Radeon X800 XT Platinum Edition, which was 98.58% faster, Sapphire Radeon X800 Pro, which was 65.33% faster, Leadtek GeForce 6600 GT AGP, which was 25.16% faster and ATI Radeon 9800 XT, which was 8.63% faster.
At a resolution of 1280×1024 without any image quality enhancement, HIS Radeon X700 was beaten by ATI Radeon X850 XT Platinum Edition, which was 127.58% faster, XFX GeForce 6800 Ultra, which was 123.49% faster, ATI Radeon X800 XT Platinum Edition, which was 121.06% faster, Sapphire Radeon X800 Pro, which was 77.75% faster, Leadtek GeForce 6600 GT AGP, which was 30.03% faster, ATI Radeon 9800 XT, which was 12.85% faster and Gigabyte GeForce FX 5950 Ultra, which was 7.54% faster.
At a resolution of 1600×1200 without any image quality enhancement, HIS Radeon X700 was beaten by ATI Radeon X850 XT Platinum Edition, which was 161.92% faster, XFX GeForce 6800 Ultra, which was 152.87% faster, ATI Radeon X800 XT Platinum Edition, which was 149.51% faster, Sapphire Radeon X800 Pro, which was 99.72% faster, Leadtek GeForce 6600 GT AGP, which was 39.87% faster, ATI Radeon 9800 XT, which was 19.10% faster and Gigabyte GeForce FX 5950 Ultra, which was 16.82% faster.
At a resolution of 1024×768 enabling image quality enhancements, HIS Radeon X700 was beaten by ATI Radeon X850 XT Platinum Edition, which was 170.70% faster, XFX GeForce 6800 Ultra, which was 154.90% faster, ATI Radeon X800 XT Platinum Edition, which was 146.46% faster, Sapphire Radeon X800 Pro, which was 98.71% faster, Leadtek GeForce 6600 GT AGP, which was 38.39% faster, ATI Radeon 9800 XT, which was 30.89% faster and Gigabyte GeForce FX 5950 Ultra, which was 16.24% faster.
At a resolution of 1280×1024 enabling image quality enhancements, HIS Radeon X700 was beaten by ATI Radeon X850 XT Platinum Edition, which was 311.87% faster, XFX GeForce 6800 Ultra, which was 186.66% faster, ATI Radeon X800 XT Platinum Edition, which was 182.72% faster, Sapphire Radeon X800 Pro, which was 120.82% faster, ATI Radeon 9800 XT, which was 43.30% faster, Leadtek GeForce 6600 GT AGP, which was 39.72% faster and Gigabyte GeForce FX 5950 Ultra, which was 25.82% faster.
At a resolution of 1600×1200 enabling image quality enhancements, HIS Radeon X700 was beaten by ATI Radeon X850 XT Platinum Edition, which was 259.53% faster, XFX GeForce 6800 Ultra, which was 217.83% faster, ATI Radeon X800 XT Platinum Edition, which was 212.87% faster, Sapphire Radeon X800 Pro, which was 144.00% faster, ATI Radeon 9800 XT, which was 53.06% faster, Leadtek GeForce 6600 GT AGP, which was 39.18% faster and Gigabyte GeForce FX 5950 Ultra, which was 37.02% faster.
[nextpage title=”Aquamark 3″]
Aquamark 3 is a 3D benchmarking program based on the engine of Aquanox game, which is a very “heavy” game. It is based on DirectX 9 and we ran it on its default configuration. From the results presented, we analyzed one called TriScore. This program runs automatically at 1024x768x32.
Here, HIS Radeon X700 was beaten by ATI Radeon X850 XT Platinum Edition, which was 71.54% faster, XFX GeForce 6800 Ultra, which was 65.52% faster, ATI Radeon X800 XT Platinum Edition, which was 51.47% faster, Sapphire Radeon X800 Pro, which was 41.99% faster, Leadtek GeForce 6600 GT AGP, which was 35.99% faster, ATI Radeon 9800 XT, which was 22.21% faster and Gigabyte GeForce FX 5950 Ultra, which was 17.35% faster.
[nextpage title=”Doom 3″]
Doom 3 is one of the heaviest games available today. As we’ve done on other programs, we ran this game at three resolutions: 1024x768x32, 1280x1024x32 and 1600x1200x32. This game allows several image quality levels and we’ve done our benchmarking on two levels, low and high. We ran demo1 four times and wrote the obtained number of frames per second. The first result we discarded at once, since it is far inferior than the other results. This happens because at the first time we run the demo the game must load all textures to video memory, fact that doesn’t happen from the second time we run the demo on. From the three results left, we consider as our official result the middle result, i.e., we discard the highest and the lowest values. Curiously almost all times the values obtained at the second round on were the same.
A very important detail that we must mention is that Doom 3 has an internal FPS lock: it is only capable of generating 60 frames per second, even if your board is able to produce more frames per second than that. This is done in order to make the game to have the same “playability” sensation independently from the video card installed on the PC. This lock, however, is disabled in the game benchmarking mode.
For further details on how to measure 3D performance with Doom 3, read our tutorial on this subject.
At a resolution of 1024×768 without any image quality enhancement, HIS Radeon X700 was beaten by ATI Radeon X850 XT Platinum Edition, which was 93.82% faster, XFX GeForce 6800 Ultra, which was 74.50% faster, ATI Radeon X800 XT Platinum Edition, which was 73.71% faster, Leadtek GeForce 6600 GT AGP, which was 60.16% faster, Sapphire Radeon X800 Pro, which was 51.20% faster, Gigabyte GeForce FX 5950 Ultra, which was 7.17% faster and ATI Radeon 9800 XT, which was 6.18% faster.
At a resolution of 1280×1024 without any image quality enhancement, HIS Radeon X700 was beaten by XFX GeForce 6800 Ultra, which was 155.26% faster, ATI Radeon X850 XT Platinum Edition, which was 150.45% faster, ATI Radeon X800 XT Platinum Edition, which was 113.81% faster, Leadtek GeForce 6600 GT AGP, which was 83.48% faster, Sapphire Radeon X800 Pro, which was 63.96% faster, Gigabyte GeForce FX 5950 Ultra, which was 7.51% faster and ATI Radeon 9800 XT, which was 3.30% faster.
At a resolution of 1600×1200 without any image quality enhancement, HIS Radeon X700 achieved a performance similar to ATI Radeon 9800 XT, and it was beaten by XFX GeForce 6800 Ultra, which was 228.95% faster, ATI Radeon X850 XT Platinum Edition, which was 183.77% faster, ATI Radeon X800 XT Platinum Edition, which was 141.67% faster, Leadtek GeForce 6600 GT AGP, which was 96.93% faster, Sapphire Radeon X800 Pro, which was 75.00% faster and Gigabyte GeForce FX 5950 Ultra, which was 13.60% faster.
At a resolution of 1024×768 enabling image quality enhancements, HIS Radeon X700 was 3.85% faster than Gigabyte GeForce FX 5950 Ultra, and it was beaten by ATI Radeon X850 XT Platinum Edition, which was 116.10% faster, XFX GeForce 6800 Ultra, which was 91.84% faster, ATI Radeon X800 XT Platinum Edition, which was 88.44% faster, Leadtek GeForce 6600 GT AGP, which was 72.56% faster, Sapphire Radeon X800 Pro, which was 57.82% faster and ATI Radeon 9800 XT, which was 6.80% faster.
At a resolution of 1280×1024 enabling image quality enhancements, HIS Radeon X700 achieved a performance similar to Gigabyte GeForce FX 5950 Ultra, and it was beaten by ATI Radeon X850 XT Platinum Edition, which was 161.04% faster, XFX GeForce 6800 Ultra, which was 160.06% faster, ATI Radeon X800 XT Platinum Edition, which was 117.86% faster, Leadtek GeForce 6600 GT AGP, which was 86.69% faster, Sapphire Radeon X800 Pro, which was 62.66% faster, and ATI Radeon 9800 XT, which was 3.57% faster.
At a resolution of 1600×1200 enabling image quality enhancements, HIS Radeon X700 achieved a performance similar to ATI Radeon 9800 XT, and it was beaten by XFX GeForce 6800 Ultra, which was 218.98% faster, ATI Radeon X850 XT Platinum Edition, which was 188.89% faster, ATI Radeon X800 XT Platinum Edition, which was 140.28% faster, Leadtek GeForce 6600 GT AGP, which was 98.15% faster, Sapphire Radeon X800 Pro, which was 73.15% faster and Gigabyte GeForce FX 5950 Ultra, which was 6.48% faster.
[nextpage title=”Far Cry”]
Far Cry is a game based on the new Shader 3.0 (DirectX 9.0c) programming model available on series 6 and 7 from NVIDIA and series X1000 from ATI graphics chips. We’ve updated the game to version 1.1.
As we’ve done on other programs, we ran this game at three resolutions, 1024x768x32, 1280x1024x32 and 1600x1200x32. This game allows several image quality levels and we’ve done our benchmarking on two levels, low and very high. To measure the performance we used the demo created by German magazine PC Games Hardware (PCGH), available at https://www.3dcenter.org/downloads/farcry-pcgh-vga.php. We run this demo four times and made an arithmetical average with the results. This average is the result presented in our graphs.
This game has a very important detail in its image quality configuration. Antialising, instead of being configured by numbers (1x, 2x, 4x or 6x) is configured as low, medium or high. The problem is that on NVIDIA chips both medium and high mean 4x, while on ATI chips medium means 2x and high means 6x, making the comparison between ATI and NVIDIA chips completely unfair. Because of that we configured antialising at 4x and anisotropic filtering at 8x manually at the video driver control panel.
For further details on how to measure 3D performance with Far Cry, read our tutorial on this subject.
At a resolution of 1024×768 without any image quality enhancement, HIS Radeon X700 achieved a performance similar to Leadtek GeForce 6600 GT AGP and it was 82.84% faster than Gigabyte GeForce FX 5950 Ultra.
HIS Radeon X700 was beaten by ATI Radeon 9800 XT, which was 12.84% faster, ATI Radeon X800 XT Platinum Edition, which was 10.84% faster, ATI Radeon X850 XT Platinum Edition, which was 10.82% faster, Sapphire Radeon X800 Pro, which was 9.78% faster and XFX GeForce 6800 Ultra, which was 5.40% faster.
At a resolution of 1280×1024 without any image quality enhancement, HIS Radeon X700 achieved a performance similar to Leadtek GeForce 6600 GT AGP and it was 146.97% faster than Gigabyte GeForce FX 5950 Ultra.
HIS Radeon X700 was beaten by Sapphire Radeon X800 Pro, which was 18.52% faster, ATI Radeon 9800 XT, which was 18.11% faster, ATI Radeon X800 XT Platinum Edition, which was 17.85% faster, ATI Radeon X850 XT Platinum Edition, which was 16.06% faster and XFX GeForce 6800 Ultra, which was 11.29% faster.
At a resolution of 1600×1200 without any image quality enhancement, HIS Radeon X700 was 149.04% faster than Gigabyte GeForce FX 5950 Ultra.
HIS Radeon X700 was beaten by ATI Radeon X800 XT Platinum Edition, which was 65.73% faster, Sapphire Radeon X800 Pro, which was 65.58% faster, ATI Radeon X850 XT Platinum Edition, which was 62.87% faster, XFX GeForce 6800 Ultra, which was 62.67% faster, ATI Radeon 9800 XT, which was 33.53% faster, and Leadtek GeForce 6600 GT AGP, which was 23,38% faster.
At a resolution of 1024×768 enabling image quality enhancements, HIS Radeon X700 achieved a performance similar to Gigabyte GeForce FX 5950 Ultra and it was beaten by ATI Radeon X850 XT Platinum Edition, which was 146.32% faster, ATI Radeon X800 XT Platinum Edition, which was 145.05% faster, XFX GeForce 6800 Ultra, which was 137.35% faster, Sapphire Radeon X800 Pro, which was 99.04% faster, ATI Radeon 9800 XT, which was 20.69% faster, and Leadtek GeForce 6600 GT AGP, which was 10.95% faster.
At a resolution of 1280×1024 enabling image quality enhancements, HIS Radeon X700 achieved a performance similar to Leadtek GeForce 6600 GT AGP and it was beaten by ATI Radeon X850 XT Platinum Edition, which was 210.26% faster, XFX GeForce 6800 Ultra, which was 170.74% faster, ATI Radeon X800 XT Platinum Edition, which was 170.17% faster, Sapphire Radeon X800 Pro, which was 97.86% faster, ATI Radeon 9800 XT, which was 18.56% faster, and Gigabyte GeForce FX 5950 Ultra, which was 5.33% faster.
At a resolution of 1600×1200 enabling image quality enhancements, HIS Radeon X700 was beaten by ATI Radeon X850 XT Platinum Edition, which was 297.45% faster, XFX GeForce 6800 Ultra, which was 249.42% faster, ATI Radeon X800 XT Platinum Edition, which was 211.81% faster, Sapphire Radeon X800 Pro, which was 131.41% faster, ATI Radeon 9800 XT, which was 46.28% faster, Gigabyte GeForce FX 5950 Ultra, which was 29.59% faster, and Leadtek GeForce 6600 GT AGP, which was 29.52% faster.
[nextpage title=”Conclusions”]
HIS Radeon X700 AGP competes directly with the AGP version of GeForce 6600 GT, as they are located on the same price range.
GeForce 6600 GT was faster than Radeon X700 on almost all tests, achieving a performance up to 98.15% higher. Radeon X700 was faster only on 3DMark01 SE at 1600×1200 enabling image quality enhancements (10.75% faster than GeForce 6600 GT).
So, if we were looking for an AGP video card up to USD 140, we would buy a GeForce 6600 GT AGP, not a Radeon X700 AGP.
We think Radeon X700 AGP would be a good buy only if it were positioned at the USD 100 range or even below.