HIS Excalibur Radeon 9800 PRO IceQ / 128 MB

[Thomas]

It appears to me, that not many SPCR readers, uses the HIS Excalibur Radeon 9800 PRO IceQ / 128 MB.

I think it's an interesting card, especially if you like me is still on the AGP bandwagon. So I've ordered one

According to this FiringSquad review, it still performs reasonably. In several cases, it's pretty close to the GeForce 6600 GT. http://www.firingsquad.com/hardware/gef ... _pentium4/

It tends to be a card on the warm/hot side, with a 30/47 watt consumption(idle/load). Idle it's more than 6600GT, but under load it's less.

However, it comes standard with a Arctic Cooling Silencer rev. 1, which appears to have a very impressive reputation. The great thing about this, is there's NO warranty issues during to mounting aftermarket coolers.

Where I live, the price is comparable to the plain 6600 with stock cooler, and quite a bit cheaper than a 6600GT, again with stock cooler.

Upcoming games might be an issue, the performance picture might change. I dont know. But for me, a casual gamer, that doesnt matter much - to give you an indication, I've just bought a Sempron 2800+

At this point, it's somewhat theoretical. In a few days, I'll recieve the HIS Excalibur Radeon 9800 PRO IceQ

[hazindu]

Looks like you got a pretty good deal. I used a arctic cooling vga silencer on my 9800pro back in the day and it was a great improvement in both cooling and noise over the stock pos.

[Mar.]

If you have AGP, it's probably a good way to go if a totally fanless card won't work in your case. You get all the benefits of a VGA silencer, without voiding your warranty.

If you want some serious overclocking potential, throw some ramsinks on there, too. The VGA Silencer can take you beyond 9800 XT speeds on the core if you're lucky. Ramsinks will help you do the rest of the work.

When you finish, you'll have the equivalent of a 128MB 9800XT.

[gmorse]

I've bought this card 2 weeks ago to replace an old Radeon 9500. Pleased as punch with it. Newegg periodically has refurbished units, so I picked up one of those for $107 shipped. Didn't come with any of the drivers/cables/manual or anything else, but didn't need them.

[Thomas]

Yeah, I think I've found a good deal.

I got a Zalman ZM80D, but my FX5700 died... warranty problems couldnt be solved... So now I'm mainly looking for graphic cards with good/silent cooling STANDARD solutions

Anyway, it appears that the Radeon 9800 Pro have compability problems with my Asus A7V880 mobo. It's with a Via chipset, and there's a lot of people on the Via forums with compability problems like mine. Thing is, the card works great, except when entering a 3D application. The entire system either freezes or (best case) exit the particular application.

I've tried almost every combo of drivers, BIOS etc. I've also wrote to ATI, waiting for response.

Next step is to try another AGP card in my system, to ensure the AGP port is working properly. If it do, I'll probably get a new compatible mobo, because I really like the Excalibur.

Back to the silent subject. I'm in doubt which version of the Arctic Cooler it comes with. It looks a lot like the "VGA Silencer rev.3" on www.arctic-cooling.com.

Anyway, the Silencer is very, very quiet at low fan speed. I tend to say it's less noisy, than my Glacialtec Silent Breeze III at 6 volt. But at high speed, the AC is pretty noisy. Much more than the Glacialtec. I'm not into overclocking, so this dont mean much to me. Just wanted to tell you guys

And by the way, this forum is one of the best I've seen for a very long time. Very good behavior

[Mar.]

As I've said in numerous posts, my VGA Silencer is VERY quiet. At high speed, I can only hear it if I shut off my ceiling fan, and pay close attention. Even then, it's just a gentle whoosh of flowing air, which I do not consider to be annoying at all.

As of now, the loudest component in my system is the 120mm inner fan on my PSU, which is the stock Antec one in the SLK3700AMB. Second to that would be my hard drive, third is the Nexus 92mm fan on my CPU, and only after all of those, can I hear the VGA silencer. I have not modded it at all to get it that quiet, it just is.

At low speed, it is totally inaudible. But, I am hesitant to run it at low speed, because my PC stays on at all times, and it is the middle of July. High speed is fine for me, so I leave it there.

However, this does not match up with other users' reports of the VGA Silencer. Mine, as far as I can tell, either runs slower than it is supposed to at high speed, or is just a one-in-a-million quality fan.

[RV8C]

I recently bought the VGA Silencer Rev3 for my 9800Pro. Worked great as advertised for almost a month. One day, came back to my computer after dinner and poof - nothing on the screen anymore! Silencer Fan still running, but no signal at all. So I swapped out the 9800Pro with a AIW 9800Pro, computer is fine again. I put the (dead) 9800Pro into another computer, same thing, no signal. okay, so maybe my 9800Pro bit the dust. So I go get a X700Pro, put the VGA Silencer on it and guess what?? No signal again! Then I put the stock heatsink back on, and the X700Pro runs perfectly. I'm willing to bet that my 9800Pro was never dead - the VGA Silencer must be interfering somehow!

Long story short - does anyone have an idea what's going on? Just more info - I used AS5 for the heatsinks, and I'm not a n00b when it comes to AS5. Thanks for any suggestions! I'll try the OEM heatsink on the 9800Pro sometime this week, but I have a feeling that all is well w/ the card....

Cheers

[wim]

hi Thomas, i got one of these last year after doom 3 came out (on recommendation from Jan Kivar). performance is good, it has taken me through doom 3 and half-life 2 and they ran well. the card is quite hot, the ramsinks are too hot to touch sometimes and will heat up the case a fair amount even though the gpu cooling uses an exhaust vent. it is also the loudest thing in my system some day i'm going to get around to attacking this one..

one complaint - if i shut down or restart the computer in portrait mode (3:4 or 1200x1600, which i like to work with in documents) then it [win2k] craps out at next load and the only way to get back to normal is to reinstall catalyst drivers. that's kind of annoying, but avoidable if i just remember to jump back to landscape before shutting down.

recommended. if i was buying vga again today i might try and get one of the passive 6600GT (not much more $ but they weren't around here when i was buying) and get a new mobo too.

some pics of the (stock) arctic cooler on my card in this thread:
http://forums.silentpcreview.com/viewto ... ght=radeon

[Jan Kivar]

Anyway, it appears that the Radeon 9800 Pro have compability problems with my Asus A7V880 mobo. It's with a Via chipset, and there's a lot of people on the Via forums with compability problems like mine. Thing is, the card works great, except when entering a 3D application. The entire system either freezes or (best case) exit the particular application.

I've tried almost every combo of drivers, BIOS etc. I've also wrote to ATI, waiting for response.

Try forcing AGP down to 1x with PowerStrip. Helped a friend of mine with his 9700 Pro.

Cheers,

Jan

[Stretchman]

Hello there Thomas,

This is my first post on the site. Greetings to all

I've used the HIS Excalibur Radon Pro 9800 128mb card for a few years now, and wanted to comment on my experiences with it.

I originally purchased this card due to some very positive reviews it recieved upon release, and due to the fact that it is one of the few cards that met my rather specific requirements at the time:

1. Must provide good gaming performance
2. Must run quiet during productivity session with MS-Word, Internet browsing, etc (i'm not gaming ALL the time you know)
3. Must let me see PoST/Bios with my Apple 23" Cinema Display

The last requirement was the biggest kicker, and i'm happy to say that the HIS Radon 9800 Pro serves me well on each point. It's a very quiet card with an excellent cooling system attached first thing out of the box, and it runs World of Warcraft @ 1920x1200 very well. Doom 3 and Half-Life 2 were a bit of a wash for me - Doom 3 had my crying, it just wasn't up to snuff, and Half-Life 2 was so-so at 1024x768. I'm a very picky gamer though.

Happily, most other games still perform quite well - after all this time, its still a very viable mid-range choice for casual and some hardcore gamers, depending on the games you play. As I mentioned, WoW runs very well ( also using 3.4 ghz P-4, and 1gb of RAM, so that helps quite a bit), as does Battlefield 2 @ medium resolutions. Other games like Battle for Middle Earth, Lego Star Wars, Knights of the Old Republic II perform splendidly too, so you'll no doubt have quite a variety to choose from.

I'm not leaving the AGP bandwagon anytime soon either, so in the future I might consider the Radeon Pro 9800's bigger brother, the HIS Excalibur Radeon x800, which has gotten some very good press. Prices are falling on that one too, users on Newegg have really lauded the increase in performance it provides.

I hope my feedback helps - enjoy that card!

[Thomas]

Thanks for all the replies

My card has showed up, to be defect If I cool it hard, that is, the AC on high speed, and 4 other 8 cm fans at 12 volt, a very cean airpath, AND open windows to take advantage of a lot of fresh air from the outside... Then some of the the 3D applications can run for up to 15 minutes, while the more extensive ones dies after a minute or two... As soon as I go back to normal, but good cooling, the thing freeze after max. 30 secs. Even with the AC at high speed...

So now I'm waiting for the RMA process

But you guys are rigth, about RAM heatsinks and other components gets pretty warm/hot. However, a front and a rear fan seems to help a lot about this.

But I'll have to check it out, when I get my new card

[Jan Kivar]

My card has showed up, to be defect If I cool it hard, that is, the AC on high speed, and 4 other 8 cm fans at 12 volt, a very cean airpath, AND open windows to take advantage of a lot of fresh air from the outside... Then some of the the 3D applications can run for up to 15 minutes, while the more extensive ones dies after a minute or two... As soon as I go back to normal, but good cooling, the thing freeze after max. 30 secs. Even with the AC at high speed...

Sad to hear that. I have only a Nexus 120 mm @ 12V as exhaust on my 3700BQE. Maybe the AC was loose?

Cheers,

Jan

[Wedge]

Just wanted to comment on the 9800 and Arctic VGA silencer rev. 3 as well. I have no complaints about the sound level. The switch is on "low" and it stays on low, no matter the application. If turned to "high" it quickly becomes audible. This PC (see sig) is almost dead silent - I have no doubt that the carpet muffles most of any noise that would otherwise be audible.

Performance:
For the casual gamer, performance is excellent, even with the latest games like Doom 3 and HL2.

For a serious gamer, it becomes weak in certain games (Doom 3, for example) when the AA is turned on and the resolution is taken higher than 1024 x 768. The in-game detail level settings can be taken no higher than "medium" if reasonably good performance is expected. Overall, for the eye-candy enthusiast, this card is weak for Doom 3, but otherwise perfectly playable.

Also worth mentioning is that the latest ATI drivers are a super-boost to titles such as Doom 3.

2D performance is wonderful as well, altough I have no benchmark for reference in this area. Color output is wonderfully accurate to my eyes and text is very clear. Also, no wavy lines like my older GF2 Ultra card.

[Thomas]

It's good to hear good things abut this card. I'm still waiting for my second card, so I havent tried it yet... expatations goes higher

I also suspect the mounting of that cooler. However, it wasnt loose at all. But maybe it dont have proper contact to the GPU. Or it might be another component, which is overheating...

When I get the 9800 and it works fine, the next step is to get two 8 cm fans, which is more silent than my current Antec tricool. And a novibe for my HDD. Looking forward to that...

[Thomas]

I sent the card in for RMA; and the card is dead. Unfortunately, no one around here stock it anymore, so I got my money back. I ended up choosing the Galaxy GeForce 6800, it should be here tomorrow.

It performs better, makes less heat and since the price was double, it also made good room in my wallet, for upcoming savings

Tomorrow, I have a day of work, he he...