The HIS is immediately striking thanks to the huge IceQ cooler, which is longer than the card itself. But if you have the space, this heatsink houses the quietest fan of the whole group, and it won’t leave all the resulting heat inside the case as a passive cooler would. Unfortunately, it’s so tall the card takes up two backplates, which rules it out for small form factors.

But there are more features to add to the appeal: HIS includes a good bundle including Dungeon Siege and an S-Video cable, as well as composite and component adapters. ATI’s X1000 series cards all have at least one dual-link DVI connector, so high-resolution displays are no problem, and the X1300 cards support D-SUB.

The Excalibur returned 25fps and 21fps in Call of Duty 2 and Far Cry respectively, so with a few tweaks to quality settings you should see smooth gameplay at 1024 x 768.

But this isn’t a gamer’s card, and even when considered as a media centre card it can’t compete with the 7600 GS at this price. ATI’s image quality is slightly superior, so this card does have its strengths, but not enough to recommend it over NVIDIA’s low-cost rival.