HIS 6870 IceQ X Turbo X - An Even Faster 6870
HIS is back again with a new and faster Radeon HD 6870. The HIS 6870 IceQ X Turbo X features an improved cooler and is even more aggressively overclocked for better gaming performance. Find out it fared in detail in this quick review.
X Makes the Difference
Launched in October last year, the Radeon HD 6870 (Northern Islands) marked the beginning of a new generation of graphics card for AMD. It isn’t a major step forward in terms of architecture, but AMD has successfully managed to optimize the 40nm process by packing in more performance in less cores and making their chips more energy efficient. And as we noted in our early review of the Radeon HD 6870 series, we found it to be a great mid to high-end graphics cards.
HIS is one of the more popular brands for AMD/ATI branded cards and earlier, we've reviewed their Radeon HD 6870 Turbo card. Now, they have come up with their own customized take on the Radeon HD 6870, which is even more extreme. The HIS Radeon HD 6870 IceQ X Turbo X (not the most elegant name, we have to say) is the company’s top Radeon HD 6870 card and it comes with a host of features that befits a flagship card.
For one, the card comes with company’s famous IceQ X cooler, which has been continuously revised and improved in past years. The latest generation IceQ X cooler has a eye-catching light blue translucent cooler with a 92mm large cooling fan and four thick heatpipes to quick draw away heat from the GPU core. On top of that, HIS has also taken a page out of MSI’s Military Class components and fitted the card with solid state capacitors and solid state chokes for better current capacity, efficiency and stability.
And to further improve the card, HIS has also factory overclocked it at a heady 975MHz at the core and 4600MHz DDR at the memory - a substantial bump of 75MHz and 400MHz DDR respectively.
All things considered, the HIS Radeon HD 6870 IceQ X Turbo X seems to have all the right ingredients, but before we find out how it performs, here are some photos to whet your appetite.
The new HIS Radeon HD 6870 IceQ X Turbo X above and the Radeon HD 6870 Turbo below.
The card features the usual twin DVI ports, single HDMI port and two mini-DisplayPort 1.2 ports.
To keep the card cool, the cooler employs four thick heat pipes to draw heat away from the GPU core and dissipate them to the heatsink array.
Test Setup
We’ll be evaluating the new 6870 IceQ X Turob with our X58 testbed which has the following specifications:
- Intel Core i7-975 (3.33GHz)
- Gigabyte GA-EX58-UD4P motherboard
- 3 x 1GB DDR3-1333 G.Skill memory in triple channel mode
- Seagate 7200.10 200GB SATA hard drive
- Windows 7 Ultimate
Key observations here will be how much faster is the new HIS 6870 IceQ X Turbo X compared to the HIS 6870 Turbo we reviewed earlier. We have also included results of the recently reviewed MSI R6870 Hawk and a reference Radeon HD 6870 for comparison.
We have also presented results of the HIS card in its highest overclocking state. Using MSI Afterburner, we managed to get the card running stably at an impressive 1000MHz at the core and 4800MHz DDR at the memory.
The list of cards tested and driver versions used:
- HIS 6870 IceQ X Turbo X 1GB GDDR5 (Catalyst 11.2)
- MSI R6870 Hawk 1GB GDDR5 (Catalyst 11.1)
- HIS 6870 Turbo 1GB GDDR5 (Catalyst 10.10)
- AMD Radeon HD 6870 1GB GDDR5 (Catalyst 10.12)
- NVIDIA GeForce GTX 560 Ti 1GB GDDR5 (ForceWare 266.56)
- NVIDIA GeForce GTX 550 Ti 1GB GDDR5 (ForceWare 266.71)
- NVIDIA GeForce GTX 460 1GB GDDR5 (ForceWare 263.09)
The list of benchmarks used:
- Futuremark 3DMark Vantage
- Futuremark 3DMark 11
- Crysis Warhead
- Far Cry 2
- Battlefield Bad Company 2
Quick Out of The Box
HIS claims their 6870 IceQ X Turbo X is the “world’s fastest Radeon HD 6870” and based on our findings here, we think they are right. Judging from clock speeds alone, the HIS card is the highest amongst their competitors. Out of the box, the HIS 6870 IceQ X Turbo X was about 5% to 10% quicker than the MSI R6870 Hawk and the previously reviewed HIS Radeon HD 6870 Turbo.
However, because its clock speeds are already so high, the HIS 6870 IceQ X Turbo X, unfortunately does not leave much room for overclocking. And in its overclocked state, you can see that performance doesn’t improve significantly.
Furthermore, while the HIS 6870 IceQ X Turbo X is quick, it is also runs considerably warmer than its MSI competitor - 64 degrees Celsius against 57 degrees Celsius. In its overclocked state, it ran even warmer at 68 degrees Celsius. We also noted that it has a slightly higher power draw than the other cards, but the difference isn't significant enough to worry about.
For casual users who are willing to splash the cash, the HIS 6870 IceQ X Turbo X is blazing quick without any modifications or tweaking needed.
At US$239, the HIS 6870 IceQ X Turbo X is slightly pricier than most Radeon HD 6870 cards in the market right now (considering most retail for around US$219), but for the money, you get a card that is blazing fast out of the box. In summary, the HIS 6870 IceQ X Turbo X is perfect for those who want a fuss-free Radeon HD 6870 that is quick out the box. For those who want to tinker about with their cards, there are more customizable options such as MSI’s R6870 Hawk.
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