HIS has made a good decision to include their winning design IceQ X2 cooling system which is efficient while keeping the noise at very acceptable levels. While the top heatsink is massive, the PCB does not bend thanks to the included metallic plate, which also helps cooling the rest of the components. This is not all: the VRM area has been enhanced in order to provide more overclocking potential. While the GPU frequency is 50MHz over the stock version, we could raise it even further to 1205MHz and the memory from 1500Mhz to 1590MHz, and this WITHOUT modifying the operating voltages.

Regarding the performance of the board, we could say that it wins over the 7970 Ghz Edition, but not by far, both cards are neck-to-neck most of the time. The card is also quite close to the GTX 770 and in some AMD-optimized games, our sample even exceeds the performance of the Gigabyte OC 770 WF card.

For added value we have the iTurbo utility which supports the latest card releases and allows us to fine-tune the fan speed, define new profiles, but also to overclock the card with ease by modifying the power limits and voltages.

The HIS Radeon R9 280X IceQ X2 Turbo card is available online for about 262 Euros, which makes it definitely a better deal compared to the 7970 GHz Edition, that can be found in the same price range.

HIS R9 280X iPower IceQ X2 Turbo Boost Clock 3GB Video Card is Recommended For:

We would like to thank again to HIS for making this review possible!