VGA Reviews by stefan @ 2012-09-24
The Radeon HD 7750 comes with an efficient and silent cooling solution, in low profile format and with very good overclocking capabilities, which makes it a very good card for integrating into a media center. With it we are also able to game with medium to high details most games with the 1680x1050 or 1680x1200 resolutions.
At first I would like to thank HIS for offering a sample of their Radeon HD 7750 iCooler 1GB GDDR5 PCI-E video card for testing and reviewing
“HIS - Hightech Information System Limited is an internationally acclaimed graphics cards company. Time and time again, HIS were compared and tested by hundreds of worldly renowned critics. The results are phenomena, HIS have proven to offer far superior, cooler, quieter, and faster graphic cards than any other leading rivals. Up to the fourth quarter of 2011, HIS has won over 1300 awards with AMD graphic solution from major media worldwide. HIS is being recognized by providing performance leading and award-wining products: IceQ, IceQ X and Turbo Edition.
HIS was established in 1987 with the mission to produce the highest quality PC products in the industry. Besides strong devotion to excellent products and services, HIS has been conducting business with the aim to "Glorifying God". Honesty and integrity are the two key principals of how HIS are conducted. Ethical business practice has been an everyday commitment to our clients, vendors, and investors.
Headquartered in Hong Kong, and with sales offices and distribution networks in Europe, Middle East, North and South America, Asia Pacific Regions; our worldwide customers benefits from efficient and localized services. ISO Certified, HIS's manufacturing facility in China is managed by a team of professionals with expertise in quality control and production planning. Working with world-class clients, HIS has been consistently meeting high quality standards and fulfilled volume order in short lead-time.
HIS is proud to be AMD's Authorized 1st Tier AIB Partner, Certified Partner and Launching Partner. Long term and favorable relationship with AMD, enable HIS to work closely with AMD to promote the HIS AMD Graphics Board; and to strive for best value on the marketing and sales of HIS AMD Product Line.
In Sept 2003, HIS incorporated the state-of-the art Supreme Cooling Technology in the award winning HIS 9800Pro IceQ, which caught the attention of worldwide media. Since then, HIS IceQ series and the latest IceQ X series has been the limelight in the market for its outstanding performance and features over the other rivals.
Today, HIS continues its avid commitment to quality product and service. HIS is certain to be Your Choice of Graphics Board Supplier.”
Good Graphics Power for HTPC Users
With core and memory clocks at 800MHz and 4500MHz, the card ensures the highest graphics enjoyment for movies and various applications, perfect for HTPC users.
The card is bundled with low profile brackets to fit your slim HTPC case!With HIS high quality component, the card has higher stability and longer life span. The card also comes with the innovative overclocking software by HIS – iTurbo. User can control the temperature, speed and power in their hands!The card has low power consumption, requiring only 400W power supply and no external power! It is also loaded with AMD latest power saving technologies such as AMD PowerPlay™ & AMD PowerTune technologies!
iCooler is Quiet
The card is equipped with iCooler, making it extremely quiet and noise level is less than 28dB. You feel the quietness when viewing photos, browsing webs, checking your email and playing movies in UVD mode.
Low Profile Ready for Slim Cases
The card comes with 2x Low Profile brackets to fit both full-height and half-height cases, ideal for Media Centers & Home Theater PCs. You could conveninetly turn the card into a low profile card, plug it in your slim case without worrying if the card size exceeds the case’s.
iTurbo
It is not good for the graphics card to be alone. Hardwares and softwares are made for each other. iTurbo is your software assistant to control your graphics card to be quiet, cool and experience overclocking by simply pressing the iTurbo Button!
User Friendly Overclocking Software: Cooler, Quieter, OC!
iTurbo's Fan Control and Fan Monitoring allow easy adjustment of your card to its maximum cooling performance or to run your card quietly!
Press iTurbo: OC Right Away!
With the smart auto overclocking function, users can experience a slight performance boost for selected HIS graphic cards with just one click!
Powerful Overclocking Software
Either you wish to unleash its full potential or to make it more environmental friendly, iTurbo is ready for you!iTurbo is compatible with all cards! Enjoy OC no matter what card you have!
High Quality Components
HIS uses only the finest materials and the most advanced techniques to build our cards, making them one of the most stable and durable product in the industry. The card is engineered with the highest standard of safety, preventing them any potential damages. The extra PWM phase and Solid State Choke gives extra stability to the card!
New Technology, New Experience
GCN
With AMD GCN technology, the card optimizes DirectX® 11.1 gaming performance automatically up to 2.5 times faster! It also offers up to 4.5x compute performance and up to 95% lower GPU Idle Power Consumption!
Apps Faster & Smoother!
The card enables a “quality graphics” experience on everyday applications, giving huge performance boosts on image processing, file compression, media converter apps, and a lot more!
• Adobe photoshop CS6
• Corel Winzip 16.5
• Musemage
• Handbrake
• MotionDSP Vreveal
• GIMP
• Cyberlink Power Director
• ArcSoft Media Converter
PCI-e 3.0 Support
Armed with the latest PCI-e 3.0 bus design maximizes performance by delivering double bandwidth per lane of PCI-e 2.x. Paired the card with the latest platforms and get the ultimate performance!
More Graphics, Less Power
Low Power Consumption
You do not have to worry about having the proper power connection from you power supply. No external power is needed and power is supplied through the card slot. The card requires only 400W power supply. Just plug the card in and enjoy the superb graphics experiences!
Optimized Power & Performance
The new architecture of the card gets more usable processing power for your money, enabling better frame rates in the latest games at high resolutions. In addition, with AMD PowerPlay & AMD PowerTune technologies, you can optimize the balance between performance and power consumption of your system by adjusting the engine clock during runtime of the card. Manage the power and keep your wallet loaded!
Game Better & Faster
Game Better & FasterWith full Microsoft DirectX® 11.1 support, the card is ready for next generation DirectX games. Equipped with AMD HD3D technology, you can enjoy a stereo 3D experience in the latest 3D games. The card also offers up to 2x faster tessellation and faster DirectCompute over earlier cards. Gamers will be pleased to enjoy the life-like graphics!
List of approved monitors for AMD HD3D Technology:
• Samsung SA700
• Samsung SA750
• Samsung TA950
• Samsung SA950
• Samsung TA 750
• LG D2342P
• LG D237IPS
Sounds Better
Output protected high bit rate 7.1 channel surround sound over HDMI with no additional cables required, heightening the sense of reality!
See Better, Enjoy Better!
The card supports 30” LCD monitor and any large size TV up to 80" feature with 16:9 ratio in amazing 4096 by 2160 resolution. Up-scaling your computer into a multimedia center with the biggest display!
Enjoy HD Beauty
With Full HD 1080p support, the card delivers high quality 1920X1080 graphics, enabling seamless full-screen video playback. See HD, hear HD and feel HD - Enjoy the beautiful graphics now with the card!
Enjoy Copy Protected Movies
The card is HDCP compliant, enabling users to play copy-protected content, such as commercial DVD movies.
Enjoy True to Life Graphics
Quad HD videos have resolution four times that of current HD videos, meaning images too clear that may deceive your eyes! With the card, you are set for getting the movie theater experience to your home. You may be able to watch a video shooting the Eiffel tower and zoom it in to see your friend’s face clearly from the top! Get your eyes impressed and enjoy mind-blowing graphics with extreme clarity, depth and texture!
View More, Work Better
Are you wishing to have multi-display Video Conferencing? Or having one dedicated screen just for Facebook and a second for emails? These are not dream anymore. The card features 2 Mini-display Ports for enhanced workspace flexibility. You can easily connect to two displays, including the 27” Apple LED Cinema Displays with the two Mini DisplayPorts. The dual-link DVI port allows you connect to a 30” DVI display up to 2560x1600. Resolution can even reach 4096x2160 with HDMI that are good for TV up to 80"!
Hear Better in Video Conference
Most GPUs today support only one audio stream at a time. The card, however, has Discrete Digital Multi-Point Audio that can simultaneously output multiple, independent audio streams. Audio seamlessly follows the video, providing affordable multi-display, multi-audio conferencing for consumers!The card is an ideal solution for all those who rely on having several applications visible simultaneously for extra productivity. Multi-tasking and multi-display video conferencing just got a lot simpler! Make your computer a multi-display workstation!
The Radeon HD 7750 iCooler from HIS is shipped in a nice themed cardboard box, with the Excalibur sword on the frontal side and some small logos describing the supported technologies along with the included software customization utility:
One of the box sides shows us the compatible connector where we should fit the card in:
The opposite explains us some of the advantages of product registration on the website, along with the box contents:
The back side of the box goes more in detail regarding the features newly introduced AMD Radeon cards; here we will also see the system requirements:
For extra protection, HIS has sealed both box sides with a circular, transparent plastic protective film:
By removing the outside packaging, we will discover another plain cardboard box:
Besides the multi-language Quick Installation Guide, we will also find inside two discs, one with the HIS utility and the other with the card drivers; as always, we recommend installing the latest drivers from the AMD website, because the ones recorded on the disc usually get outdated fast:
The card is held inside a transparent plastic mold, with a protective sponge underneath:
Besides it we'll find two extra I/O shields, that we can install depending on the case we will use the card into:
While the last Radeon HD 7750 we have tested was full-size, this one comes in a low profile format, with the VGA port linked separately with a cable:
The two small blue fans are branded HIS and blow air onto the heatsink, which covers almost two thirds of the PCB:
While looking on the card laterals, we can see how the aluminum heatsink is placed onto the components:
The back side of the card sports a clean design and here we can find some of the stickers with board identification numbers:
On the pre-installed shield,we can find the VGA port, one HDMI and a DVI port:
The board heatsink can be removed really easy because it is held only with four screws with springs; with it's removal, we have uncovered the board GPU and memory:
The HIS Radeon HD 7750 iCooler comes with 4 Elpida W2032BBBG memory chips, which are GDDR5 and specified to run at 1250MHz (5000Mhz Effective):
Here is a closer look on the Cape Verde graphics processor:
The heatsink makes direct contact with the GPU surface and uses transparent plastic spacers at the screw holes:
CPU: Intel I5 3570K Retail @ 4.7GHz
CPU Cooler: Noctua NH-D14
Motherboard: ECS Z77H2-AX Black Extreme
RAM: GeIL Black Dragon 2x4GB DDR2133 (@1600)
Video: HIS Radeon HD 7750
Power Supply: Cooler Master 850W
HDD: Seagate Barracuda 320GB 7200.10
Case: Cooler Master ATCS 840
With the help of the GPU-Z 0.6.4 utility, we could extract lots of information regarding the video card clocks,memory type, pixel and texture fill rate and so on:
To extract even more information, we have used the AIDA64 utility:
Here are the CAL capabilities of the RADEON HD 7750:
For finding out the temperatures in both IDLE and Full Load with the fan set on Auto, we left the computer IDLE for about 25 minutes and then started monitoring with HWINFO64 and logged the values obtained while running Heaven 3.0 at 2560x1440 resolution for an additional 30 minutes, with details at maximum and Tesselation set to Extreme. During this time, the ambient temperature was held steady at 25.4 degrees Celsius:
Before finding out the noise the video card was producing, I have first measured the noise inside the room the tests took place and I found out it was 29.7dBA (with everything turned off).
At all times, the sound meter was placed 20cm near the video card.
The GPU fan was controlled by the latest version of Catalyst Control Center:
HIS have shipped the card with a special customization utility named iTurbo; after it has been installed, we will be welcomed by a minimal interface, like a wheel, with multiple items that we can access:
The full interface imitates a metallic housing, with a display in the center; the menus can be found on the top like Home, Info, Overclock and so on:
The Info tab lets us know detailed information regarding the installed VGA card:
From the Overclock tab we can clearly seen that the CCC limits can be exceeded without any issues:
Fan control profiles can be edited and saved in the respective tab:
Finally, we have some additional settings inside the next menu:
In the Heaven 3.0 synthetic benchmark, we get about two thirds of the performance obtained with the overclocked card from XFX, the 7770 SOE.
With all details set to maximum, the card manages to produce over 25FPS framerates at 1680x1050 with no filtering applied. If we increase the filtering and resolutions further, we will get a lot of choppyness.
The trend continues in Crysis Warhead, where we get almost 75% of the overclocked 7770 performance.
Dirt 3 is a game where we get over 30FPS performances till 1920x1080; if we apply filtering, it falls under.
The card performs great in this game and we can even play well at the highest resolution.
In LP2, the card is brought to it's knees again and it seems it needs a little more power to be able to produce playable framerates.
In Stalker : COP, the 7750 handles well at the 1680x1050 resolution.
Street Fighter 4 is another game where the Radeon 7750 performs really good, at any resolution, with or without filtering.
In World in Conflict, we get decent framerates at both 1680x1050 and 1920x1080.
Shooter games like Crysis 2 usually need a lot of FPS to provide a good experience, but with the 7750 we weren’t able to obtain good results when testing at the highest detail settings.
Just Cause can be run well at both 1680x1050, but without 8xAA filtering.
F1 2011 will run at decent FPS values till 1920x1080, without any AA filtering applied.
We would recommend running Batman AC only at the 1680x1050 resolution, which proved to be the most playable.
In Metro 2033, we did not succeed to obtain playable framerates, at any resolution.
Finally, in Dirt Showdown we have obtained acceptable framerates until reaching 1920x1080, without AA applied.
The card that we have reviewed in this article from HIS does come in a low profile format, which is ideal in case we’d like to fit it in a small factor enclosure; the manufacturer has made sure to include some extra I/O shields, that we could use depending on the outputs we’ll need.
The “iCooler is Quiet” statement is not a lie; even in full load, during all our tests, the VGA card fans remained quiet and as we have seen from the measurements with the sound meter, there is a very small noise difference between 30% and 40%, the fan speed percentages the card usually remains during usage.
Our previous recommendations regarding the games we could play with this card are still in place (from the previous AMD RADEON HD 7750 review): this card performs well when running up to 1680x1050 or 1600x1200, with the details from medium to high on most of the latest games. When running older releases, we may be surprised to see that this card handles well games at even the 1920x1080 resolution, considering that it has about the same performances as the RADEON HD 5770, which was a best-buy mainstream card for quite a long time.
The Radeon HD 7750 we have tested from AMD in March did achieve an 880MHz frequency on the GPU when overclocking via CCC and we did not break the imposed 900MHz limit. With the HIS card it was another story: right from the start we have cranked the GPU at the maximum frequency and the card wasn’t giving any sign of weakness. The next step was to run the supplied utility and after hours of testing we have reached a maximum frequency of 960Mhz on the core and 1340Mhz on the memory, which is impressive in our opinion.
To compare the performances, we have run the 3DMark 2011 synthetic benchmark, so here are the results:
The card is available online for about 80 Euros, which is a good price considering its overclockability and custom, silent cooling.
I would like to thank again to HIS for making this review possible!