VGA Reviews by stefan @ 2013-08-12
The HIS 7950 IceQ X2 Boost Clock 3GB card sports a high performance cooling system along with a plate to avoid PCB bending, a custom design with more power phases and can also overclock to impressive levels in order to reach Radeon HD 7970 GHz Edition performances or even exceed them.
At first I would like to thank HIS for offering a sample of their Radeon HD 7950 IceQ X2 Boost Clock 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.”
iPower: More Voltage, More Overclocking!
Increased Power supply input for more voltage for overclocking! The extra PWM phase for core voltage provides extra power stability, lower temperature for power components!
Boost Clock is Faster!
The card has the latest Boost Clock technology, providing extra performance for the most demanding games and applications!
IceQ X² – Cooler, Quieter
Cooler
With IceQ X², the card is cooler than the reference cooler.
Quieter
IceQ X² is one of the quietest coolers, making the card quieter than the reference cooler. The card is below 28dB when watching movies, surfing Facebook, working. The card remains quiet whether you are gaming, online socializing, entertaining or working.
Fan Design
The super large 2x 89mm dual axial fans draws massive amount of cool air to cool the GPU directly.
The Q&C fan blade increases air velocity make cooling more efficiently while keeping noise level at minimum.
The fan is extremely durable with a life span of up to 50,000 hours.
3x 6mm and 2x 8mm wide heatpipes optimize cooling performance by removing heat from the core area.
The extra-large 40x47.5mm copper heatsink provides a large area to dissipate heat efficiently.
The card also carries memory and mosfet heat sinks to provide extra heat dissipation from these areas.
The card also features fan control and monitoring, you are able to read fan speed & Asic temperature from iTurbo or other softwares.
iTurbo – Your Graphics Card’s Assistant
iTurbo is your graphics card’s assistant to control your card to be quiet, cool. 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!
Long Lasting Design: Safer, Last Longer!
Dual Bios
The card has two bios, ensuring the card runs properly. You can always switch to the second Bios if the card does not run with the first Bios.
Enhances stability in critical gaming situations!
HIS cards are engineered with the highest standard of safety, preventing them any potential damages. Solid State Choke stabilizes the card and Full Solid State Capacitors ensures the best power quality and enhances the card’s stability in critical gaming situations!
Special Metal Rib
PCB might easily warped due to prolonged hanging on motherboard & casing, potentially causing cracks on BGA solder joints and resulting in malfunctioning of the card. The HIS special metal rib provides extra strength to the PCBs to avoid warpage, making the cards extra stable and durable. You can count on HIS cards to game hard for 24/7/365 for years!
OC Equipment
The card is equipped with improved power design which is great for OC! HIS cards utilize Dynamic Phase Control PWM IC to save power for better use. Along with improved power design, digital power design, 2 ounces Copper Layer, HIS cards make the best out of power, carrying better OC capability and pushing clock speeds to the full potential!
Built for Crossfire
The card is armed with 2x Crossfire Connectors and is ready for up to 4-way crossfire for strengthened performance!
New Technology, New Experiences
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!
After the release of the Radeon HD 7970 Ghz edition which featured the new Turbo Boost, AMD has also prepared Turbo functionality for their HD 7950 offerings. Initially, the stock cards were designed to run at an 800MHz base clock and with the new revision we are getting boost clocks up to 925 MHz depending on load and power, which would bring a noticeable performance increase.
The HIS Radeon HD 7950 IceQ X2 Boost Clock card we are going to take a look upon in this review is quite interesting since we are getting a custom PCB, a beefy cooling system with a plate to avoid bending and also increased boost clocks. As we know, the Tahiti 28nm core comes with 1792 shader processors but the HIS version has the clock increased to 950MHz for exceeding the performance of the regular HD 7950 Boost from AMD.
We have a beefy 6+1+1 VRM design compared to the original which has 3+1+1. However, we have also seen some revised Radeon HD 7950 versions which sported the 7970 VRM design.
The box in which we receive the HIS 7950 IceQ X2 Boost Clock card is quite big and is similar in size with the one we have seen with the HIS 7850:
The raised clock frequencies are described on a small logo too; however, there is a small mistake here, the Boost Clock should be 950MHz, not 925:
If we look on one of the sides, we will see some more system requirements:
Also here we will get to see the box contents:
On the back side we have multiple logos with explanations of the supported technologies:
By removing the top packaging layer, we will reveal a secondary black box with the HIS logo printed on it:
On the top layer we have protective foam material along with a small leaflet showing installation instructions:
By lifting it up, we will reveal the card which is surrounded by another layer of protective foam, so it won’t get damaged during transport:
The bottom area of the box holds some documentation, a DVI-to-VGA adapter and also a CrossFire bridge:
By opening the small envelope we will reveal the installation disk, along with the manual and a small case sticker:
The card is quite big and the cooling system exceeds the length of the actual PCB; two 90mm fans assure the cooling of the heatsink:
Each fan has 11 blades and in the middle we have a sticker of the iTurbo GUI:
On the sides we are able to see some of the heatpipes of the cooling system underneath:
Also, in the back we will be able to take a look at the heatsink aluminum fins:
The back side of the PCB reveals that the top cooling system is held in four small screws with springs around the GPU:
Two CrossFire fingers are available near the I/O and in the vicinity we also have a ½ switch for the Dual BIOS function:
On the I/O we can find one DVI, one HDMI but also two miniDPs for lots of connectivity options:
In order to get access to the top side of the PCB, we have to remove quite a lot of screws; first we will take care of the 4 silver screws around the GPU:
The rest of the small black screws keep fixed the frontal metallic plate onto the PCB to help heat dissipation but also to avoid bending:
By removing the plate, we will finally have access to the PCB; some thermal pads might remain attached to the components:
This card is equipped with ELPIDA W2032BBBG memory ICs which are specifiet to run at 1500MHz:
In the middle we have the Tahiti Pro2 GPU fabricated at the 28nm process by TSMC and has 4.31 billion transistors:
The VRM controller is a CHiL CHL 8228G:
On the lower right side of the PCB we can find the 4-pin PWM header which powers up both fans:
This card comes equipped with a solid 6+1+1 VRM design which should help with overclocking:
On this side we can also take a closer look at the Dual BIOS switch:
The metallic plate has a lot of thermal pads attached to it in order to avoid short-circuits with specific components and to aid heat dissipation:
HIS advertises the lifetime of the fans of being up to 50000 hours and the heatsink is equipped with 3x6mm and 2x8mm wide heatpipes. The 40x47.5 copper plate makes direct contact to the GPU die and on the sides we can see some black rubber washers to avoid scratches to the contact areas:
CPU: Intel I5 3570K Retail @ 4.7GHz
CPU Cooler: Noctua NH-D14
Motherboard: ASRock Z77 OC
RAM: GeIL Black Dragon 2x4GB DDR2133 (@1600)
Video: Currently reviewed card
Power Supply: Cooler Master 850W
SSD: OCZ Vertex 3 240GB
Case: Cooler Master ATCS 840
With the help of the GPU-Z 0.7.2 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:
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 4.0 at 2560x1440 resolution for an additional 40 to 50 minutes, with details at Maximum and Tesselation set to Extreme. During this time, the ambient temperature was held steady at 26.5 degrees Celsius:
From the HIS website, we can download the iTurbo video card utility, which is very handy for customizing the fan speeds, monitoring several parameters or performing overclocking. The interface is user-friendly and presents itself like a wheel:
The UI can open up in a larger form, in order to expose the full-sized interface. The menus can be accessed on top of the applications and these include Home, Info, Overclock and so on. In the Home tab we can find more news regarding the manufacturer, the ongoing promotions or the latest drivers:
The Info tab will display various hardware information regarding the card like card name, GPU series name, die size, memory size, bus width, ROPs and so on:
The Overclock tab comes with adjustments for the GPU Clock, Memory Clock, Board Power Limit (also present in CCC), but also VDDC. These modifications can be saved by assigning them to different profiles or we can simply jump to the factory defaults:
From the Fan Control tab, we will be able to monitor the current fan status or adjust the speed to a fixed or custom profile. These modifications can be saved as “Quiet” or “Cool”:
The final tab, Settings, lets us adjust some of the global options like Load on Startup, Show memory clocks, Disable 2D clocks and so on:
Before measuring out the noise the video card was producing, we have first measured the noise inside the room the tests took place and we found out it was 30.9dBA (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:
Along with the card, HIS were nice and sent us some additional connectivity accessories:
The first adapter we are going to talk about is the Mini DisplayPort to HDMI Adapter. This one is both suitable for PC and Mac platforms:
On the back side of the box we will receive the list of features and also installation instructions:
The adapter cable is white as well as the connectors:
On one end we have the HDMI assembly, which has a plastic housing:
The other end comes with the Mini DisplayPort connector; with this cable we can transport video up to 1920x1200 resolution, but also 2-channel audio:
Next, we have the DMI to Singlelink DVI-D cable adapter:
The product specifications are located on the back side of the packaging:
The adapter cable is shorter than the previous one and comes in black:
On one end we have the Singlelink DVI-D connector:
The other end, as you have imagined, sports the HDMI connector; as you have probably imagined, the maximum resolution we can transport through this adapter is 1920x1200:
The last adapter we are going to talk about is again, fully compatible with both PC and Mac platforms and permits going from Mini Displayport to full-sized Displayport:
As usual, on the back side of the packaging we will get additional details:
The adapter is all-black and quite compact:
On one side of the cable we have the Mini Displayport connector:
The other side has the full-sized Displayport connector:
After finishing testing the HIS 7950 IceQ X2 Boost Clock card we can really say that we have liked it because of two main reasons: the efficient cooling system and also the overclocking capabilities. While the card can deliver quite a bit of performance at stock clocks, the overclocked performance can even exceed the speed of a regular Radeon HD 7970 GHz Edition. In our case we were able to attain this performance without the need of increasing the stock voltage.
After running the Heaven 4.0 benchmark in order to monitor the maximum temperatures, we have seen that the card did not pass 65 degrees Celsius and the fan noise remained at acceptable levels. The cooling system does not exceed the height of two slots, so we should not run into compatibility issues or overheat when our system is composed from a multi-card setup.
The card we have just tested can be found online for about 269 Euros.
We would like to thank again to HIS for making this review possible!