VGA Reviews by stefan @ 2014-06-09
HIS is ready with another entry-level card based on the R7 250X GPU and has built an improved cooling system for it in order to keep the temperatures at a decent level in all conditions. The card is not a speed demon, but for 75 Euros we can run plenty of titles with resolutions up to 1680x1050 while keeping the detail levels from medium to high.
At first I would like to thank HIS for offering a sample of their R7 250X iCooler 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 1600 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.”
iCooler - Quieter
The card is equipped with the widely acclaimed HIS iCooler – certified by HIS that generates less than 28 dB in 2D mode. HIS iCooler provides an outstanding cooling performance and quiet environment. With HIS iCooler, the life span of the card is maximized while the noise level is minimized!
Quieter
HIS iCooler excels in noise management. It's extremely quiet and noise level is less than 28dB in 2D mode - much lower than the original cooler on reference design. You feel the quietness when viewing photos, browsing webs and checking your email.
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!
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.
CrossFireX Ready!
The card's is supports software crossfire, ready for CrossFire & strengthened performance without the need of a crossfire bridge!
New Technology, New Experiences
GCN
With AMD 2nd generation GCN technology, the card optimizes DirectX® 11.2 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!
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!
See More, Enjoy More!
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 complaint, enabling users to play copy-protected content, such as commercial DVD movies.
Enjoy True to Life Graphics
ULTRA 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!
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!
By taking a look at the R7 250X iCooler video card from HIS, we will see a similar card as with the previous Gigabyte R7 250X OC 1GB product we have reviewed just now. The card uses the well-known Cape Verde GPU and not the Oland GPU we have seen on the R7 250. Cape Verde is the code name of the same GPU that was used on the Radeon 7770 from the previous generation and employs a frequency of 1000MHz while the memory is clocked at 4.5Gbps. The total number of Stream Processors is 640, the board power is rated at 95W thus the usage of the extra 6-pin PCI-Express power connector for compensation. The product also supports the following APIs: DirectX 11.2, OpenGL 4.3 but the more recent Mantle.
If we are discussing about the 250X iCooler video card, this time we are dealing with a non-overclocked card, meaning that the specifications it comes with are identical to the stock model. Because of this, at the end of this review we will use the necessary software tools in order to see how much we can further overclock it in order to enhance the performances even more, but let’s go back to the card packaging.
The box sports a similar design as the other cards we have tested from the same company. HIS did not forget to include the iCooler logo which advertises the usage of a proprietary air cooler for the card:
If we check one of the box sides, we will get to see the total installed memory quantity along with the list of package contents:
The back side of the packaging is filled with main product features, product highlights but also a list of product requirements:
With the external packaging layer removed, we will end up with a black box, which is marked with the manufacturer logo in the middle:
The HIS 250X iCooler is placed inside a thick foam mold, which does not permit it to move during transit, in order to prevent damages:
This is not all! We will also receive a small envelope with goodies, featuring the installation disk, one HIS case sticker but also the multi-language Installation Guide:
The cooler HIS has used on this card is a little beefier than the one they have designed on the R7 250 and R7 240 models, in order to be able to evacuate the extra dissipated heat without the need to increase the fan speed; the fan has also been replaced with a larger 9-blade model:
We have also taken some photos of the card from different angles which show both the plastic shroud and the underneath heatsink:
For connectivity options we have available one VGA port, one HDMI and one DVI Dual Link with supported resolutions up to 2560x1600. The 1080P limitation on the single-link DVI port is finally gone (HIS R7 250, 240):
On the back side of the card we will be able to spot the blue PCB again along with the four spring-loaded screws which keep the cooling system fixed:
In order to get access to the top side of the PCB, we will have to remove the four spring-loaded screws on the back side of the card:
The cooling system is compact and the cooling fan is powered by a two-wire cable which has its connector on the top right side, near the 6-pin PCI-Express connector:
A closer look at the PCB reveals the central GPU, which is surrounded by four RAM chips:
The GPU packaging is surrounded by a protective frame and in the center we will get to see the tiny 28nm Cape Verde GPU, which is laser-etched with various serial numbers:
The GDDR5 memory chips are manufactured by SK Hynix and come with the model number H5GQ2H24AFR. The Gigabyte model was housing Elpida RAM but these two share the same technical specifications:
The main VRM component is placed on the top left side of the PCB:
If we look on the bottom side of the cooling system, we will be able to spot a large aluminium plate which cools the GPU die directly and on each corner HIS has placed some rubber grommets in order to avoid scratches on the PCB surface when mounting the heatsink:
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 0.7.8 utility, we could extract lots of information regarding the video card clocks,memory type, pixel and texture fill rate and so on:
To receive more in-depth information regarding the GPU, we have used the AIDA64 utility:
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 console, in its minimized mode:
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:
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 the 2560x1440 (system) 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 25.7 degrees Celsius:
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 28.7dBA (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 the HIS iTurbo utility:
With the HIS 250X, the manufacturer has fitted a redesigned cooling system and with this card we will get the exact performances as the stock model from AMD. The 250X GPU is not really a new model since at its core we have the Cape Verde architecture which was also found with the Radeon HD 7770 video cards. Nevertheless, the 250X is completely from another league when comparing with the R7 240 or R7 250 meaning that we can drive games up to 1680x1050 resolution while applying medium to high settings.
Even if the I/O shield is using a single slot, the card actually is a dual-slot model and for extra power the 250X needs juice from a 6-pin PCI-Express slot. This card has proven a little bit noisier at the maximum speed supported by the fan, BUT in regular full-load usage, even when room temperatures are a bit higher, the HIS 250X iCooler has proven to keep a low noise level, which is excellent.
It is easy to spot that we have succeeded a maximum 1130MHz overclocking level for the core on the Gigabyte model; the HIS 250X stopped at 1110MHz, but the overall performance level has been the same, which means about 5000pts in 3DMark 11, Performance mode.
As an entry level card, the HIS 250X is priced at about 75 Euros, which is about 6 euros less than the Gigabyte card. What card should you choose then? Well, we are on the fence on this one since both are great cards and the Gigabyte model also supplies a PCI-Express to Molex power adapter. In conclusion, both are a good choice for light gaming and for fitting in compact HTPC systems.
We would like to thank again to HIS for making this review possible!