At first I would like to thank HIS for offering a sample of their R9 280 IceQ X2 OC 3GB GDDR5 Video Card for testing and reviewing.

 

 

About HIS:

 

“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.”

Product Features:

 

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.

The 2x 8mm and 3x 6mm 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 new black handle makes you easy to carry the card.

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! At the same time, you can adjust the voltage by your own!

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!

 

Built for Crossfire

 

CrossFireX Ready!

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 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!

AMD Eyefinity

Set up Eyefinity on 3 displays with No ACTIVE DisplayPort Adapter is needed.

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!

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 ZeroCore Power & 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!

 

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!

 

See More, Win More!

The card is capable to turn your computer into a super gaming machine. Enjoy the latest 3D games with stunning graphics and effects that your enemies cannot match! Get an immersive experience with AMD Eyefinity!

Expand your game across up to 3 displays while your opponents have one monitor. Along with all-new support for stereo 3D, universal bezel compensation and brand new display configurations, take the unfair advantage over your opponent and win more with the surround sight

 

View More, Work Better

Having one dedicated screen just for twitter or Facebook and a second for outlook is not a dream anymore. The card features a DisplayPort for enhanced workspace flexibility. You can easily connect to the 27” Apple LED Cinema Displays with the DisplayPort. The dual-link DVI port allows you connect to a 30” DVI display up to 2560x1600. Resolution can even reach 4096x2160 with HDMI® , 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!

 

 

Product Specifications:

 

 

We will continue with our journey and this time we will take a look at the R9-280 IceQ X2 OC video card from HIS, which features the solid cooling system we have also found on their 7950 and R9 280X offerings; because of this the card is kept cool at all times and also allows quite a bit of overclocking. HIS has released not one but two cards which look pretty much the same with the R9-280 GPU, one having a maximum frequency of 953 MHz for the core and 1250MHz for the memory, while the Turbo model is overclocked up to 1050MHz for the core and 1500MHz for the memory. Specification-wise, the R9-280 is a re-branded Radeon HD 7950 which had a very good price/performance ratio at launched and continued to be the same way with the price drops. The AMD R9-280 OEM model has released with a 933MHz frequency on the core so we can say that the card we are reviewing at this moment only features a very mild overclock, while retaining the same memory speed.

 

The card gets shipped inside a pretty large box, with the IceQ X2 logo in the middle along with iTurbo, the utility which simplifies the overclocking procedure:

 

 

 

On one of the box sides, the manufacturer has placed a list with system requirements:

 

 

 

The other side is populated with a list of box contents:

 

 

 

Some of the product main highlights are described in more detail on the back side of the enclosure:

 

 

 

After removing the top layer of the packaging, we will end up with a black box, which features the HIS logo in the middle:

 

 

 

The card is fully enclosed with a foam mold and on the top we will get to see a leaflet showing the mounting procedure, along with the well-known envelope with goodies:

 

 

 

The envelope provides us with the installation disk, one Quick Installation Guide in multiple languages, but also a small case sticker:

 

 

 

Besides the card, we will also get a DVI to VGA adapter for older displays:

 

 

 

With the new cards, HIS has decided to change the color of the top aluminum shroud from black to gold:

 

 

 

The two 89mm Dual Axial Fans keep the card cool by blowing air onto the large heatsink:

 

 

 

The lateral views are showing a combination of 2x8mm and 3x6mm heatpipes, which travel from the GPU plate up to the heatsink fins:

 

 

 

 

On the back side of the card we will find multiple stickers along with the GPU backplate:

 

 

 

The card presents itself with two CrossFire fingers and one BIOS switch:

 

 

 

In order to power-up this card we also need one 8-pin and one 6-pin PCI-Express connectors handy:

 

 

 

As outputs, we have available one DVI connector, but also one HDMI and two mini-DisplayPort:

 

 

 

It is time to dig further and in order to remove the large cooling system, we will have to first unscrew the four spring-loaded screws in the GPU area. The PCB is reinforced on the frontal side with a plate which covers the VRM areas and memory:

 

 

 

Here is a closer look at the VRM sections of the board:

 

 

 

 

The Tahiti 28nm GPU is surrounded by 12 RAM chips; HIS chose to use thermal compound in abundance this time:

 

 

 

The CHiL 8228G controller takes charge of the GPU VRM:

 

 

 

The GDDR5 memory chips are made by Hynix, and carry the model number H5GQ2H24AFR-R0C; they are specified to run at 1500 MHz:

 

 

 

Between the shield and the PCB components we will be able to see thermal pads as the interface:

 

 

 

The cooling system is pretty complex in order to ensure proper cooling for the GPU but also for the surrounding components:

 

 

 

Here is also a closer look at the GPU plate which connects all heatpipes:

 

 

 

Test Setup

 

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:

 

 

Temperature tests:

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 27.4 degrees Celsius:

 

 

Noise measurements

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 28.8 dBA (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:

 

 

 

3DMark 2003

[pts]

3DMark Vantage

[pts]

3DMark 11

[pts]

3DMark 2013

[pts]

Unigine Heaven 4.0

[FPS/pts]

Aliens vs Predator

[FPS]

Hitman Absolution

[FPS]

DIRT 3

[FPS]

Sleeping Dogs

[FPS]

Stalker: COP

[FPS]

Tomb Raider

[FPS]

Final Fantasy XIV –Maximum Preset

[FPS]

Crysis 2 – Ultra Preset

[FPS]

Bioshock Infinite – Ultra DDOF Preset

[FPS]

Resident Evil 6

[pts]

Batman Arhkam City GOTY

[FPS]

METRO 2033

[FPS]

DIRT Showdown

[FPS]

F1 2013

[FPS]

Metro: Last Light

[FPS]

 

GRID 2

[FPS]

 

Despite the fact that the board is based on the older Radeon 7950 GPU, HIS has succeeded to transform it into a great deal for the second time, by including the proven two-slot cooling system which is equipped with two 89mm silent fans. Through the heatsink fins we will find no less than five heatpipes, which keep the GPU plate nice and cool during heavy load. Be warned though of the length of the card, which is close to 30cm and may have difficulties fitting in some cases.

 

Talking about the overclocking capabilities, we would like to remind again that the product features a mild overclock, but with the help of the iTurbo utility we have succeeded to surpass the performance of the 7970 GHz Edition. The total of 3GB graphics memory allow the card to perform admirably even at resolutions over Full-HD but be careful when setting the detail levels since we will often drop under 60FPS while using resolutions of 2560x1440 or 2560x1600.

 

 

 

Besides gaming, we won’t be afraid to recommend this card for mining too, in the situation we also have good case ventilation.

 

The HIS 280 IceQ X2 OC 3GB video card can be found online for about 190 Euros, which is very reasonable for the given performances.

 

HIS R9 280 IceQ X2 OC 3GB GDDR5 Video Card is Recommended For:

 

 

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